A few weeks ago, I was reflecting upon a phenomenon all too common in American politics these days. When politics and morality collide, our discussion devolves into a mostly irrelevant argument over the world's religions. It has become too unpopular to argue principles, so we rely on attacks on people and institutions we don't like. Very often, this results in vitriolic smears against my faith, that of the Roman Catholic Church.
When I opened up the last issue of The News-Letter, I was unsurprised as I read Steve Iannelli's "The Real Problem with Stupak-Pitts." In it, he claimed to argue that the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, the amendment which prohibited abortion funding in the House of Representatives' healthcare reform bill, "is a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment." It isn't.
The Free Exercise Clause states that the government cannot violate your right to freely exercise your religion. I'm unaware of any religion that requires its women to have abortions. Abortion is not an exercise of religion. Even if it were, Stupak-Pitts does not ban abortion, it just ensures that federal money will not subsidize the procedure. As it is right now, most health insurance plans do not provide abortion coverage. Bart Stupak is simply trying to ensure that those that do cover them do not get federal funding to help them do so.
Last issue's opinion piece suggests that abortion is beyond restriction due to the fact that certain religions permit it. I think that's a line of reasoning we better put to rest. Some religions permit parents to beat their children. Does that deserve its very own federal subsidy?
Even liberal judges like our newest Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, have ruled that the government has no obligation to fund abortion. Arguments to the contrary are on very shaky legal ground.
It did not take much to see that the author's "real problem" was not primarily with the Stupak Amendment at all. It was with the Catholic Church. You see, the amendment apparently represents the principles of that "morally questionable institution."
He is, of course, correct that Catholics across the country, including Catholic bishops, stood up and exercised their rights as American citizens, telling their representatives that they do not want to be forced to pay for abortions. This is not, however, a strictly religious issue.
According to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 61 percent of Americans favor a ban on the use of federal health care funding to subsidize abortions. A majority of Americans also believe that women who want abortions should have to pay the full cost of the procedure out of pocket. The Catholic Bishops did not force Stupak-Pitts on the House. The American people did.
Unable to substantiate the claim that Stupak-Pitts is a violation of the Free Exercise Clause, the author changed course and decided to make more unsubstantiated claims to explain why he holds "a strong contempt for the Catholic Church." He accused the Church of banning children's books. Really? The Church couldn't ban books if it wanted to do so. It used to keep the Index Liborum Prohibitorum, which was a list of mostly theological books that Catholics were told to avoid because they held misleading doctrinal positions. Pope Paul VI abolished that list in 1966. I guess facts do not matter when you're smearing Catholics.
He also accused the Church of "furthering the AIDS problem in Africa." A full half of anti-AIDS programs in Africa are run by Catholic organizations. Catholics treat one in four AIDS sufferers worldwide.
I cannot make anyone become Catholic, nor can I force anyone to support Stupak-Pitts. Even so, "The Real Problem with Stupak-Pitts" was a dishonest smear campaign and people of honesty and good will should demand that arguments be based on facts, values and reason rather than on bigoted tirades.
Catholic bishops have every right to try to live up to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision for churches in American society. King hoped that the church would be, "not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state." Just as the Catholic Church stood with the leaders of the civil rights movement, it now stands for the rights of the unborn.
When the moral leaders of 25 percent of Americans cannot talk to Congress about a healthcare bill, but morally questionable organizations like the SEIU (whose members recently brutally beat a conservative African American while screaming vile racial slurs) can go to the Capitol to help write it, America will truly be a lost nation.
America is a great country where every group has the right to advocate its views. Planned Parenthood and NARAL can do that. The Catholic Church can do that, too.
