Recently in Abortion Category

Aborttion has been part of the healthcare debate from the beginning.  The effort was supposed to be that the healthcare bill would be "abortion neutral" meaning it neither expanded the opportunities for abortion, nor restricted them.  Now it seems that no longer suffices for the US Catholic Bishops who want to impose their view on abortion on all of American citizens and make this an anti-abortion health Care bill.  Sara Posner at Relgion Dispatches explains the current fight over abortion in the health care bill:

As the House of Representatives health care reform bill edges closer to a vote, anti-choice Democrats continue their threats to hijack the bill over abortion funding. These members, and their supporters, are the very constituency Democrats have been urged to placate on abortion-related issues. That strategy, misguided to begin with, seems even more so as the "pro-life" Democrats are trying to bring down their own party's signature legislative initiative.

As part of Democrats' re-tooling in the post-"values voters" election of 2004, they tried to be more "friendly" to religion. A big part of that strategy included making anti-choice Democrats feel more "welcome" in the party by being less doctrinaire on choice, and acknowledging the claimed heartfelt religious belief at the core of these Democrats' position.

But now some of these Democrats, who claim to be pro-life, are playing politics with health care reform, aligning themselves more closely with the anti-choice hard right and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) than their own party. They insist that efforts to ensure that no public funds will be used to cover abortion services are insufficient. This game-playing is not about public funding of abortion, already outlawed in the Hyde Amendment (which bars federal funding from being used to pay for abortions for low-income women under Medicaid and other programs). Indeed, the House bill already incorporates Hyde through its own amendment authored by pro-choice California Democrat, Rep. Lois Capps.

Instead, these Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, are pushing for an amendment to restrict womens' access to abortion. And that's not theology, it's politics.

Even so, says Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, those attempting to torpedo health care reform over the abortion issue do not represent mainstream religious views. "Pro-choice religious groups and leaders are very mainstream. They are supporting health care reform in the broadest framework," she said in an interview with RD.

While the USCCB has taken a hard line on opposing health care reform (which it claims to support) if abortion isn't sufficiently restricted, it does not represent the views of most Catholics. A recent poll commissioned by Catholics for Choice found that 68% of Catholics disapproved of the Bishops' opposition to health care reform that includes abortion coverage; 56% believed the Bishops shouldn't even be taking a position on the health care reform legislation. The views of the country's 65 million Catholics, said Jon O'Brien, the group's president, "are not represented by 350 members of the USCCB."

Other pro-choice religious leaders are similarly dismayed. Rev. Debra Haffner, president of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, reacting to efforts to restrict abortion coverage in health care reform, wrote on her blog, "It is profoundly unjust when the private moral choices of women... are subject to majority vote and political trading. There can be no common ground when votes are allowed to strip people of their existing rights."

Planned Parenthood, said Richards, wants the Hyde Amendment repealed because low-income women should have equal access to abortion services. But, she added, "we're not taking the position that health care reform is the place to relitigate that issue... unfortunately a handful of people would rather bring down health care reform in its entirety than provide the coverage women already have."

Read the entire article on abortion and health care over at Religion Dispatches:

Randall Terry is back with his after-life threats just in time for Halloween as reported by Associated Press:

WASHINGTON -- Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry is calling on people to burn effigies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this Halloween, as part of a "Burn in Hell" video contest to protest the health care legislation in Congress.

Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, said Tuesday that the contest serves as a political and spiritual statement that "gives people a chance to peacefully vent their rage."

"If Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid force us to pay for child killing and they die unrepentant, they will burn in hell for this," Terry said in a telephone interview.

But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., called the contest "unfortunate."

"I don't think appealing to people's anger and in effect inciting them to acts which either display or in any way project violent acts is consistent with rational discussion of very critical issues," Hoyer told reporters.

A YouTube video of the contest instructions shows how to print a poster of Reid and Pelosi and construct a stand for it. The clip shows a person dousing the Democratic leaders' images with flammable liquid. The next scene shows their picture going up in flames. People are then encouraged to take pictures, record and submit online the footage of their Oct. 31 protests.

"No, this is not a threat to their body," an unidentified man says in the instructional video, "but it is a threat to their soul."

While this is a pretty spooky ploy I think most pro-lifers are embarrassed by these tactics finding them counter-productive as well as opposed to the American spirit of civil debate and disagreement.  Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners, whom I know to be personally opposed to abortion, responded to Terry's Burn in Hell proposal with this statment:

By John Gehring
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good

Just in time for Halloween, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is once again spooked about all those "radical secularists" lurking ominously behind ever corner. In case you didn't notice, these godless heathens are "waging war" against American culture and plotting to "smash the last vestiges of Christianity in America." So argues the irrepressible cultural warrior in a recent On Faith commentary and in his new book, "Secular Sabatoge: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America."

You have to hand it to the guy. Donohue makes righteous indignation and throwing rhetorical bombs into an art form. He is about as subtle as a fist in your face. If you are looking for reasoned and sensible analysis turn on PBS, Donohue seems to snarl. His latest depiction of cultural doom probably elicits a yawn from most religious Americans who are not obsessed with the bogeymen of multiculturalism, secularism, homosexuality and Hollywood hedonism that Donohue rails against with a bullying style.

Everyday in our churches, mosques and synagogues people of faith gather humbly to pray for wisdom, compassion and justice. We give public expression to this faith by comforting the sick, welcoming the strangers among us and seeking peace in a world torn by violence. We lobby Congress to pass health-care reform, fix a broken immigration system and address global climate change as profound moral issues. Even on difficult issues, we reject culture-war showdowns by encouraging pro-choice and pro-life elected officials to find common ground and reduce abortions by increasing support for pregnant women, expanding adoption opportunities and preventing unintended pregnancies.

Keeping track of Donohue's latest offensive comment keeps the watchdogs at Media Matters for America busy. Here's a few of his signature gems:

▪ "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular...Hollywood likes anal sex." MSNBC, Scarborough Country, 12/8/04

▪ "A lot of these people are gold diggers looking to get money from the Catholic Church."  -Speaking about the clergy sex abuse scandal. The Last Word with Matt Cooper 5/29/2009

At least when he gets to feeling down about things, Donohue raises his chin and cheers himself up with this comforting thought:

▪ "The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels."  On Faith, Washington Post, 10/19/09

It's sad, if unsurprising, that the media regularly turns to Donohue for a "Catholic view" on issues. While Donohue's bluster makes for sensational television, he rarely raises his voice to speak about issues at the heart of Catholic social teaching. While the U.S. Catholic bishops' 2008 election-year statement on political responsibility emphasized a consistent ethic of life tradition that recognizes torture, unjust war, the death penalty, genocide, racism and poverty as "direct assaults on innocent human life," Donohue is uncharacteristically mute on these points. Abortion is not the only "life issue" for Catholics. As Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala of Los Angeles told the Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. last year: "We are not a one-issue Church...but that's not what always comes out."

We live in an age where the shrillest voices often drown out sober debate and thoughtful insights. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh watch their ratings soar with every outrageous remark. Bill Donohue gets invited on TV because he bellows and bloviates with the best of them. While some enjoy the antics, most of us are tired of the noise machine. Faith and reason are not enemies, but together help illuminate our path through the dark forests of fear, ignorance and injustice. Sometimes we just need to turn down the volume and tune out the shouters to find our way.

When contraception use goes up, abortions go down. That is the not so surprising findings in the report Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress on the declining number of world wide abortions coming out of the Guttmacher Institute this week.  As the Christian Science Monitor Reported:

Contraceptive use is up worldwide, and with that has come a decline in abortions and unintended pregnancies, according to a report by the Guttmacher Institute released Tuesday.

Between 1995 and 2003, the number of abortions performed worldwide fell from 45.5 million to 41.6 million. The global rate of abortions fell as well: from 35 abortions for every 1,000 women of reproductive age (15-44) in 1995, to 29 per 1,000 women in 2003.

The decline corresponds with a growth in contraceptive use worldwide. The proportion of married women practicing contraception rose from 54 percent in 1990 to 63 percent in 2003, Guttmacher reports. Unmarried, sexually active women are also more likely to be using contraception.

What spurred the increase in contraceptive use?

"In the course of social and economic development, women and couples increasingly want smaller families, and so in a broad sense those are some of the contributors to uptake of contraception," says Gilda Sedgh, a senior research associate at the New York-based Guttmacher Institute and a coauthor of the study.

"That of course is not possible without access to contraception. So it's service provision and international investments in family planning programs that have made it possible."

The findings of the report entitled: Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress confirm what is obvious to most of us - if you want to stop abortions then make contraception and family planning options readily available.  Yes, this is consequentialist thinking but in this case the effort of All OF US should be about the consequences of not stopping unwanted or intended pregnancies before they happen.  For those who view abortion as the equivalent of murder then shouldn't all efforts be made to make sure that there is no conception from sex to begin with?  Likewise, those concerned with the health of the woman should be shocked by the statistic that 70,000 women are dying from the consequences of botched illegal abortions. 

While in a utopian moralistic universe people would only have sex when they wanted to have children, but that is not the universe where real people live and it is time to admit that and to turn to a more pragmatic approach.  Availability to contraception and family planning sould be supported by all sides in the abortion debate.

Chris Broughton, 28, made national news when he showed up to protest a speech by President Barack Obama in Phoenix, Arizona with an AR-15 automatic rifle slung over his shoulder and a handgun. While Broughton claims that his (apparently legal) actions were not meant to threaten the president, there was more to the story than a single citizen's dubious actions and pronouncements. Local print and television coverage in Phoenix, and bloggers all over the country, have led the way on an interesting and important story of religion and politics that has been almost entirely ignored by the traditional media.
Here is what they missed.

The night before Broughton's fifteen minutes of fame, he attended a fiery Sunday sermon by his pastor, Rev. Steven L. Anderson, at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Rev. Anderson, also 28, explained not only "Why I Hate Barack Obama," but also why he and God both want the president dead. "When I go to bed tonight," Broughton's pastor declared, "Steven L. Anderson is going to pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell." He even goes so far as to claim that:
God appointed [Obama] to destroy this country for the wickedness of the United States of America. God appointed him because that's what our country has turned into. That's who we deserve as a president.

And yet, even though we may deserve Obama, Anderson urges his congregation to pray for the president's death, issuing imprecatory prayers and repeatedly asking God to kill the president. Most dramatically, and in an interesting shift to the passive voice, he said Obama "ought to be aborted" because the president is pro-choice, and therefore a "murderer." Despite all this Anderson has insisted to reporters that he was not calling for vigilante violence. Ditto for Broughton, who told a reporter for the Phoenix New Times: "I don't care how God does it, I'm not going into further detail than that," said Broughton. "It would be better now than later."

"However it happens, I'm going be happy that it happens," he continued. "I'm gonna be a happy man... I would rejoice."