Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Obama's denials of abortion coverage 'laughable'

A leading pro-life activist in Washington says President Obama is not telling the whole truth when he promises taxpayers they will not be forced to fund abortions under his healthcare plan.

On Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on ABC's This Week program that President Obama will go beyond language in the House healthcare bill to make sure no public money goes to pay for abortions under healthcare reform.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, says Americans should be skeptical of Sebelius' claim, especially given the President's 2007 promise to Planned Parenthood that his healthcare plan would provide "reproductive care."

"It's almost gotten to the point of laughable if the consequences weren't so dire -- the president repeating over and over that there is no abortion coverage in healthcare reform currently.  I mean, it's simply a lie. It is simply not true," she contends. "I simply don't believe that he is that ignorant of what the plans are out there. I think what he knows is that Americans have rejected the idea. Our poll showed last week that it rejects the idea."

In order for President Obama to be considered the next convert to the pro-life cause, Dannenfelser says he needs to push for an amendment specifically excluding abortion coverage from the healthcare plans, an amendment that has been narrowly defeated in the House more than once already.

~ Via OneNewsNow.Com 

Opposing Obamacare Not a Tough Choice for Catholics


by Cathy Ruse

The New York Times reports that President Obama's health plans have caused a "struggle" within the Catholic Church over "how heavily to weigh opposition to abortion against  oncerns about social justice."

There are two problems here.  First is the suggestion that there is a collision of competing priorities at play, the social justice imperative of achieving health care for the poor and the pro-life imperative of battling abortion, with which Notre Dame law professor Cathleen Kaveny agrees.  She tells the Times, "It is the great tension in Catholic thought right now."

Surely there are bureaucratic squabbles between parish or diocesan offices, but this idea that there is some dichotomy in "Catholic thought" is utter fiction.  Social justice is concerned with the dignity of the human person, and there is no greater indignity than the taking of innocent human life in the womb; it champions the rights of the poor, and there is no one poorer than the child marked for abortion.

In fact, not only does the Church teach that abortion is a social justice concern, successive popes have called it the preeminent social justice issue of our time, which highlights the second problem in the New York Times report.  The competing imperatives are not of equal weight.  Teaching documents at all levels of the Church demonstrate that concern for the right to life takes pride of place because it is the foundation for all other rights.  Pope John Paul II wrote in Christifidelis Laici that, "the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture - is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination."

The Catholic Church doesn't see abortion as an issue that can be given more weight in some circumstances and less in others; it is always and everywhere an attack on innocent human life and gravely immoral. The Church will never embrace "a little abortion" in exchange for achieving another desired goal.

The Catholic bishops have worked for decades to achieve access to quality health care for all, especially the poor, in furtherance of their belief that health care is a basic right belonging to all human beings.  But the Church has never taught that this obligation must be met by a government-run health system and certainly not a government system which sponsors the killing of children before birth.  Indeed, for the Church, the fundamental requirement of any health care system is that it respects human life.  The Church has been extraordinarily consistent throughout the debate on health care:  any system that authorizes or subsidizes the killing of unborn children is unacceptable.

Click here to read the rest.

URGENT Petition to Notre Dame: Please drop the charges

keyes_arrested

Alan Keyes being arrested at Notre Dame while peacefully praying the rosary. He now faces up to one year in jail.
The 88 outspoken pro-lifers peacefully walked onto Notre Dame’s campus in May to be the voice of the unborn – when pro-abortion president Obama was honored there – and were arrested for trespassing. 
Among those arrested were Fr. Norman Weslin, several Catholic nuns, Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade, and Ambassador Alan Keyes.
Sign the “Drop the Charges” petition

Lifesitenews.com reports:
“While witnesses say pro-Obama protesters were allowed to roam free, the arrested individuals were singled out for displaying any pro-life message -- including slogans on the sanctity of life, photographs of aborted children, a large wooden cross, and images of Mary.”
The double standard is rather shocking, isn’t it?
The University of Notre Dame, as the original complainant, has the choice to drop the charges pending against the 88 pro-lifers.
Therefore, your signature is very important right now because, according to reports, the president of Notre Dame “has repeatedly refused to seek such leniency or even answer the pro-lifers' requests for dialogue.”  (Lifesitenews.com: 09-04-09)
Join this urgent petition.  Pass it along.  Post it on Facebook, on blogs, and get the word out.

Kindly ask Fr. Jenkins to drop the charges
Respectfully contact Fr. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame:
Office of the President
400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Phone: 574-631-3903
Email: president@nd.edu

Bishop Doran Weighs in Against Obama Health Care Overhaul

 By Kathleen Gilbert

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Another U.S. Catholic bishop has joined in criticizing President Obama's health care overhaul, insisting that any such legislation must avoid promoting abortion and urging against the unwarranted expansion of government into the private sphere.

Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford, Illinois wrote in the diocesan newspaper The Observer last month that the principles of subsidiarity, solidarity, and interest in the common good are indispensable to positive health care reform. Doran advised that health care be treated as "more of a market than a system," and warned against the pitfalls of a government takeover.

"Our federal bureaucracy is a vast wasteland strewn with the carcasses of absurd federal programs which proved infinitely worse than the problems they were established to correct," wrote Doran.

Doran's remarks reflect the widespread unrest among conservative Americans that led to a massive grassroots rally on Saturday against the Obama administration's health care initiative and government expansion. Estimates for the number of attendees at the "tea party" protest on Capitol Hill spanned from "tens of thousands" to well over a million.

The bishop also wrote that, "whatever we do," respect for "all human life from conception to natural death" is the first principle that must be respected in any such bill.

Read the rest here.

Obamacare: Ending the Elderly

American Life League exposes the euthanasia agenda of the sponsors of HR 3200. Henry Waxman and co-sponsors John Dingell, George Miller, Peter Stark, and Frank Pallone all voted against a federal ban on use of drugs for physician assisted suicide. Not only that, Barack Obama equates physician assisted suicide with "end of life issues" and "the elderly."

Obamacare: It's As Bad (Or Worse) As You Imagined

By Thomas DiLorenzo

The Obammunistic health care proposals, that is. A friend sent me this blog by Michael Connelly, a lawyer who has read every word of the proposed legislation. Rationing, free health care for illegals, government-funded abortion, the abolition of medical privacy, and much worse is all in there, he says, contrary to what the lying media are telling you.

The USCCB Gambit on Health Care

Last week, in response to President Obama's speech on health-care reform, Richard Doerflinger-- a veteran staff member for the US bishops' pro-life committee-- said:

We especially welcome the President’s commitment to exclude federal funding of abortion, and to maintain existing federal laws protecting conscience rights in health care.

But if you read the President's speech carefully, you'll notice that the relevant section did not make any commitment. On the contrary, Obama was addressing what he described as misconceptions about the legislation that's now being considered:

One more misunderstanding I want to clear up - under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

In context, then, President Obama didn't seem to be promising to exclude abortion funding from his health-care package; he seemed to be claiming that it was already excluded-- which, in fact, it isn't.