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Archbishop Joseph Naumann and the bishops of Kansas are requesting all Catholics and people of good will to observe a Day of Prayer on Thursday, Feb. 6, for the passage of the “Value Them Both” legislation in the Kansas House of Representatives, authorizing language for an amendment to the Kansas Constitution.
The legislation was previously passed by the Kansas Senate.
Said the Archdiocese: “The ‘Value Them Both’ Constitutional Amendment initiative seeks to return to Kansas citizens, through their elected officials, the authority to determine public policy and to protect both women and preborn babies in the Great State of Kansas. At present, these decisions have been commandeered by unelected judges of the Kansas Supreme Court in actions which threaten both representative government and the protection of human life. “
On April 26, 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act violates the state constitution’s Bill of Rights, which the court claimed guarantees a right to abortion.
The Kansas Bill of Rights should already protect the right to life. In Section 1, it says: “All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Bizarrely, though, the Kansas Supreme Court used the state’s right-to-life language the right to find a way to allow the abortion industry to dismember children for money.
“[T]his right to personal autonomy is firmly embedded within Section 1’s natural rights guarantee and its included concepts of liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” says the court’s opinion, deliberately omitting Section 1’s guarantee of a “right to life.”
To support the right to life, the Archbishop calls for any or all of the following prayers:
“We invoke the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe for passage of this amendment legislation,” said the Archdiocesan statement, and asked for Catholics to pray this prayer:
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Unborn,
we implore your powerful intercession at this most critical time.
Now that the Kansas Supreme Court has removed lifesaving protections
for the unborn and mothers in crisis,
we humbly ask that you strengthen our efforts
to secure an amendment to reverse this decision and defend
the sanctity of life in our state. Amen.
Tom Hoopes, author of The Rosary of Saint John Paul II and The Fatima Family Handbook, is writer in residence at Benedictine College in Kansas and hosts The Extraordinary Story podcast about the life of Christ. A former reporter in the Washington, D.C., area, he served as press secretary of the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee Chairman and spent 10 years as executive editor of the National Catholic Register newspaper and Faith & Family magazine. His work frequently appears in Catholic publications such as Aleteia.org and the Register. He and his wife, April, have nine children and live in Atchison, Kansas.
