Of Madalaine Elhabbal

Washington, DC Newsroom, October 25, 2024 / 3:50 p.m

Here’s a summary of the latest news about life and abortion in the United States and abroad:

Beyoncé to appear at Kamala Harris rally to mobilize voters around abortion

Beyoncé is set to join Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally in Houston that will focus on abortion, according to Washington Post.

The Harris campaign has described Texas as “ground zero of the nation’s extreme abortion ban.” Friday’s rally will “center on abortion rights,” the Post reported.

Beyoncé, a Texas native, previously performed at a rally for Hillary Clinton in 2016, just days before the Democratic presidential candidate lost the election to Donald Trump.

Harris has used Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” as a rallying cry throughout his campaign.

Ohio judge strikes down heartbeat ban, citing voter-approved abortion rights amendment

A Hamilton County Common Pleas Court judge ruled Thursday that Ohio’s heartbeat law is “constitutional” in light of a state constitutional amendment passed by voters overwhelming last November which established abortion as a constitutional right.

First passed in 2019, the state’s heartbeat law banned abortion procedures if a fetal heartbeat had been detected. The law did not go into effect until after Dobb’s decision in 2022 but was temporarily blocked by Judge Christian Jenkins within three months.

“Ohio voters have spoken,” Jenkins wrote in the decision this week granting a permanent injunction. “The Ohio Constitution now unequivocally protects the right to abortion.”

The Students for Life group was forced to stop meeting on the San Antonio campus

A group of pro-life high school students in San Antonio was forced to stop meeting on campus after administration officials alleged the club was “preventing education from moving forward” and “creating an uproar at the school,” according to a local KENS5 news report Report.

Diego Salinas, founder of the Students for Life of America chapter at Sonia Sotomayor High School, told KENS5 the group had only met once before it was shut down by the administration.

Salinas had been preparing to launch the club this fall and started an Instagram account for the group with the handle “Sotomayer Students for Life,” which gained attention from the student body. Citing district policy, the administration forced Salinas to remove the account, which had been in the school’s name.

The weekend after the group’s first meeting, the pro-life students faced backlash and were eventually instructed by school officials to stop meeting.

Salinas claimed that despite taking all the necessary steps the school outlined to start the group and easily complying with the administration, Students for Life had been “singled out” for their beliefs, as other groups had been allowed to meet and use the school’s name.

(Story continues below)

Subscribe to our daily newsletter

“Sotomayor HS has fully complied with district policy regarding student expression and use of school facilities for activities outside of school by providing a limited open forum,” the school district wrote in a statement, adding, “The matter is currently under review by school administration.”

Irish Parliament votes to approve ‘assisted dying’ report

The House of Commons and the main chamber of the Irish legislature voted 76 to 53 to approve a report by its Committee on Assisted Dying.

Although the vote does not involve any legislative change, the final report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying contains 38 recommendations that largely favor legislative permission for the practice.

Among these recommendations, the committee recommends that the government allow medically assisted death in limited circumstances, such as those with six months to live, or for patients suffering from neurodegenerative conditions, up to one year.

Notably, the report also recommends that the government prosecute those found to have coerced someone into assisted suicide and that doctors receive training that would help them identify cases of such a crime.

Sinn Féin Health Spokesperson and Committee Member for Assisted Dying David Cullinane told Irish Times that it would “fall to the next government to decide what to do next” regarding policy change.

“It will be a challenge to move from a committee report to a legal framework that is robust and can ensure that all the safeguards related to coercion, assisted decision-making and all these issues,” he added.

Madalaine Elhabbal is a staff reporter for the Catholic News Agency based in EWTN’s Washington, DC bureau. She has been published by CatholicVote and has also worked as a foreign language assistant in France. She is a graduate of Benedictine College.