Bioethics Public Policy Report: December 23, 2025

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State by State

  • Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Senate Bill 1950, which legalizes assisted suicide in the state. While the Act does not require doctors’ and hospitals’ cooperation with the law, nor does it mandate insurance coverage, disability advocates warned that the measure may lead to doctors pressuring patients into suicide rather than proper care, and the Catholic Conference of Illinois called the law “dangerous.” To read the Governor’s statement, click here. To read the Catholic Conference’s statement, click here. For further information, click here.

  • New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that she would also be signing an assisted suicide bill in January following a few additional amendments to the bill. The bill has passed both houses of the legislature and now only needs to be signed. To read the Governor’s statement, click here. To read the statement of the Bishops of New York, click here.

  • Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger announced that Stan Meador as Secretary of Public Safety & Homeland Security in her upcoming term. Meador was the FBI special agent in charge of the Richmond Field Office during the time that a memo was leaked indicating that the FBI was conducting surveillance on traditional Catholic groups. For further information, click here and here.

  • South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley sent a cease and desist letter to Mayday Health ordering it to cease advertising and sending abortion pills across state lines into the state, in violation of its pro-life laws. Of particular concern was the advertisements’ implication that chemical abortion pills are legal in South Dakota, all “while urging women not to seek medical care after taking abortion pills and to keep their abortion a secret.” For further information, click here.

  • Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that Florida has filed suit against three medical groups for providing misleading information about transgender procedures for minors, specifically their “reversibility and efficacy.” Florida pointed to the 2024 Cass Review in the United Kingdom citing little evidence to support the use of puberty blockers and hormones for treating gender dysphoria in minors. For the Attorney General’s announcement, click here. To read the Cass Review, click here. For further information, click here. The NCBC submitted public comment to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission identifying practices concerning misleading information provided to vulnerable parents and children. To read the NCBC’s public comment, click here.

Federal Courts

  • The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a preliminary injunction against New York, preventing it from censoring crisis pregnancy centers from giving information about abortion pill reversals, as litigation continues on the merits. For further information, click here.

  • Following a federal lawsuit, the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine has agreed to a $10.3 million settlement to 18 students who were denied religious accommodations for the school’s vaccination requirement for the COVID-19 virus. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals had found that the school’s widespread denials of accommodations were “motivated by religious animus.” For further information, click here.

  • The Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. McDonald, in favor of Amish families challenging a vaccine mandate in New York, vacating the judgment of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals which had ruled against them. The Court cited Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case from June of this year regarding parental rights and vindicated the religious objection of the families. For further information, click here. The NCBC, with colleague agencies, submitted an amicus brief in support of the religious liberty of the Amish community. To read this amicus brief, click here.

  • First Liberty Institute filed an amicus brief with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of 46 members of Congress in favor of the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools in Texas and Louisiana. Federal judges had struck down laws first in Louisiana in 2024 and then in Texas earlier this year, pending an appeal with the Fifth Circuit, which consolidated the two cases. To read the brief, click here. For further information, click here.

  • Two Catholic students won a federal case against Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia for enforcing its transgender policies that required the two female students to share a restroom with a biological male. For further information, click here, here, and here.

  • Disability advocates have filed a federal suit against Delaware for discrimination following the passage of its assisted suicide law earlier this year, seeking to stop its enforcement at the beginning of next year. The challengers allege that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the Americans with Disabilities Act, creating “a two-tiered" medical system, where terminally ill patients may be deprived of the protection of liability laws. For further information, click here.

National

  • The House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act without IVF provisions by a vote of 312–112, with the bill now going to the Senate for further consideration. If it is passed, the Department of Defense will not have to cover IVF treatments for active-duty servicemembers or their dependents. For further information, click here.

  • President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission held its fourth meeting, discussing religious liberty in the military, discussing the history of religion and the military as well as recent developments under the Obama and Biden administrations that limited religious liberty in more recent years. For further information, click here.

  • The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a nationwide provision to protect children with gender confusion from being subjected to sex rejecting procedures, which result in bodily mutilation, especially before they are able to fully provide informed consent. For further information, click here. The U.S. Senate has yet to consider this proposal, which restricts physicians from engaging in such harmful procedures. The NCBC, with colleague agencies, submitted public comment in support of providing protections for children who may be subjected to such procedures. To read this public comment, click here. Furthermore, on December 18, 2025, Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services announced six initiatives to protect children from “sex-rejecting procedures.” For further information, click here.

International

  • The Canadian government is considering removing a religious exemption from the nation’s strict hate-speech law, which allows one in good faith to express or attempt “to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.” The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney expressing their concern that the proposed change will “have a chilling effect on religious expression, even if prosecutions remain unlikely in practice.” To read the bishops’ letter, click here. For further information, click here.

  • Following a lawsuit over Poland’s refusal to recognize same-sex “marriages” as legal unions, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued a decision that stated that Poland’s laws regarding traditional marriage violate freedom of movement in the European Union, as well as “the right to respect for private and family life.” While the decision emphasized that member states do not necessarily need to change their laws over the decision, nevertheless the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union issued a statement of concern due to the possible impact on the laws of member states. To read the Commission’s statement, click here. For further information, click here.

Of Note

  • Pope Leo XIV warned of the dangers of transhumanism, specifically the promises of prolongation of human life through technology, by pointing out that “death is not opposed to life,” but “the passage to eternal life.” For further information, click here.

  • President Trump issued a message on the Immaculate Conception, discussing the history of America’s consecration to the Immaculate Conception and ending with the text of the Hail Mary. To read the message, click here.

  • In Minneapolis, Archbishop Bernard Hebda led the rite of reparation at Annunciation Catholic Church following the shooting that took place on August 27 of this year. For further information, click here.

  • A poll conducted by EWTN News and RealClear Opinion Research showed that Catholic support for IVF dropped from 53.5% to 44.5% after being informed of Church teaching on the matter. For further information, click here.

  • The Pew Research Center conducted a study that showed that the number of religious believers in the United States has held steady for the past five years. To read the study, click here.

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The National Catholic Bioethics Center website is a significant resource for bioethics information. NCBC bioethicists are also on call for consultation twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, at 215-877-2660.

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