Oppose Abortion Funding and Mandates in Health Care Reform

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Mandated Abortion Coverage Threatens Health Care Reform,
U.S. Bishops Official Says
 

Washington D.C., Aug 8, 2009 (CNA).- Tom Grenchik, director of the U.S. bishops’ Pro-Life Secretariat, has said that mandated abortion health care coverage and funding is “a line we can never cross,” charging that some U.S. leaders are threatening health care reform by forcing Americans to accept such mandates in proposed reform bills.

Writing in a Friday column on the U.S. bishops’ web site, Grenchik said that health care proposals need to be examined during the congressional recess to see how well they provide affordable quality health care and how they impact immigrants and the poor.

“But one thing is certain,” he emphasized. “The bills approved so far by House and Senate committees include mandated abortion coverage and abortion funding, and that is a line we can never cross.”

He also noted that amendments to exclude abortion from health care legislation have been defeated.

Reporting that abortion was not specifically mentioned in draft health care bills until recently, he recalled that Medicaid also did not mention abortion but nonetheless funded 300,000 abortions per year in the 1970s until the Hyde Amendment forbade such funding.

Grenchik quoted Bishop of Rockville Centre William Murphy’s July 17 comments to Congress, in which the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Rights said the bishops looked forward to working with congressional leaders to reform health care “in a manner that offers accessible, affordable and quality health care that protects and respects the life and dignity of all people from conception until natural death.”  Read More

Recent Press Release

Colorado Bishops express disappointment over President Obama’s decision to lift restrictions on federally financed human embryonic stem cell research.

 

We are deeply disappointed to learn of President Obama’s decision, via executive order,
to lift restrictions on federally financed human embryonic stem cell research.


President Obama’s support for embryonic stem cell research is filled with moral
complications and will further erode respect for the dignity of all human life.


Embryonic stem cells derive from the living bodies of human embryos. The embryos are
killed by the process; thus this type of research involves the wrongful destruction of
innocent, developing life. Human dignity can never benefit from this kind of lethal
exploitation. To destroy human embryos for research purposes implies that some lives
have more value than others, and that we may sacrifice some lives today so that future
generations will benefit. This kind of reasoning is inherently dangerous. Whatever
President Obama’s intentions, it is not morally acceptable to do evil hoping that good
may eventually result from it. Read More

A Pro-Life Prayer For Our President And Public Officials

Baby with TearLord God, Author of Life and Source of Eternal Life,

 

Move the hearts of all our public officials and especially our President, to fulfill their responsibilities worthily and well to all those entrusted to their care.

 

Help them in their special leadership roles, to extend the mantle of protection to the most vulnerable, especially the defenseless unborn, whose lives are threatened with extermination by an indifferent society.

 

Guide all public officials by your wisdom and grace to cease supporting any law that fails to protect the fundamental good that is human life itself, which is a gift from God and parents.

 

You are the Protector and Defender of the lives of the innocent unborn. Change the hearts of those who compromise the call to protect and defend life. Bring our nation to the values that have made us a great nation, a society that upholds the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.

 

Mary, the Mother of the living, help us to bear witness to the Gospel of Life with our lives and our laws, through Christ, Our Lord.

 

Amen.

 

Imprimatur:

January 22, 2009

Most Reverend Robert J. Baker

Bishop of Birmingham in Alabama

Library Highlight

Dignitas Personae, an Instruction on ethical issues arising from biomedical research, was published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 12 December 2008. The Instruction defends the life of unborn human beings, created in the image of God, and provides guidance on how to respect human life and human procreation in our scientific age. View Document

 

Bioethics and the Myth of Relativism
In this interview with ZENIT, Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the Philadelphia-based National Catholic Bioethics Center, discusses the need to base bioethics on absolute moral principles. He affirms that even people who profess relativism count on certain absolutes in life.   View Document

 

Religious Catalogue Pro-Life Resources- View More from Religious Catalogue

No Greater Joy DVD NO GREATER JOY - DVD Being Human DVD BEING HUMAN: 40 DAYS FOR LIFE - DVD
Video highlights of the effectiveness and importance of the mission of sidewalk counseling in the Pro-Life movement. See actual footage of sidewalk counselors offering pregnant women alternatives to abortion. Hear the testimonies of women who chose life for their babies because a counselor was at the clinic the day they came for an abortion. One DVD. 40 minutes. This program focuses on the everyday, ordinary people who - by relying on Christ - help save lives from abortion through prayer and activism. Includes interviews with three volunteers: a businessman, a mother and a college student. Features expert commentary. 30 min.

 

Life After Death: David Alton examines the true cost of laws that were heralded as the pathway to the liberation of women and social justice. This book and many other Pro-Life Resources are available in our Religious Catalogue.

 

See Below For More Pro-Life Resources Being Human: 40 days for Life • Defending Life • Ending Abortion

Multimedia

Audio - Click playlist items below.

 

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Video - Click playlist items below.

 

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Library

 

Prayer for the Unborn

Heavenly Father, in Your love for us, protect against the wickedness of the devil, those helpless little ones to whom You have given the gift of life.

 

Touch with pity the hearts of those women pregnant in our world today who are not thinking of motherhood.

 

Help them to see that the child they carry is made in Your image - as well as theirs - made for eternal life.

 

Dispel their fear and selfishness and give them true womanly hearts to love their babies and give them birth and all the needed care that a mother can give.

 

We ask this through Jesus Christ, Your Son, Our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You and Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever. Amen.