US Bishops reiterate objections
WASHINGTON – “Despite the good” that proposed health reform legislation “intends or might achieve,” concerns about the abortion wording in the Senate-passed bill compel the U.S. bishops to “regretfully hold that it must be opposed until these serious moral problems are addressed,” Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago said March 15.
A House vote on the health reform legislation was expected by March 20, with Senate and House action to follow on a separate bill containing a set of “fixes” proposed by President Barack Obama.
In his statement, Cardinal George said, “Throughout the discussion on health care over the last year, the bishops have advocated a bipartisan approach to solving our national health care needs. They have urged that all who are sick, injured or in need receive necessary and appropriate medical assistance, and that no one be deliberately killed through an expansion of federal funding of abortion itself or of insurance plans that cover abortion. These are the provisions of the long standing Hyde amendment, passed annually in every federal bill appropriating funds for health care; and surveys show that this legislation reflects the will of the majority of our fellow citizens. The American people and the Catholic bishops have been promised that, in any final bill, no federal funds would be used for abortion and that the legal status quo would be respected.”
The statement from the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops came soon after the head of the Catholic Health Association called on House members to quickly pass the Senate legislation and make changes later.
Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity who is CHA president and CEO, said in a March 13 statement that the Senate bill isn’t perfect but would “make the lives of millions more secure, and their coverage more affordable.”
She told Catholic News Service March 15 that she considered the Senate language “an acceptable way to prevent federal funding of abortion,” even if it might not be the best way or the preferred way.
Cardinal George said in his statement that the USCCB concerns were “not quibbling over technicalities.”
“The deliberate omission in the Senate bill of the necessary language that could have taken this moral question off the table and out of play leaves us still looking for a way to meet the president’s and our concern to provide health care for those millions whose primary care physician is now an emergency room doctor,” the cardinal said.
He acknowledged that the USCCB analysis “is not completely shared by the leaders” of CHA.
They believe, moreover, that the defects that they do recognize can be corrected after the passage of the final bill,” Cardinal George said. “The bishops, however, judge that the flaws are so fundamental that they vitiate the good that the bill intends to promote.
“Assurances that the moral objections to the legislation can be met only after the bill is passed seem a little like asking us, in Midwestern parlance, to buy a pig in a poke,” he added.
Sister Carol, who was at the White House March 3 for Obama’s announcement of the final push for health care reform, said in her statement that CHA’s priorities for health care reform were to “protect human life and dignity,” including mothers and unborn children, and to “alleviate the suffering of people who cannot afford health insurance or cannot afford the health care they need.”
A lengthy analysis posted on the USCCB Web site, however, said the “House-approved health care reform bill follows indispensable and long-standing federal policies on abortion funding and mandates, and conscience rights on abortion, while the Senate bill does not.”
Cardinal George said, “No provision in the Senate bill incorporates the longstanding and widely supported protection for conscience regarding abortion as found in the Hyde/Weldon amendment. Moreover, neither the House nor Senate bill contains meaningful conscience protection outside the abortion context. Any final bill, to be fair to all, must retain the accommodation of the full range of religious and moral objections in the provision of health insurance and services that are contained in current law, for both individuals and institutions.”
He added, “What is tragic about this turn of events is that it needn’t have happened. The status quo that has served our national consensus and respected the consciences of all with regard to abortion is the Hyde amendment. The House courageously included an amendment applying the Hyde policy to its Health Care bill passed in November. Its absence in the Senate bill and the resulting impasse are not an accident. Those in the Senate who wanted to purge the Hyde amendment from this national legislation are obstructing the reform of health care.”
Catholic San Francisco contributed to this story.
From March 19, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
