The Iowa capitol. Credit: Henryk Sadura/Shutterstock.
Denver Newsroom, Feb 27, 2021 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- An effort to restore strong religious freedom protections in Iowa has the backing of the state Catholic conference and others who say there should be a high threshold for any state interference with the free exercise of religion.
While the legislation does not mention LGBT issues, LGBT advocates have tried to portray it as harmful and discriminatory.
“We support the bill and have supported similar proposals for several years,” Tom Chapman, executive director of the Iowa Catholic Conference, told CNA Feb. 26. “Our view is that the bill provides a standard of review for the court when there’s a conflict between the First Amendment’s protection of free exercise of religion and a law.”
Washington D.C., Feb 22, 2019 / 05:11 pm (CNA).- The movie “Unplanned,” which tells the true story of former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson’s conversion into a pro-life activist, has been given an R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, a decision the directors fear could have been motivated by the pro-life message of the film.
The rating was announced Friday, Feb. 22.
“We had hoped that (the rating) would be different, but due to the political climate, and the fact that we’re in Hollywood, it doesn’t surprise us,” co-director Chuck Konzelman told CNA.
Co-director Cary Solomon agreed, adding, “we’ve made a pro-life film in a pro-choice town. We’re very aware of that.”
The case of
Trump v. New York involves the administration’s lawful ability to exclude undocumented immigrants from the overall population of states for the apportioning of seats in Congress based on states’ population. On Friday, the court said it was not yet ready for consideration.
The number of a state’s representatives in the House is determined by its population, which itself is determined by the decennial Census. According to the Fourteenth Amendment, representatives are apportioned “counting the whole number of persons in each State.”
In July, President Trump had issued a memorandum instructing that undocumented immigrants be excluded from the apportionment base; he ordered the Secretary of Commerce to provide him the information necessary to do so at his discretion and “to the extent practicable,” in addition to the information contained in the 2020 Census.