The Weekly is a rundown of news by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission highlighting the week’s top news stories from the public square and providing commentary on the big issues of our day.

Congress Overturns a Rule that Forced States to Fund Planned Parenthood

What just happened?

Vice President Pence cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to allow that gives individual states more leeway in how they disperse Title X funding. Because of this change, states like Texas and Florida will be able to prevent organizations that provide abortions, like Planned Parenthood, from qualifying for this particular federal grant.

“By passing this Resolution of Disapproval, states will be free again to block abortion providers from subsidizing their businesses through Title X funds,” said Evangeline Bartz, corporate counsel for American’s United for Life. “In addition, Congress has acted to prevent future pro-abortion administrations from reinstituting it as an agency rule.”

Why was Vice President Pence involved in the voting?

On Thursday, the Senate took a vote to rescind the rule on Title X funding. Two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joined all 48 Senate Democrats in opposing the measure. Fifty Senate Republicans voted in favor, resulting in a 50-50 tie.

As Vice President, Mike Pence is also the ex officio President of the United States Senate. Normally, he doesn’t get a vote. But under Article I, Section 3, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution: “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.”

What is Title X funding?

Title X or Title X Family Planning is the common name for Public Law 91-572—the “Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970.” Title X is a federal grant program “dedicated solely to providing individuals with comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services.” The funds are given to the individual states who, based on federal rules and regulations, disperse it to qualified Title X clinics.

What rule was overturned?

In December 2016, the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule on Title X funding that “precludes project recipients from using criteria in their selection of subrecipients that are unrelated to the ability to deliver services to program beneficiaries in an effective manner.”

What this meant was that states that receive Title X funding could not exclude otherwise qualified recipients just because they provide abortion services. In previous years, as much as 25 percent of Title X funding has gone to Planned Parenthood clinics.

Under President Ronald Reagan and the George H.W. Bush, federal regulations were clearly written to prevent recipients of Title X funds from referring for abortions or combining family planning services with abortion services (i.e., working at the same location).

How was this rule overturned?

In 1996, Congress passed the Congressional Review Act, which allows the legislature to review and disapprove, by means of an expedited legislative process,

almost all federal agency rules. If Congress uses disapproves of a law using this act, then the rule “may not be reissued in substantially the same form, and a new rule that is substantially the same as such a rule may not be issued, unless the reissued or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of the joint resolution disapproving the original rule.”

What will be the effect of this rule change?

Once President Trump signs the bill into law, states will be able to direct Title X funds to county health departments and community health centers while excluding clinics that also perform abortions.

In January,  Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) published an op-ed in The Washington Examiner explaining that, “State legislatures around the country have spoken out about their preference for prioritizing more comprehensive primary and preventative care providers for the receipt of Title X funding, and their voice should be respected by bureaucrats in the federal government.”

This week on ERLC podcasts: Daniel Darling talks to Esther Fleece, author of No More Faking Fine: Ending the Pretending and founder and CEO of L&L Consulting, Inc, about her deeply personal and tragic story and how she helps other Christians lament well. On the Signposts podcast, Russell Moore talks with author and speaker Jen Wilkin about the local church, men and women in ministry, and how to build a strong culture of teaching for women in the church. And on the ERLC podcast, we get a preview of Capitol Conversations, a new podcast hosted by Matthew Hawkins and Travis Wussow from the ERLC offices in Washington, D.C.

Other Issues

American Culture

Can Religious Charities Take the Place of the 
Emma Green, The Atlantic

Supporters of Trump’s budget are eager to restore the central role of faith-based organizations in serving the poor—but it’s not clear they can be an adequate substitute for government.

Social Trust and the Heroin Epidemic
Amber Lapp, Family Studies

The carnage of the heroin epidemic is literal, resulting not only in death but a loss of social trust.

Bioethics

Collecting DNA from Sex Workers to One Day Identify Their Bodies
Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic

Bioethicists studying a small program in Dallas were surprised by what they found.

Canada harvesting the organs of euthanasia patients
Samantha Gobba, WORLD News Service

A recent push in Canada to encourage euthanasia patients to donate their organs appears to be working.

Assisted suicide bills faring poorly in 2017
David Roach, Baptist Press

Bills that would legalize assisted suicide have failed to advance in eight of 24 states considering them this year, with pro-life victories in Hawaii and New Mexico drawing media focus.

Christianity and Culture

Why evangelical churches are booming in Cuba
Andrea Rodriguez, Associated Press

An Associated Press examination has found a more complicated picture. Pastors and worshippers say Cuba is in the middle of a boom in evangelical worship, with tens of thousands of Cubans worshipping unmolested across the island each week.

Jesus Take the Reins
Lyndsie Bourgon, Hazlitt

In the fast-growing cowboy church movement, the trappings of traditional worship are eschewed to entice people through the door, dung-covered boots and all.

Family Issues

Empowering Child Support Enforcement to Reduce Poverty
Robert Doar, American Enterprise Institute

Of all the programs that help low-income Americans, Child Support Enforcement (CSE) stands apart from the others.

International Issues

Imprisoned Iranian believer in 'urgent' health crisis
Art Toalston, Baptist Press

Maryam Naghash Zargaran, an imprisoned Iranian convert to Christianity, is in "urgent need of special care."

27 Million People are Enslaved in the World Today: What One Organization is Doing About It
Amelia Hamilton, Opportunity Lives

When young women are rescued from human trafficking it can seem as though the problem has been solved. But being brought to physical safety is only the first step.

China keeps finding millions of people who never officially existed
Echo Huang, Quartz

China, the country with the largest population in the world, has just found another 14 million people, equal to about one percent of its population of 1.37 billion.

Religious Liberty

Supreme court struggles over hospital pension dispute
Associated Press

The United States Supreme Court is hearing arguments on whether religious hospitals have the same right to be determined a religious organization as churches or other houses of worship. The Catholic bishops argue it is up to the Church, not the government, to determine what is a Church ministry.

To Win Back What We’ve Lost: How Defenders of Religious Freedom Are Fighting to Reclaim International Law
Benjamin Bull, Public Discourse

Despite conceding crucial legal and political ground for decades to organizations such as Planned Parenthood, opportunities abound for defenders of religious freedom to gain that ground back.

Why religious freedom is important to both Democrats and Republicans in Gorsuch hearings
Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News

Republicans and Democrats had competing motives for bringing up religious freedom during last week's confirmation hearing for President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch — conservative lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee did so to praise Gorsuch, while those on the left looked for opportunities to trip him up.

Kentucky, Nebraska Enacts New Protections For Religion In Schools
Howard Friedman, Religion Clause

Two states this month have enacted legislation aimed at enhancing free exercise rights in the public school context.

Sexuality Issues

Ten Years of International Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Laws: Lessons Learned
Daniel Moody, Public Discourse

When the state insists on governing us only in terms of who we think we are, surely the proper interpretation of such an insistence is that the state has reneged on the very reason for its existence: to govern us-as-us; to govern us as male and female.