Inside this issue
• Single-payer Healthcare Bill Fails
• Newsom Moving to Permanently Close Death Row
• Opinion: California Might Expand Abortion Funding. What About Help for Mothers Who Carry to Term?
• Celebrating Marriage
• International Day of Prayer and Awareness of Against Human Trafficking
Single-payer Healthcare Bill Fails
A proposal by Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D - San Jose) to create a state-funded single-payer healthcare system died after it failed to meet a critical deadline on Monday.
AB 1400, which would have replaced private insurance with a state-run health system, was not debated on the Assembly floor. Instead, Assemblymember Kalra noted that "the votes were not there today" and chose to refrain from presenting the bill for a vote at all.
The bill is largely seen as a dividing point among California's more progressive and moderate Democrats. The California Democratic Party announced that it would not endorse any lawmaker who does not support AB 1400, a decision it said it is still implementing despite the bill's failure to move forward.
Governor Gavin Newsom, who campaigned on the platform of working to establish single-payer healthcare in the state, was also not vocally supportive of AB 1400.
Monday was the deadline for two-year bills to pass out of their house of origin to stay alive.
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Newsom Moving to Permanently Close Death Row
Gov. Gavin Newsom is moving to dismantle California's death row, the largest in the country, and transfer all condemned inmates to other prisons within two years.
"The prospect of your ending up on death row has more to do with your wealth and race than it does your guilt or innocence," Newsom said at a press conference Monday. "We talk about justice, we preach justice, but as a nation, we don't practice it on death row."
In January 2020, the Department of Corrections implemented the Condemned Inmate Transfer Pilot Program, a result of Proposition 66 that voters passed in November 2016. The program allows death row inmates to transfer to other prisons to work to pay restitution to their victims' families. At last report, 116 of the state's 673 condemned male inmates had moved to one of seven other prisons that have maximum security facilities.
California last carried out an execution in 2006 and is one of 28 states that maintain the practice.
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Opinion: California Might Expand Abortion Funding. What About Help for Mothers Who Carry to Term?
The following is an op-ed by Maria Valencia, associate director of culture of life at the Diocese of San Diego, Gina Vides, parish engagement strategist for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and Maria Martinez-Mont, Respect Life and Gabriel Project coordinator for the Archdiocese of San Francisco on January 29.
Together, we represent the three major metropolitan dioceses of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, totaling more than 6 million Catholics in California.
Reading the December California Future of Abortion Council report was a sobering moment for us. More than 40 California organizations, including the offices of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, offered 45 recommendations to expand abortion access, from funding to loans for physicians to increased "abortion care later in pregnancy." For a woman seeking an abortion, these organizations and lawmakers want the state to be a sanctuary, offering "gas, lodging, transportation, childcare, doula support, food, lost wages." But for a woman who wants to carry her unborn child to term or needs these resources for her born child? Crickets.
Continue Reading at SanDiegoUnionTribune.com
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Celebrating Marriage
National Marriage Week (Feb. 7-14) and World Marriage Day (Sunday, Feb. 13) are an opportunity to focus on building a culture of life and love that begins with supporting and promoting marriage and the family. The theme for 2022 is "Called to the Joy of Love."
The USSCB offers resources to bishops, priests, deacons, married couples, and laymen and women to help celebrate, including posters in English and En Español, social media graphics in English and En Español, and prayers for married couples. There will also be a live-streamed Facebook event.
Visit ForYourMarriage.com for more information and other creative ways to celebrate marriage.
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International Day of Prayer and Awareness of Against Human Trafficking
February 8, the feast day of St. Josephine Bakhita, is the annual day of prayer and awareness against human trafficking. Bakhita was kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery in Sudan and Italy. Once she was freed, Bakhita became a Canossian nun and dedicated her life to sharing her testament of deliverance from slavery and comforting the poor and suffering. She was declared a Saint in 2000.
Catholics worldwide are encouraged to host or attend prayer services on February 8 to create greater awareness about this human atrocity. There are numerous ways and levels in which you can become involved:
Register to join the Vatican in solidarity against trafficking and find other resources like social media posts, daily messages, etc.
Become a USCCB SHEPHERD to organize action or find ways to spot trafficking in your community.
The U.S. Catholic Sisters Against Human Trafficking have several advocacy campaigns to help protect children and trafficking victims.
Offer prayer intentions. The USCCB has a St. Josephine Bakhita Prayer card available.
View a PSA from the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking and the California Department of Justice.
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February 4, 2022
Vol. 15 No. 05
California Catholic Conference
En Español
Faith is not water that extinguishes flames, it is fire that burns; it is not a tranquilizer for people under stress, it is a love story for people in love! That is why Jesus above all else detests lukewarmness (cf. Rev 3:16).
@Pontifex
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