No Compromise on Protecting Life in 'Health Care Reform'

Removing the Stupak amendment would remove protections for our youngest neighbors. More would be killed by voluntary abortions paid for with our tax dollars.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - Anyone who reads my writing regularly knows how rarely I agree with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC's Hardball. That is why my positive experience of him on Monday, November 16, 2009 surprised even me.

Once again, I found myself flipping through the network while searching for another report on a subject I was covering. When I noted the peripatetic Matthews hosting another discussion on "Health Care Reform", I was initially annoyed.

However, as I listened further, I was drawn into the segment. The topic was the current "Health Care Reform" package - with the Pro-Life Stupak Amendment - and its likely outcome in the Senate debate. Matthews asked his two guests whether they felt that the legislation would be amended in the Senate so as to remove the Stupak Amendment.

The effect of removing the Stupak amendment would be to remove protections given to our youngest neighbors, children in the womb, against being killed by voluntary abortions paid for with tax dollars.

In the past I have grown angry with Chris Matthews, who is a practicing Catholic, because he has failed to defend the fundamental human right to life. However, in this discussion he took the position that the Stupak amendment - named after the faithful Catholic Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak who co-authored the amendment in the House - would end up causing the defeat of the legislation because there would be no compromise possible over the issue of funding abortion.

Interestingly, he compared the current situation to the period just preceding the Civil War in the United States. He drew the analogy based on the unwillingness of the two sides back then to compromise and the unwillingness of the two sides today to compromise.

The analogy goes much deeper. "Legal" abortion on demand at any time for any reason has denied an entire group of human persons, children in the womb, their fundamental right to life and freedom much like "legal" like slavery did to Americans of African ancestry in another age. This is the real analogy.

"Legal" abortion is a new form of slavery. It empowers one group of human persons to treat another group of human persons as property by denying them their fundamental human rights. Both slavery and abortion are rightly called in Catholic teaching "intrinsically evil". They are a violation of the Natural Law written on every human heart. They must never be protected by the positive law as the subject of a human "choice" in any truly just society. Unfortunately, Chris Matthews did not make that point.

However, he at least disagreed with his two guests, Karen Tumulty, the Time Magazine National Political Correspondent and Eugene Robinson, an Op Ed Columnist for the Washington Post, who claimed that the Stupak Amendment would be stripped from the legislation and that it would still pass. For that he is to be commended, at least for his political insight.

The Bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States, who showed such courage in supporting the Stupak Amendment in the House, are taking a similarly strong and unwavering position in defense of children in the first home of the womb as this legislation reaches the Senate. On the same day this program aired, I received an E-Mail with multiple attachments from the US Catholic Conference concerning the Senate battle over this legislation.

As a member of the Clergy of the Diocese of Richmond I received this package from my own Bishop's office with a clear direction to implement it and to pass it on to as many others as possible. This package has been mailed out to every parish in the United States.

It includes a Memo from Tom Grenchik, the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, a Nationwide Bulletin Insert on Health Care Reform, a prepared announcement to be made from the pulpit and a Prayer to be used at every Mass during the Prayers of the Faithful. The package is in both English and Spanish.

Just like the U.S. Bishop's effort in the House, this effort in the Senate is to be commended and should be implemented in every single parish and Catholic institution in the United States.I urge our readers to do everything they can to encourage their priests and deacons to make sure the material from our Bishops is included in the bulletin and mentioned at every Mass this weekend.

The reaction to this strong stand by the US Catholic Bishops in Defense of the Right to Life runs from strong support from those who recognize the objective truth that killing children is not health care to near hysterical rants from the opponents of the Right to Life who now want to fund this killing by extracting tax dollars from every American.

Chris Matthews was right on this; there is no room for compromise on the fundamental Right to Life. To push for such an evil may spell the end of the "Health Care Reform" legislation.

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