Respect Life

Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Va., expressed “great sorrow” after the body of an unborn baby was found in a pond in Leesburg, Virginia, on March 11. He called on the faithful to pray for everyone involved in the incident, offered burial services and also drew attention to the resources the diocese offers to women in crisis pregnancies.

Spending most of her life in Armentières, a northern small French town bordering Belgium, Roseline Hamel, 84, would never have expected it to take such a dramatic turn when her brother, Jacques, 86, was murdered while celebrating Mass at his little church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in France’s Normandy region on July 26, 2016.

Alabama’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey March 6 signed into law a bill passed by lawmakers to grant legal protection to in vitro fertilization clinics after a ruling by that state’s Supreme Court found that frozen embryos qualify as children under the state law’s wrongful death law.

While those who support euthanasia and medically assisted suicide emphasize empowerment and control, Catholic opponents argue an undeniably dangerous and dystopian dimension has begun to emerge in the sometimes profit-driven realms of health care insurance and medicine: the cost-benefit ratio of prescribing death for terminal patients versus palliative care.