RELIGION HEADLINES WED 6-11-25

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(SRN NEWS  )  A federal judge has ruled that two government agencies cannot punish Catholic employers and health care providers if they refuse to pay for or provide sex-change operations for their workers.  The decision bars the Department of Health and Human Services from enforcing a rule it imposed in 2024 under President Biden.  The judge also barred the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from punishing employers for refusing to cover so-called “gender-affirming care” in their health insurance policies.  A similar challenge over in vitro fertilization is being launched.

(  )  The United Nations is taking Guatemala to task over its pro-life laws.  A panel of independent experts who make up the U.N. Human Rights Committee says Guatemala violated the rights of a 14-year-old rape victim by denying her request to have an abortion.  The committee compared the abortion refusal to torture.  In Guatemala, abortion is banned except in cases where the life of the mother is at risk.  Prior to 1973, no abortions of any kind were allowed.  The country’s constitution contains a protection for human life from conception.

(  )  Vietnam has abolished its long-standing two-child limit to try and reverse declining birth rates and ease the pressures of an aging population.  The National Assembly passed amendments scrapping rules that limit families to having one or two children.  Vietnamese families are having fewer children than ever before and births have fallen below the replacement rate, just like most of the countries in Asia.  Western nations, including the U.S., are also seeing very low birth rates.  The rate in this country is also below replacement levels.

(  )  The Trump administration wants to be dropped as a defendant in a lawsuit in which two New Hampshire boys are challenging their state’s ban on males playing against females in school sports.  Attorneys for the government say the teens are trying to “drag the federal government into a lawsuit well under way not because of an imminent injury, but because of a generalized grievance with policies set by the President of the United States.”  Mr. Trump is campaigning to keep boys out of girls sports, their bathrooms and their locker rooms.