Posted on 04/25/2009 5:11:18 PM PDT by presidio9
When's the last time you heard Catholic bishops praise the Democrats on the abortion issue? Don't worry—I can't remember either.
But Cardinal Justin Rigali, who chairs the Committee on Pro-Life Activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a letter today urging passage of the Pregnant Women Support Act, the Democrats' main legislative vehicle for their "abortion reduction" program. During Barack Obama's presidential inauguration, Rigali quietly convened a meeting of antiabortion activists to devise a strategy to combat an expected Obama/Democratic assault on antiabortion policies, so this is a significant development.
Rigali has written to all members of the House of Representatives urging support for the Pregnant Women Support Act, which was introduced this week by Rep. Lincoln Davis, a Democrat from Tennessee.
I'll be watching to see how antiabortion groups and antiabortion Republican lawmakers react to the bill. Much of the antiabortion movement has been highly skeptical of the Democrats' abortion reduction plan so far, but it's going to be tough to challenge the antiabortion bona fides of the Catholic bishops' pro-life committee chief.
Read the full text of Rigali's letter here.
An excerpt from the Conference of Catholic Bishops' press release:
"The Pregnant Women Support Act reaches out to women with a helping hand when they are most vulnerable, and most engaged in making a decision about life or death for their unborn children," Cardinal Rigali said.
The Cardinal said that the PWSA offers "an authentic common ground, an approach that people can embrace regardless of their position on other issues."
"There are some statements that almost everyone can endorse. First, the fact that over a million abortions take place every year in this country is a tragedy, and we should at least take steps to reduce abortions," said Cardinal Rigali.
"Second, no woman should ever have to undergo an abortion because she feels she has no other choice, or because alternatives were unavailable or not made known to her. An abortion performed under such social and economic duress meets no one's standard for 'freedom of choice'," the Cardinal continued.
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Rigali’s a douche who never missed an op to have his photo taken alongside Gephardt or Schoemel. He left St. Stanislaus in Burke’s lap. I don’t trust this, it’s just political cover for pro-death pols.
“Read the full text of Rigali’s letter here.”
It is not, and will not be, the Bishops words, or the words on the preamble of the bill that matter, now, or later.
The only thing that matters is the legal language of the bill itself, and therein lies the rub - the “devil” will be in the details.
Rigali’s got to use a carrot and stick approach, because Obama is okay with Federal funding to avoid abortion and Federal funding to provide abortion.
So there’s good and bad on abortion per se. But the underlying Statist value system IS ALL BAD.
I agree! Where is Cardinal Rigali when it comes to allowing Obama to speak at Notre Dame? Total resistance is the only way to finally defeat ‘Legalized Abortion’, not being complicit in lip-service legislation that still fosters abortion.
Your thoughts? Pragmatic politics or self serving servility?
SEC. 401. TREATMENT OF UNBORN CHILDREN.
Question: Would this be de facto recognition of the "personhood" of the child in the womb, if the law is enacted?
Oh! And interestingly, a pro-abortion website called RH (Reproductive Health) Reality Check has an artice asking whether "pro-choice" people can support this bill. This, and the comments following it, is fascinating.
But here's "Just the Fact's Ma'am," the official summary:
Pregnant Women Support Act
- Authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make grants to increase public awareness of resources available to pregnant women to carry their pregnancy to term and new parents.
Amends the Public Health Service Act to allow the Secretary to make grants for the purchase of ultrasound equipment for examinations of pregnant women.
Prohibits a health insurance issuer offering individual coverage from imposing a preexisting condition exclusion or a waiting period or otherwise discriminating against a woman on the basis that she is pregnant.
Provides for continuation coverage for newborns.
Amends title XXI (State Children's Health Insurance Program) (SCHIP) of the Social Security Act to allow states to extend health care coverage to an unborn child.
Requires health facilities that perform abortions to obtain informed consent from a pregnant woman seeking an abortion.
Provides for the collection and dissemination of information on Down syndrome and other prenatally diagnosed conditions.
Directs the Secretary to provide for: (1) higher education pregnant and parenting student services offices; and (2) programs to work with pregnant or parenting teens to complete high school.
Authorizes grants for services to pregnant women who are victims of domestic violence, dating violence, or stalking.
Requires states to require a pregnancy determination for homicide victims.
Requires the Secretary to provide for comprehensive and supportive services for pregnant women, mothers, and children.
Amends the Internal Revenue Code to increase and make refundable the tax credit for adoption expenses.
Authorizes appropriations to carry out the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children (WIC program).
Amends the Food Stamp Act of 1977 to increase the eligibility threshold for food stamps.
Authorizes appropriations to carry out the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990.
Authorizes grants to provide to eligible mothers education on the health needs of their infants through visits to their homes by registered nurses.
Authorizes grants for collecting and reporting abortion surveillance data.
Sucked in by the well-worn time-tested tactic of "common ground" which means, don't get in the way of abortions, just be glad we offer distractions to help you avert your gaze.
A disappointment to say the least..
There is a time and place for practical politics but this isn't one. "Finding common ground" often ends with that "common ground" being the graveyard. Stalin tried to find "common ground" with Hitler when it came time to divvy up Poland. In the end, it cost him 30 million dead. It is sobering to think that the price in blood for "abortion rights" in this country will soon exceed twice that bloody total.
"Authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make grants to increase public awareness of resources available to pregnant women to carry their pregnancy to term and new parents."
Question 1. Why? If the money for this is in the economy, it, the money, IS IN the states. The money DOES NOT NEED TO BE SUCKED INTO WASHINGTON, PUT THROUGH THE CORRUPT U.S. Congress, only to be sent back to the states, who can very well carry out such a program, internally, themselves. This type of law results in nothing but the national politicization of this kind of policy, with no greater economic benefit to such a policy being conducted - BY THE STATES - IF THEY WANT TO.
Amends the Public Health Service Act to allow the Secretary to make grants for the purchase of ultrasound equipment for examinations of pregnant women.
See Question 1.[States can fund this themselves if they want to.]
Prohibits a health insurance issuer offering individual coverage from imposing a preexisting condition exclusion or a waiting period or otherwise discriminating against a woman on the basis that she is pregnant.
Question 2. As a matter of law, this should be within the purview of state insurance regulations, not a federal dictate. There is nothing "benevolent", in the long run, about extending control of everything to the federal government, no matter how compassionate the objective seems on the surface.
Provides for continuation coverage for newborns.
See Question 2.[Should be a matter of state law, not federal law.]
Amends title XXI (State Children's Health Insurance Program) (SCHIP) of the Social Security Act to allow states to extend health care coverage to an unborn child.
Question 3. Will this amendment, this extension of SCHIP, ignore current income limitations that restrict eligibilty for SCHIP, in this instance - providing another back-door attack on private insurance.
Requires health facilities that perform abortions to obtain informed consent from a pregnant woman seeking an abortion.
See Question 2.[Should be a matter of state law, not federal law.]
Provides for the collection and dissemination of information on Down syndrome and other prenatally diagnosed conditions.
Question 4. The language should be clear, that HEW is NOT the agency collecting the data. If this is a concern AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL, it is a concern of science, NOT social policy.
Directs the Secretary to provide for: (1) higher education pregnant and parenting student services offices; and (2) programs to work with pregnant or parenting teens to complete high school.
See Question 1.[States can fund this themselves if they want to.]
Authorizes grants for services to pregnant women who are victims of domestic violence, dating violence, or stalking.
See Question 1.[States can fund this themselves if they want to.]
Requires states to require a pregnancy determination for homicide victims.
See Question 2.[Should be a matter of state law, not federal law.]
Requires the Secretary to provide for comprehensive and supportive services for pregnant women, mothers, and children.
See Question 1.[States can fund this themselves if they want to.]
Amends the Internal Revenue Code to increase and make refundable the tax credit for adoption expenses.
Finally, a "FEDERAL" matter we can support.
Authorizes appropriations to carry out the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children (WIC program).
Question 5. This program already exists. Is the bill's language extending the program to income categories not previously eligible, amending the program in some other way, raising the budget allocation for it - what???
Amends the Food Stamp Act of 1977 to increase the eligibility threshold for food stamps.
Question 6. Our answer should simply be NO.
Authorizes appropriations to carry out the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990.
See Questions 5. [How is the language of the bill altering what is already being done.]
Authorizes grants to provide to eligible mothers education on the health needs of their infants through visits to their homes by registered nurses.
See Question 1.[States can fund this themselves if they want to.]
Authorizes grants for collecting and reporting abortion surveillance data.
See Question 1.[States can fund this themselves if they want to.] and Question 2.[Should be a matter of state law, not federal law.]
One of the biggest dangers, to my mind, is dangling this Federal money before the eyes of cash-strapped Pregnancy Aid services, the vast majority of supported by churches or, at the very least, by church people, buying them into the Washington system, and then regulating them down to nothing.
As I understand it, something like this happened in Germany (then: West Germany) starting in 1975, when they passed an amendment to their Constitution that was actually, on the face of it, pro-life, recognized the right to life of the unborn, but concluded that the most effective way to protect this right was to offer counseling, services, the usual.
Within a very short time, even Church-run counseling services were required to make referrals for abortion when that's what the client wanted.
It so deeply compromised and coopted both the Catholic and Evanglical groups, they essentially never recovered. There is practically no organized pro-life movement in Germany, or in fact in most of Europe.
The two approaches, Conservatives and Marxists, represent very fundamental differences in what is viewed as the society, the nation and the government.
To a Marxist, one cannot discuss what “the nation” or “the society” is doing, unless one is actually talking about the government, and in the American context, the federal government. To a Marxist, if the federal government is not “doing it” then the “nation” is not “living up to its responsibilities “.
But Conservatives do not equate “accomplishments” of “the nation” as either singularly, or even most importantly derived ONLY from activities funded, controlled, run by the federal government - in ALL cases, for ALL things.
To Conservatives, “the nation” is the free society of America and what the nation can accomplish, within its domestic sphere begins with localities, counties, states and regions, from every for-profit and not-for-profit sphere, and its accomplishments, in most things is manifested from those venues up, not from Washington D.C. down.
Conservatives understand that neither Washington D.C. or our state Capitals have any real money or wealth of their own. All the money they have has been sucked out of private hands from the local village on up.
Yet, Marxists, Progressives and Fascists keep getting elected on the myth that they are delivering to the village some magic money that appears out of the sky over Washington D.C. and our state Capitols. The only result is money, power and liberty are sucked out of the sphere's of life closest to us.
You can see the application of our different philosophies of “national accomplishment” in the record of American philanthropy and charitable giving. Americans, from all their private individual, corporate and non-profit foundation sources are the world's largest givers, both for domestic and international causes. Americans rate of giving on a % of GDP and per-capita basis is double that of the 2nd ranked nation, Great Britain. For foreign work alone, in one recent year, the American people, outside of government spent $49 billion. And, in demographic surveys of where Americas most consistent givers live, they are in the “red” counties and they are not rich.
This contrasts, philosophically with everything Mr. Obama has done, or supported, in the non-profit area, with outfits like Acorn, which has not been to husband peoples own resources to accomplish something, but to organize around the idea that taxes and government must be harnessed to make possible the “benevolence” they want to do.
By comparison, Habitat for Humanity has a conservative moral compass and Acorn and Obama have a Marxist compass.
The “dangling Federal money” is, as you noticed, the beginning of the end of freely chosen and independent charitable work. That same “dangling” is already increasing at some state and local levels as well. It is pernicious and insidious.
The additional “grants”, over time, add to the commitments the politicians are placing on tax revenues, which not only adds to future tax increases, to keep the “grants” up, but in doing so reduces the private money left in the economy, tending to reduce, over time, the private giving (look at Europe) not to mention the often corrupt and undeniable politicization of “giving”. To Marxists like Obama, who equate "society" with "government" its always couched in his terms - the government must do it. To Conservatives, it is not a contest between who is compassionate and who is not, but how is the best way for "society" to do something, not simply the "government". If Conservatives are going to quit letting their own compassion cause them to lose the battle that says the ends don't justify the means, now would be a good time to start.
A good summary. I’m going to have to sit down and do some thinking about how to oppose this sort of legislation -— because it’ll be politically difficult to do so, any opposition would be mocked and misrepresented at every turn,but it must be done.
One “trick” is “bloc grants”, on the “funding” items, with the language written generically - i.e “reproduction education efforts” - and the details left to the states.
The problem is that that method (a)does not remove the idea that the fed treasury is needed, and (b)dims in time try to convert the grants to specific federal programs.
We need to win on the philosophical argument of why is the fed govt needed for these efforts, in general, and the difficulty is that the state and local units are pleading poverty at the moment and Obama is willing to borrow till dooms day to “step in and help out”. As someone in his admin said recently, never let a crisis go to waste - or some such words.
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