Catholic Pro-Choice Group Blasts House Abortion Vote
WASHINGTON --- Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, issued the following statement about the passage of HR 3962:
"Behavior in recent weeks tells us and the American voters a lot about core values. We in the prochoice community stayed true to our core values, seeking to overcome the struggles ordinary Americans have making ends meet. These struggles mean that many cannot afford basic healthcare or have to choose between maintaining their health and paying for other basic necessities. The antichoice lobby, with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and its Office of Prolife Activities at the helm, has shown that it is willing to stop at nothing to ensure that its own views, which are shared by very few Americans, held sway. This lobby, aided by the 64 Democrats who voted to insert unfounded red herrings into a critical life-and-death debate over the basic right of access to healthcare, exploited the vulnerabilities of the Democratic Party.
"This is only the first salvo in the bishops’ campaign against women’s health. Just imagine for a moment what healthcare will look like when the bishops are finished. There will be absolutely no access to abortion—even in cases of rape or incest. Women will be detained in prison if it is thought they want to travel abroad for an abortion. There will be no IVF. No contraception. No treatment for ectopic pregnancy or medical anomalies during pregnancy. No respect for your advance medical directives and no use of cures gained through stem-cell research. There will be nothing that doesn’t meet the myriad litmus tests prescribed by a small group of men who don’t represent American Catholics, let alone the America populace.
"We hope that, as this struggle continues, Congress realizes that those who want to destroy the possibility of meaningful healthcare reform may have employed good lobbyists, but ultimately the voters will take down all those who betray the needs of the people for short-term political gains. President Obama was elected just one short year ago on a prochoice ticket. If the electorate sees that a woman’s right to choose is not a core value but simply a bargaining chip to be laid on the table when the going gets tough, there will be a price to pay.
“We call on the Democratic leadership and all of our elected representatives to put forward healthcare reform that can be endorsed by the American people, not just the US bishops.”
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter
OV Social
For two millennia in our Western culture, written into our constitutions, specifically protected by our laws, and deeply imprinted into the hearts of all men and women , there has existed the absolute value of honoring and protecting the right of each human to live. This has been an unalienable and unequivocal right. The only exception has been that of balancing a life for a life in certain situations or by due process of law .
* Never, in modern times — except by a small group of physicians in Hitler’s Germany and by Stalin in Russia — has a price tag of economic or social use-fullness been placed on an individual human life as the price of its continued existence.
* Never, in modern times — except by physicians in Hitler’s Germany — has a certain physical perfection been required as a condition necessary for the continuation of that life.
* Never — since the law of paterfamilias in ancient Rome — has a major nation granted to a father or mother total dominion over the life or death of their child.
* Never, in modern times, has the state granted to one citizen the absolute legal right to have another killed in order to solve their own personal, social or economic problem. And yet, if this is human life, the U.S. Supreme
Court Decision in America and permissive abortion laws in other nations do all of the above. They represent a complete about-face, a total rejection of one of the core values of Western man, and an acceptance of a new ethic in which life has only a relative value. No longer will every human have a right to live simply because he or she exists. A human will now be allowed to exist only if he measures up to certain standards of independence, physical perfection, or utilitarian usefulness to others. This is a momentous change that strikes at the root of Western civilization. It makes no difference to vaguely assume that human life is more human post-born than pre-born. What is critical is to judge it to be — or not to be — human life. By a measure of "more" or "less" human, one can easily and logically justify infanticide and euthanasia . By the measure of economic and/or social usefulness, the ghastly atrocities of Hitlerian mass murders came to be. One cannot help but be reminded of the anguished comment of a condemned Nazi judge, who said to an American judge after the Nuremberg trials, "I never knew it would come to this." The American judge answered simply, "It came to this the first time you condemned an innocent life."
Ponder well the words of George Santayana: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it."
But how effective can a splinter group of Catholics be at counter lobbying the group they splintered from?
Question, where does this idea come from:
"Women will be detained in prison if it is thought they want to travel abroad for an abortion ."
'Cause, that seems insane.