November 1, 2022

A daily news briefing from Catholic News Agency, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask your smart speaker to play “Catholic News,” or listen every morning wherever you get podcasts. www.catholicnewsagency.com - Pope Francis’ prayer intention for the month of November is for children who suffer, including war victims and orphans. “There are still millions of boys and girls who suffer and live in conditions very similar to slavery,” the pontiff said. “They aren’t numbers. They are human beings with names, with a face of their own, with an identity that God has given them. Let us pray for children who are suffering, especially for those who are homeless, orphans, and victims of war,” the pope said in a video message published October 31. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252691/why-pope-francis-november-prayer-intention-is-for-children-who-suffer More than 10,000 unborn babies are alive today because of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, a new report by a pro-abortion group suggests. Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount initiative reported Friday that there were 5,270 fewer abortions in July and 5,400 fewer in August after the court’s June 24 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe and freed individual states to decide abortion policy. As the New York Times pointed out in an article on the #WeCount study, abortions declined almost to zero in states with bans, but they increased in many states where abortion remained legal. In August, fewer than 10 abortions were performed in each of the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. #WeCount also identified some of the states with the largest increases in abortion as North Carolina (37%), Kansas (36%), Colorado (33%), and Illinois (28%). In the two months after Dobbs, the number of women getting abortions decreased by 10,670, or 6%, the group reported. If those numbers were to continue, more than 60,000 lives co