WASHINGTON (RNS) In a break with Catholic hospital administrators, the nation’s top Catholic bishop says the health care reform bill “must be opposed” because it does not adequately ban federal funding of abortion.
“The American people and the Catholic bishops have been promised that, in any final bill, no federal funds would be used for abortion and that the legal status quo would be respected,” Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Monday (March 15).
President Obama, who is pressing Congress to pass a health care bill this week, has pledged to exclude federal funding of abortion from the legislation except in cases of rape, incest, or if the mother’s health is in jeopardy, as has been federal law since the 1970s.
Obama and others say the health care bill passed by the Senate in December fulfills that promise. The Catholic bishops argue that it does not, and that only the version passed by the House in December contains the necessary ban.
Because of congressional rules and partisan politics, Democratic leaders are pushing the House to adopt the Senate version. The Catholic Health Association, which represents 2,000 health care sponsors, systems, hospitals, and long-term facilities, calls the Senate bill a “major first step” toward covering all Americans. CHA officials say the abortion language can be “corrected” after it passes.
George acknowledged the CHA’s difference of opinion. “The bishops, however, judge that the flaws are so fundamental that they vitiate the good that the bill intends to promote,” he said.
“Assurances that the moral objections to the legislation can be met only after the bill is passed seem a little like asking us, in Midwestern parlance, to buy a pig in a poke,” he said.
By Daniel Burke
Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted March 17, 2010 at 12:57 pm
“Obama and others say the health care bill passed by the Senate in December fulfills that promise. The Catholic bishops argue that it does not”
The bishops have it wrong. Shame on them. Shame specifically on Cardinal Francis George. Isn’t bearing false witness a sin anymore?
posted March 17, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Cardinal George never misses an opportunity to take a swipe at Americans denied their rights and fair opportunity. He went after gays and he is now going after the poor and needy AND middle class who suffer and die because they lack health insurance.
Health Insurance for all is truly a PRO-LIFE approach.
Cardinal George’s foray into American politics????Who cares?
posted March 17, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Of course the Bishops and the Catholic hospital association are in conflict! The hospitals want to continue to help patients, and with the health care bill, they can help more. The bishops are hung up on worrying that perhaps a tad bit of federal money might slip past them and get used for an abortion. Heaven forbid!!!
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posted March 26, 2011 at 8:11 pm
I am continually amazed at the autocratic synopsis of commentators regarding any Christians and Catholics who oppose abortion which is the legal mutilating and murder of a human. Yet these critics would want the help if they were ill…and demand it. And one commentor says who cares what Cardinal George says..if you really did not care would you comment. So knowing full well that Catholics and Christians do a great deal of good helping people with AIDS and other illnesses why shouldn’t they be able to have their own ethics?
The same people including this Cardinal George who oppose abortion and ending any life are chastised by autocratic commentators who know, really know by the Truth, that the most help to the neediest people come from Christians and Catholics… yet they continue to berate the ones giving the help. How odd? How peculiar? These type of comments lack common sense and common decency for support of American freedom to work and to have ethics that they believe in. Art is the work of the artist and his choice as is healing and healthcare direction is the work of the physician.