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WASHINGTON LETTER Mar-17-2006 (810 words) With photos today and Jan. 17. Backgrounder. xxxn
Catholics bring legislatures messages on life-and-death issues
By Nancy Frazier O'Brien
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In Washington, issues such as parental notification before an abortion, fetal pain and assisted suicide remained on the back burner in Congress and court observers wondered when a judicial challenge to Roe v. Wade might reach the Supreme Court. But around the country, state legislators were stepping up in defense of life.
Although not every effort was successful, legislators in nearly every state were working to limit abortions, prohibit assisted suicide, improve health care access, eliminate the death penalty, achieve just immigration reform and enact a living wage for workers.
And in many places, Catholics were taking their message directly to the legislators.
"We put them in office and we need to hold them accountable," Candy Hill, senior vice president for social policy at Catholic Charities USA, said of legislators in a March 8 talk to students and adults gathered in Nashville, Tenn., for Catholic Day on the Hill.
"One of the most important things we can do as citizens is to be here and learn to understand the issues," Father Ragan Schriver, director of Catholic Charities of East Tennessee, told 250 middle and high school students at the Capitol. "It's a great day to recognize what our faith tells us as Catholic Christians to advocate for."
Like other Catholic Day on the Hill participants, Bishops David R. Choby of Nashville, Joseph E. Kurtz of Knoxville and J. Terry Steib of Memphis met with state legislators in their offices throughout the day to discuss immigration, abortion, health care and other issues. The bishops also met privately with Gov. Phil Bredesen.
Catholics in Florida planned similar meetings with legislators during Catholic Days at the Capitol in Tallahassee March 21-22.
Among the topics cited as priorities by the Florida Catholic Conference during the March 7-May 5 legislative session were parental notification, the death penalty, farmworker safety, affordable housing, a sales tax exemption for textbooks and adoptions by homosexuals, currently banned in the state.
In Illinois, parents and supporters of Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish and other nonpublic schools came together for a February rally in support of legislation expanding scholarship opportunities and after-school educational programs to low-income children attending public, private or religious schools.
Another issue drawing Catholic attention in the Illinois General Assembly was the "morning-after pill" -- in particular, whether pharmacists who object to it can be forced to dispense the drug.
A bill under consideration would require pharmacists to dispense the morning-after pill without a prescription, while other proposals would include pharmacists under the state's Health Care Rights of Conscience Act, which Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says applies only to doctors.
Blagojevich has pledged to veto any legislation that weakens the state regulation requiring pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception. "Let me make something else very clear -- if any of those bills reach my desk, they are dead on arrival," the governor said.
At the other end of the life spectrum, legislators in California were preparing to debate whether that state should become the second to allow physician-assisted suicide, currently legal only in Oregon.
The debate was expected to heat up in mid-April, when Democratic Assembly members Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine scheduled a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Assembly Bill 651, a measure that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal medication to patients who have been declared mentally competent and terminally ill by two physicians.
Berg and Levine tried unsuccessfully last year to pass another assisted suicide measure, but abandoned the effort because of lack of support.
A recent survey showed 49 percent of Latinos in the state strongly disapprove of physician-assisted suicide, 15 percent disapprove, 17 percent somewhat approve and 12 percent strongly approve. The margin of error was plus or minus 5.4 percentage points.
The results "speak volumes about how the Latino community opposes doctor-assisted suicide," said Angel Luevano, state director of League of United Latin American Citizens. "Latinos know that this is morally wrong. We don't see this as a partisan issue, but one that concerns civil and human rights."
Another hot topic in state legislatures this spring was Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that lifted most state restrictions on abortion.
In March, South Dakota became the first state since Roe took effect to ban nearly all abortions, except those to save the life of the mother.
A similar bill is headed for conference committee in Mississippi, after the state Senate March 15 declined to concur with House-passed amendments adding exceptions for rape, incest and "the presence of a life-threatening condition in the mother that would be worsened by continuing the pregnancy."
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Contributing to this story was Theresa Laurence in Nashville, Ann Piasecki in Joliet, Ill., and Julie Sly in Sacramento, Calif.
END
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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