c. 1996 Religion News Service

Supreme Court to hear abortion protest limits case

(RNS)-The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday (March 18) to review a case challenging whether a judge may impose a 15-foot buffer zone to keep anti-abortion demonstrators away from health facilities where abortions are performed.

The 15-foot buffer zone is being challenged as a violation of the demonstrators’ free speech rights.

In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled judges can bar even peaceful demonstrators from getting too close to abortion clinics. In that case, the justices upheld a buffer zone keeping demonstrators 36 feet away from a Florida abortion clinic.

Since then, the court has refused to review challenges to similar limits placed on anti-abortion demonstrations.

In the case accepted Monday, the court could set new guidelines for anti-abortion demonstrations across the country. The ruling is expected sometime in the term that begins in October.

At issue are buffer zones and other limits on demonstrators established by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Arcara in 1992 covering clinics in the Buffalo and Rochester, N.Y., areas.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York struck down the buffer zone and a provision covering”sidewalk counselors”as free-speech violations.

But the entire appeals court, in a 13-2 ruling last September, reversed the panel’s decision.”The First Amendment (which guarantees free speech) does not, in any context, protect coercive or obstructionist conduct that intimidates or physically prevents individuals from going about ordinary affairs,”Judge Ralph Winter wrote in the majority opinion.

In the appeal accepted by the Supreme Court Monday, lawyers for the abortion protesters argued that if Winter’s ruling is correct, then”their (clinic employees and clients’) new constitutional right `not to be hassled in public’ will swiftly encroach on union picket lines, gay-rights activists and all other anti-establishment protesters who `hassle’ the American people by challenging the status quo.”

German parliament wants religious education in the schools

(RNS)-Germany’s federal parliament has adopted a resolution criticizing Brandenburg, one of the country’s federal states, for failing to introduce traditional religious education in the state’s schools.

Brandenburg, in the former East Germany, has announced plans to introduce a course called”Life – Ethics – Religion”instead of the traditional religion courses taught in other German states.

In those courses, the churches usually play a significant role in determining what is taught, Ecumenical News International, the World Council of Churches-based news agency in Geneva, reported.

The March 15 vote by the federal parliament, similar to a”Sense of the Congress”resolution in the United States, is not binding on Brandenburg.

The vote by the parliament was welcomed by Bishop Klaus Engelhardt, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Church in Germany, an umbrella organization of 24 Protestant church groups.”Religious education is indispensable as a normal school subject,”Engelhardt said.”From the point of view of the individual and of culture, religion is a part of human life. Without religious education many young people will never really become acquainted with religion and will have no way to speak of religious matters.” Chinese doctors urge passage of a euthanasia law

(RNS)-A group of prominent doctors has called on China’s parliament to pass euthanasia legislation allowing doctors legally to help the very old and terminally ill die, Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, reported.”Doctors are duty-bound to cure patients’ sickness, but they have to alleviate the pain of those patients with incurable diseases,”Professor Wu Zhaoguang of Zhongshan Hospital in Shanghai was quoted as saying.

Wu and like-minded colleagues from other medical facilities made their appeal March 14 during a session of the National People’s Congress.

The euthanasia issue has been a subject of debate in China for several years. In 1995, in a widely publicized case, a Chinese man was convicted of murdering his cancer-stricken wife by giving her tea laced with pesticide after she pleaded with him to help her escape the agony of her disease, Reuters reported.

The Chinese parliament has twice voted against proposals to legalize euthanasia.

Human rights activists have voiced concern at the proposals, fearing euthanasia could be abused by officials eager to economize on scarce medical resources, Reuters said.

Ukraine president rejects call for establishing state church

(RNS)-President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine says he will attempt to settle the conflict between two rival Christian Orthodox churches in the former Soviet republic.

At the same time, Kuchma rejected calls for the establishment of a state church in Ukraine.

Orthodoxy has been in a crisis in Ukraine since 1991 when a breakaway branch of the church announced its independence from the Russian Orthodox Church headquartered in Moscow.

The breakaway church, headed by Patriarch Filaret, has not been recognized by the world Orthodox movement.

But the dispute re-entered the spotlight this month when the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksy suspended ties with the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul. Aleksy took the action after Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is the”first among equals”of Orthodox leaders, gave official recognition to the Orthodox Church in Estonia, which had also announced its independence from the church in Moscow.

Kuchma said he would help mediate disputes between the rival groups but would not give special status to the breakaway church headed by Filaret.”Appeals are again being heard for the government to set down a policy on religion,”Kuchma told a gathering of leaders from all religious groups, Reuters reported Saturday (March 16). “Behind this are attempts to press for a state church, to create divisions between one church that is ours and another that is alien,”he said.”Our policy is to create equal conditions for all churches and ensure peace between all confessions.” But Patriarch Filaret urged Kuchma to take measures to make religion more a part of day-to-day life in Ukraine.”In the constitution, there must be no reference separating the church from schools,”Filaret said.”Our children, whether they like it or not, must undergo religious education.”

Jesse Jackson plans protest at Academy Awards ceremony

(RNS)-The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the political activist who heads the National Rainbow Coalition, says he plans to organize a protest at the Academy Awards ceremony over the lack of black nominees.

Jackson, in an interview with The Los Angeles Times published Sunday (March 17), said the protest would be part of a larger campaign aimed at the movie industry. He said the industry ignores blacks and other minorities.

Jackson did not spell out what form the protest would take.

The Academy Awards are scheduled for March 25.”It doesn’t stand to reason that if you are forced to the back of the bus, you will go to the bus company’s annual picnic and act like you’re happy,”Jackson told the newspaper.

But Bruce Davis, executive director of the academy, told the newspaper that Jackson’s charges are unfounded.”The academy is probably the most liberal organization in the country this side of the NAACP,”he said.”To say that the academy is discriminating against minorities is an absurdity of the highest level. There must be other groups that are more in need of the Rev. Jackson’s attention.”

Quote of the day: The Rev. Bob Holum, executive director of the Lutheran Volunteer Corps in Washington.

(RNS)-On Dec. 14, 1995, Judge Patricia Wynn of the District of Columbia Superior Court handed down an unusual sentence to the Rev. Bob Holum and 38 other religious leaders arrested for praying in the Rotunda of the Capitol to protest welfare cuts. Wynn ordered the defendants to write an essay on the rule of law in society. In his essay, Holum wrote:”The rule of law in a free society is an expression of the social contract between the governed and government and between the people and each other. … As you well know, this sense of mutuality is breaking down. Those crafting cuts in welfare … blame social disruption on the sinking morals of the poor. Those of us who gathered in the Rotunda … feel it is time to examine not only the morals of the poor, but the morality of a system that wants to hold the poor accountable without holding them dear.”

MJP END RNS