Feminist Looking Glass

The issue of abortion is pitting the Catholic Church against Rep. Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy had criticized the church’s opposition to health care reform legislation, saying:

I can’t understand for the life of me how the Catholic Church could be against the biggest social justice issue of our time, where the very dignity of the human person is being respected by the fact that we’re caring and giving health care to the human person. . . .

I thought they were prolife? If the church is prolife, then they ought to be for health care reform, because it’s going to provide health care that are going to keep people alive.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, of the archdiocese of New York, and Bishop Thomas Tobin, who is Kennedy’s bishop, criticized Kennedy for his comments.   Tobin called Kennedy’s statements “irresponsible and ignorant of the facts.”  Dolan said about Kennedy that:

His remarks were sad, uncalled-for, and inaccurate.  The Catholic community in the United States hardly needs to be lectured to about just healthcare. . . . All we ask is that it be just that — universal — meaning that it includes the helpless baby in the womb, the immigrant, and grandma in a hospice, and that it protects a healthcare provider’s right to follow his/her own conscience,” Dolan added. “This is what the President says he wants; this is what we bishops say we want.

The Boston Herald reports that the bishops want assurances that any new health care system will not funnel money directly or indirectly to any recipient for an abortion.  It also reports that Kennedy said that Catholic opposition to abortion funding is a “red herring” and that “the abortion-funding outcry by the bishops fans ‘the flames of dissent and discord’ and they should be in favor of keeping ‘people alive’ and not focus just on abortion.”

So there you have it.  The Catholic Church is so against abortion, and so for allowing any provider to refuse to provide abortion or contraceptive services, that it is unwilling to support health care reform.

Given the church’s ridiculously hypocritical and irreconcilable overtures to the Anglican Church, it would seem that they might be willing to do some compromising on abortion and contraceptive services in order to get absolutely necessary health care reform.   Since Kennedy is a member of the most prominent Catholic family in America, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.  (And by the way, in order to be consistent (I know that’s a foolish word when talking about the Catholic Church), shouldn’t they be threatening Kennedy with excommunication?)

Filed under: Abortion, Politics Tagged: | Abortion, Catholic Church, Health Care, Patrick Kennedy