Affordable Care Act

Life issues are perennially critical to the robust public witness of the Catholic Church, but 2025 nonetheless proved a particularly eventful year across a wide spectrum of related concerns.

The ban would prohibit most abortions in the state, but has narrow exceptions for cases of rape or incest, risks to the mother’s life, or “a lethal fetal anomaly.”

The Biden administration declined to appeal a unanimous ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that struck down a transgender mandate that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has implemented as a revision to the Affordable Care Act.

Pope Francis was among several church leaders who commended Sister Keehan, a nurse and Daughter of Charity, during an awards banquet May 25 at the Library of Congress sponsored by the Chicago-based papal mission society that supports ministries in poor dioceses.

Workshops throughout the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering addressed numerous social outreach efforts to people on the margins, addressing poverty, immigration, racism, prison ministry, worker rights, mental health and economic development.

Biden announced the vaccine mandate Sept. 9.

A U.S. District Court judge’s Aug. 9 ruling to block the Biden administration’s mandate that doctors and hospitals perform gender-transition procedures despite their own moral or medical objections is “a victory for common sense, conscience and sound medicine.”

In a 7-2 decision June 17, the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, saying the states that sued over the law did not have the legal right to do so.