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Pro-abortion Catholics

Pro-abortion Catholics

Last updated on: September 27, 2016 at 5:55 am by Gene Veith

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Pro-abortion Catholics 2016-09-25T21:32:33-04:00 Gene Veith

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Pro-abortion Catholics–members of “Catholics for Choice”–are running ads promoting their position, calling abortion a “social justice issue” and urging the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which prevents taxpayer money from being to kill babies in the womb. (This, by the way, is Hillary Clinton’s goal.)

A piece by Mary Hallan Fiorito critiques this group. She also writes about the history of legalized abortion, citing the role of Richard Nixon’s “Rockefeller Report” on ways to prevent “overpopulation.” Its recommendations included legalizing abortion.

From Mary Hallan Fiorito, Abortion — Catholics for Choice & Their Cruel Way | National Review:

In the summer of 1969, President Richard M. Nixon established the U.S. Commission on Population Growth and the American Future (often called the Rockefeller Commission, after its chairman, John D. Rockefeller III) to study what he called “one of the most serious challenges to human destiny,” namely, human beings. One of the vice chairmen of the commission was Graciela Olivarez, a Mexican-American high-school dropout who in her early life probably would have never dreamed she would serve on such a prestigious panel. She remains one of its most oft-quoted members. Working in the civil-rights movement, Olivarez saw her life radically changed when she met Theodore Hesburgh, the president of Notre Dame University. Impressed with her commitment and her natural intelligence, Hesburgh asked her to enroll at Notre Dame’s law school. Although she was in her late thirties and had no undergraduate degree, Olivarez agreed and became Notre Dame Law School’s first Hispanic female graduate. From her humble beginnings, Olivarez went on to an impressive life of service in the public sector. She held a high-ranking post in the Carter administration.

When the Rockefeller Commission submitted its final report in March 1972 (the year before Roe v. Wade), it not only called for a national legalization of abortion. It recommended that “federal, state, and local governments make funds available to support abortion services in states with liberalized statutes.” Only two of the commission’s 24 members dissented, arguing that abortion was one of the “cheapest and most irresponsible” solutions to unintended pregnancy and that public funding of abortion would do nothing to strengthen communities, family life, or society. One of those dissenters was Olivarez. “The poor cry out for justice and equality and we respond with legalized abortion,” she said, adding, “I believe that in a society that permits the life of even one individual (born or unborn) to be dependent on whether that life is ‘wanted’ or not, all citizens stand in danger.” She later noted, “Abortion is a cruel way out.”

Olivarez’s words of caution immediately came to mind last week for many Catholics who noticed that a privately funded — not to mention oxymoronically named — Washington, D.C., lobbying group, Catholics for Choice, had launched a national public-relations campaign, taking out full-page ads in many newspapers across the nation. The ads called for taxpayer-supported abortions for those unable to pay for the elective procedure themselves.

[Keep reading. . .]

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