“Telemedicine abortions are a clear violation of Iowa law, as an abortion can only be performed by a physician, and the drugs used to induce abortion can only be administered in a physician’s office,” said Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, who appeared at the hearing at the request of several Iowa pro-life organizations and leaders. “We hope the Iowa Medical Board will properly honor the law of the state and public health will not be put at risk by allowing remote control abortions.”

Under current Iowa law, the performance of an abortion by anyone other than a physician is a Class “C” felony. Brejcha adds that “telemed abortions” flout the protocol for administration of the drugs approved by the FDA, Mifeprex and misoprostol.

The chairman of the Board, Dr. Siroos Shirazi, announced after hearing the arguments that the Board will take all comments into consideration and render a ruling, which could come at the Board’s October meeting.

“More than fifteen years ago, with overwhelming bipartisan support, parental notice was supposedly made the law in Illinois, but as we sit here today, secret abortions on pregnant minors continue unabated,” said Peter Breen, Thomas More Society executive director and legal counsel. “With this motion to transfer, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to immediately and definitively decide the constitutionality of parental notice in Illinois.” (motion after the jump)

Earlier this year, Judge Daniel Riley of the Cook County Circuit Court allowed the Thomas More Society to appear as “friends of the court” as he rejected the ACLU’s Illinois state constitutional challenges to the Parental Notice Act. However, after the decision, both the ACLU and the Illinois Attorney General’s office agreed to an indefinite stay of the law, extending through the duration of the appeal a temporary restraining order entered earlier by Judge Riley.

Since the Parental Notice Act was signed into law in 1995, more than 50,000 abortions have been performed on pregnant minors in Illinois, including almost 5,000 abortions on girls 14 years of age and younger. Illinois is the only state in the Midwest that does not have a law requiring parental notification or consent prior to an abortion, and more than 55,000 abortions have been performed on non-residents in Illinois since 1995, including an unknown number of out-of-state pregnant minors.

While the Act was passed in 1995, it was in late 2006 that the Illinois Supreme Court issued the Act’s required “judicial bypass” rules, which allow a minor a confidential bypass proceeding in court in lieu of notifying her parents. Notwithstanding the bypass rules, the Act also allows a minor to forego notification if she declares in writing that she is the victim of abuse. In early 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the ACLU’s federal constitutional challenge to the Act.

It is not yet known whether the Attorney General and the ACLU will support, oppose or remain neutral on the motion to transfer.

Thomas More Society Motion to Transfer Parental Notice Appeal to Supreme Court

Thomas Brejcha, TMS President & Chief Counsel, was in court this morning, along with ace defense attorney Patrick Mclain, who volunteered his services to defend Cheryl. “Thank you to Patrick Mclain for his selfless service to assist Cheryl Kennedy to get back on the sidewalk and save more babies,” said Brejcha. Mclain, a former federal prosecutor and former Marine Judge Advocate General officer, had recently contacted Thomas More Society seeking to assist in the pro-life law center’s work.

“We are pleased that for the second time, the City of Chicago has dismissed the false charges of disorderly conduct against a man who was properly and legally exercising his First Amendment rights on the public way,” said Breen, executive director and legal counsel at the Thomas More Society. “We hope these two baseless cases involving alleged ‘Bubble Zone’ ‘infractions’ show the Chicago City Council why it should repeal this controversial ordinance altogether and cease efforts to scare pro-life people away from Planned Parenthood.”

The “Bubble Zone” ordinance applies outside local abortion clinics to prohibit approaching within eight feet of a person to present a leaflet, sign or oral message to that person. The Thomas More Society challenged the constitutionality of this ordinance, in agreement with the ACLU, in 2009.

Avignone’s case is the third “Bubble Zone” case, all of which have been dismissed. On August 3, the City of Chicago dismissed its case against Joe Holland, a Northwestern University graduate student arrested while praying the rosary outside the same Planned Parenthood clinic.

“David did nothing wrong – he was exercising his First Amendment rights on a public sidewalk, and this arrest is another sad attempt at scaring pro-life people away from Planned Parenthood,” said Breen, executive director and legal counsel at the Thomas More Society. In 2009, Breen presented testimony on behalf of the Society that the “Bubble Zone” ordinance is unconstitutional during committee hearings.

On August 3, the City of Chicago dismissed the same charges against Joe Holland, a Northwestern University graduate student who was arrested as he prayed the rosary outside Planned Parenthood’s Near North Side facility. Video of the incident showed Holland standing outside the entrance to the facility and praying, not approaching any individual to leaflet, picket or engage in “sidewalk counseling.”

Breen commented, “David and Joe, arrested within a week of one another, were arrested even though they were both standing still, which is perfectly legal under the ordinance. We call on the City of Chicago to end this pattern of illegal arrests and repeal its ‘Bubble Zone’ ordinance.”

The court previously granted the Thomas More Society permission to serve subpoenas on Planned Parenthood for relevant security footage and on the City of Chicago for relevant “911″ call tapes. The responses to those subpoenas are due today in court.

What was their alleged “misconduct”? According to the ACLU, the Catholic hospitals have “inappropriately and unlawfully den[ied] pregnant women emergency medical care.” How so? Because, the ACLU complains, the Catholic hospitals decline to provide “reproductive services” to women. What “reproductive services” aren’t provided? The answer, says the ACLU, is that—as if this were only recently discovered!—Catholic hospitals don’t provide abortions!

The ACLU’s complaint focused on the recent demotion of a nun, Sister Margaret Mary McBride, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, for her role in the hospital’s performing an abortion allegedly to address a serious health problem on the part of the baby’s mother — an event that drew a formal statement of opposition from the ordinary of the Diocese.

ACLU then claimed that this action by Church authorities now discourages health care workers from fulfilling their legal duties to provide “adequate” emergency health care and underscores how Catholic hospitals provide inadequate “emergency care” in taking their historic, time-honored principled stand against doing abortions.

The CNA/EWTN news article quotes Dr. John Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, based in Philadelphia, to the effect that ACLU distorted Catholic moral teaching “which permits efforts to treat or cure a mother, even if such efforts may result in the indirect and unintentional death of the unborn child.” Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop once remarked that in his entire medical career spanning decades of practicing pediatric medicine, he never once encountered a situation where it was actually necessary to kill an unborn baby in order to save a woman’s life.

The CNA/EWTN article proceeded to quote at length from remarks of TMS’s president and chief counsel, Tom Brejcha, citing him as a legal expert on the subject matter of ACLU’s complaint, as follows:

Catholics should view the ACLU’s letter as heralding nothing less than a new onslaught of attacks against the Church’s core teachings that human life is sacred from conception to natural death, that procured or directly intended destruction of a viable fetus by abortion is never morally permissible, and that those who participate or materially aid in such acts per se put themselves out of communion with the Church.

ACLU’s advocacy that abortions are sometimes necessary to ’save a life’ and its contention that reproductive health care may require the killing of uinborn human beings should provoke an enlightened, invigorated and sustained response from Catholics and others who believe that every human life is endowed with an inviolable right to life.

Direct killing of defenseless human beings is evil. No law now requires that those who abhor such killing must nonetheless engage in it, and advocacy of such a law in utter disregard for rights of conscientious objection must be repulsed and rejected in the strongest possible terms as both inhumane and unconscionable.”

President Obama promised in his notorious Commencement speech at Notre Dame in May, 2009, to protect fundamental rights of conscience. He and his Administration must be held to honor that pledge. America’s distinguished legacy of Catholic health care must not be sacrificed in deference to the abortion lobby.

The entire article from EWTN and Catholic News Agency may be found here.

After briefing and argument in the Trial Court, Judge Manier denied the initial request for recusal, but agreed with the ND 88 attorneys that the issue should be certified for immediate consideration by the Indiana Court of Appeals. After the appeal was underway but before it was decided, Manier reversed her earlier decision and recused herself.

Details to follow as we learn more…

Chicago, IL—At noon this Saturday, December 12, the Thomas More Society (TMS) will co-sponsor a Catholic Mass which will be celebrated at Federal Plaza, 50 W. Adams St., (Map) in honor of this Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

This public Mass evidences the recently increased recognition by Chicago and federal officials that private citizens are constitutionally entitled to proclaim their religious faith in the public square, so long as such events are privately sponsored and funded and where government’s role is only that of a neutral gatekeeper.

Far from offending any mandate for separation of church and state, such public religious ceremonies reflect that it is rather those who would purge all religious expression from the nation’s public arena who flout the First Amendment, which explicitly protects both free exercise of religion and free speech.

“If you can set up your soapbox and spout your politics on Federal Plaza, then there is no reason why you should not be permitted equally to proclaim your religious faith,” said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of TMS. “Last year, despite sub-freezing temperatures there was a great turnout for this Mass, and it was such a moving event that our Thomas More Society decided to spearhead and sponsor it again,” said Brejcha.

“It’s wonderful to see Christians come together in the public square to proclaim their faith and celebrate this Mass in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In the 16th century, Mary appeared to a poor Indian, Juan Diego, on Tepeyac Hill. Shortly thereafter, a symbolic image of Mary awaiting the birth of her baby, Jesus, was miraculously imprinted on his cloak which today hangs in the great Cathedral in Mexico City. This image, or icon, is known by the title ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe,’ is held dear to Mexican Catholics, in particular, as ‘Queen of Mexico,’ but venerated as well by all the rest of us as ‘Patroness of the Americas’ and ‘Patroness of the Pro-Life Movement.’”

“We hope, too, that others will step forward to proclaim their religious values—values our society desperately needs to reaffirm and embrace!—in our nation’s public squares, and we offer pro bono legal help to all in pursuit of that end,” Brejcha added.

Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, the Most Reverend John R. Manz, will celebrate this historic Mass in English and Spanish while musicians from the St. Agnes of Bohemia ensemble, directed by Jorge Velazco, will provide liturgical music.

Additional sponsors for this event include the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office for Hispanic Catholics, its Respect Life Office and its Office for Divine Worship. Federal Plaza is located at 50 W. Adams, at the intersection of Adams and Dearborn in Chicago’s Loop.

Additional Links

• Hundreds Flock to Guadalupe Mass—Pro Life Action League
• Bishp Manz’s Bio [PDF]

Attorney Tom Dixon today filed a second motion for recusal in the “ND 88″ case [PDF] in which he provides detailed support for his assertion in his previous recusal motion that there exists sufficient actual and perceived bias that Judge Jenny Pitts Manier, the judge assigned to the “ND 88″ case is required by Indiana state law to recuse herself in the matter.

Unlike the original motion, the new motion goes into great detail about the rabid pro-abortion, anti-episcopacy views of Edward Manier, Judge Manier’s husband, a Notre Dame professor and raises serious doubts about claims made by Judge Manier in her previous denial of Dixon’s motion to recuse.

Motion to Reconsider Motion for Change of Judge

In the new motion, Dixon states that ever since Judge Jenny Pitts Manier has known Professor Edward Manier he has been a well-known and outspoken advocate of the pro-abortion position and has both targeted the Catholic University and charged the judiciary to promote and protest abortion rights. As his views were well-known and have defined, in large part, his public person at the University of Notre Dame it seems implausible that Judge Manier could reasonably claim to be unaware of his views on the “ND 88” case which stem from the single biggest controversy in the history of the University of Notre Dame (the invitation to President Barack Obama to be the 2009 Commencement speaker and to receive an honorary law degree from the University of Notre Dame) which revolved entirely around the issue of Obama’s pro-abortion views and the relationship of the University to the episcopacy – the very issues which largely define Professor Manier’s career as a member of the Notre Dame faculty.

The motion notes that Judge Jenny Ann Manier (nee Jenny Ann Pitts) graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1982, that Edward Manier was her professor during her undergraduate years., that Jenny Ann Pitts graduated from the University of Notre Dame law school in 1985 and married Professor Manier the same year.

In the new recusal motion, Dixon addresses an exchange that occurred during the August 2009 hearing on his original recusal motion. Dixon describes how Judge Manier struggled to respond when asked whether her husband had ever written on the topic of abortion before choosing to disregard the question and say only “I’m not my husband”.

Neither Dixon nor anyone has alleged that Judge Manier is her husband but rather that her husband has been so outspoken in his pro-abortion stance that it creates actual and perceived bias. Further, that his pro-abortion views are informed by his broader rejection of the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church which has, in turn, informed every aspect of his career as a professor at the Notre Dame, his published writings and his personal political activism.

The Magisterium refers to the “teaching authority of the church as embodied in the episcopacy, which is the aggregation of the current bishops of the Church, led by the Bishop of Rome (the Pope), who has authority over the bishops, individually and as a body, as well as over each and every Catholic directly.”

Judge Manier’s marriage to Professor Manier is not that of a political odd-couple like that of Democratic political strategist James Carville and Republican political strategist Mary Matalin where he publicly advocates liberal points of view and she advocates conservative points of view. Quite the contrary, they appear to be two peas in a pod. Judge Manier owes her current position largely to riding the coattails of one of Indiana’s most ardent pro-abortion politicians, former South Bend Mayor and Indiana Governor Joe Kernan who is so pro-abortion that South Bend Bishop John D’Arcy banned him from giving the commencement address at Saint Joseph’s High School, South Bend’s largest Catholic school. In a 2004 interview in The Observer in 2004, Professor Manier described his decision to leave the Catholic Church and how Judge Manier later encouraged him join the ultra-liberal Little Flower Church in South Bend, IN.

To understand the legal reasoning as well as the statutes and precedents be sure to read the entire motion filed by Attorney Tom Dixon. The short version is that in Indiana a judge must recuse himself or herself from a case in the event of actual or perceived bias. Dixon then proceeds to highlight the many ways in which such actual and perceived bias exists in the “ND 88” case including how, under the guise of advocating “academic freedom”, Edward Manier has written extensively on promoting his belief that the University of Notre Dame is not and should not be subject to the authority of the Catholic Church and advancing a pro-life agenda at Notre Dame.

Dixon’s previous recusal motion including an affidavit factually alleging that Judge Manier’s husband is “too intertwined with and invested in the University of Notre Dame, the complaining witness”. Rather than accept that factual allegation as true, as required by Indiana state law, she sought to disprove the factual allegation and claimed “Edward Manier has no personal or professional interest in the outcome of these cases”. In fact, Professor Manier is a grant recipient from the University of Notre Dame and his entire professional career at Notre Dame has been defined by the matters at issue in the case. More to the point, how, asks Dixon could Judge Manier know this if she had not discussed the “ND 88” case with him.

“When one analyzes Edward Manier’s political contributions to pro abortion candidates and Political Action Committee, when one reads Edward Manier’s writings referencing members of the Christian right, calling them “fundamentalist mullahs” and “jackleg preachers”, Dixon writes, “it is hard to comprehend how Judge Manier could derive from her husband’s writings the notion that he has no interest in the outcome of these cases.”

Dixon proceeds to lay out the many ways in which Professor Manier’s views inform all of his subsequent writings and on-campus activism ranging from promoting abortion counseling by University funded organizations to promoting homosexual organizations to championing the controversy over a production of “The Vagina Monologues” on the Notre Dame campus.

• In 1977, Edward Manier co-edited and contributed to a book, published by Notre Dame Press, entitled ABORTION: New Directions for Policy Studies in which Manier said Church teachings on abortion are “methodologically naive and uncritical in their derivation of moral conclusions from biological premises and attacked Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., a pro-life judge.
• In the 1990’s, Edward Manier wrote several op-eds for the Notre Dame campus newspaper, The Observer, criticizing the University of Notre Dame for reprimanding the University funded Women’s Resource Center for providing abortion referrals to female undergraduate students, advocating in favor of such referrals being allows and falsely accuses the two students who reported the abortion counseling as anonymous “snitches”.
• Manier has described Pro-life advocates as “fundamentalist mullahs…who only find prophetic insight in papal documents symptomatic of compulsive voyeurism”.
• Edward Manier has written that the Catholic Church’s teaching about life beginning at conception is “indefensible”.
• In an New York Times Letter to the Editor which identifies him as a Notre Dame professor, Manier wrote that opposition to abortion should be “criticized by any faithful Catholic” with experience of the needs of children (ironic coming from a man who walked out on a marriage with seven children to marry a student more than half his age).
• Attacked Pope John Paul II’s Papal Encyclical Human Vitae as being “intellectually stillborn”.
• Edward Manier donated money to Emily’s List, a PAC whose stated purpose is to get pro-choice women into public office.
• Edward Manier donated a significant sum of money to Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign as well as additional donations to other pro-abortion rights candidates in the United States. As it is the decision to invite President Obama to Notre Dame to give the 2009 Commencement Address and award him an honorary law degree that was the animating event that led to the arrest of the “ND 88″.
• Edward Manier has written that Notre Dame must be independent of the authority of its local Bishop. As the defendants intend to argue that they had a right to be on campus to pray that the University adhere to the authority of the Bishop this is an issue that the Judge in the case will be asked to determine. That her husband has been an outspoken critic of of the basis for this legal defense is something she should have disclosed.

This is, of course, the United States of America and Professor Manier is entitled to give voice to his opinions and support the political candidates of his choice but as his extensive track record makes clear — and only a portion of it has been cited here — Edward Manier stands in direct opposition to everything that the “ND 88″ support. Given this, it is beyond incredible that Judge Manier would refuse to respond to questions about her husband or admit her knowledge of his past writings. The defendants in this case are left to wonder whether her refusal to answer suggests the possibility of her solidarity with her husband’s positions. In either case, there can be no doubt that a reasonable person would find a perception of bias and for this reason alone Judge Manier should recuse herself from the “ND 88″ case.

Public Policy Luncheon: Thursday, September 24, 2009
Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
President, University of Notre Dame

Location: Maggiano’s Banquets

111 W. Grand Avenue (click here for directions)

Time: 11:30 a.m. Reception / Check-In, 12:00 p.m. Lunch

You can register online or call (312) 565-6500.

City Club Chairperson Thomas F. Roeser is hoping “authenticist Catholics” will turn out to protest Jenkins’ appearance.

On his blog Roeser expresses some disappointment that pro-lifers have, so far, not made plans to show up in force.

As City Club Chairman, I didn’t invite him but I welcomed his appearance because I thought it would be healthy for him to experience some old-fashioned robust dissent with placards and civil protests out on the street-where I had planned to be.

But all I got when I approached one pro-life leader was a yawn (“We did that before at Notre Dame”). Oh, all right. The media will say, “see? Just a tempest in a teapot!” But if that’s the way you want it, Catholics, okay. I’ll fold up my placard and stay home. If you want to protest, get organizing. Not long until this Thursday. And if any of you want to make a showing, I’d like to know so I can join in to make a ruckus in the good old American spirit of dissent. Write me at thomasfroeser@sbcglobal.net.

NOTE: I am working on getting a print-ready EPS file of the “Free the ND 88″ logo so folks can use it to make signs and placards. We sure would like to see a few “Free the ND 88″ signs with out logo and web site greeting him at the event.