by Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann
Last week, I wrote about President Biden and his administration’s extremism regarding abortion.
The president wants no limitations or restrictions on abortion. He labels the killing of unborn children and the physical, emotional and spiritual harm inflicted on their mothers and fathers by abortion as essential health care. The president has made an unrestricted and unlimited right to abortion his central issue for the midterm elections.
Since the leak of the draft of the Dobbs decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, there have been more than 100 pregnancy resource centers and Catholic churches vandalized.
Staff and volunteers at these pregnancy centers raise millions of dollars annually to assist women with untimely or difficult pregnancies. These centers of mercy and love not only assist mothers through the time of pregnancy but continue to accompany women for several years with financial, educational, child care and employment assistance. Their goal is to empower mothers and help their children not just make it through the pregnancy, but to thrive for a lifetime.
The president’s justice department so far has failed to identify, much less charge, a single perpetrator for the vandalism to pregnancy resource centers and threats of violence to their staffs and volunteers.
Who could possibly be opposed to such places of compassion and practical assistance? The abortion industry despises these centers that empower women to make a choice that values both mother and child. Each mother, who gives birth, is a loss of revenue for abortion providers.
Abby Johnson, the former Texas Planned Parenthood clinic director and one-time employee of the year, in her book “UnPlanned” reveals how she was trained to sell abortions to vulnerable women who came to her clinic.
She acknowledges that she could talk any pregnant woman into an abortion by playing on her fears. She left Planned Parenthood because of a culture that was not aimed at helping women but getting their abortion numbers as high as possible. Abortion is a cash cow profit center for Planned Parenthood.
Sadly, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey have introduced legislation asking the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit what they called deceptive advertising by pregnancy centers. Senators Warren and Menendez are both financially supported by the abortion industry. They seem to think that every failure of a woman to abort a child is a tragedy. They claim to be champions for women, when in reality they are defenders of an industry that profits from the killing of children.
Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, who is a medical doctor and has cared for thousands of pregnant women and their babies, responded eloquently in a Senate committee debate regarding their bizarre proposal.
He stated: “To answer my colleague, the fraud and deception is occurring in abortion clinics. I can tell you story after story of patients crying in my office who went to Planned Parenthood for a pregnancy test and were scheduled for an abortion, coming to my office wondering: Do I have to do this abortion? That’s where the fraud and deception is occurring. These women are not being told about the potential complications of these abortions. They are not being told that these abortion pills are going to cause pain and cramping and bleeding, that they could end up in the emergency room as well. They’re not told about the complications from abortion procedures. That’s where the fraud and deception is present. You talk about this as reproductive services. You’re afraid to say the word abortion in these clinics. That’s the fraud and deception. This isn’t reproductive services. These are abortions. This is taking the life of the unborn.”
Planned Parenthood has on its website videos about chemical abortion. One video tells women who are experiencing severe enough postabortion complications to go to an emergency room (ER), that they do not have to tell ER nurses and doctors they have taken the abortion pills. They suggest that women tell ER staff that they are experiencing a miscarriage.
This is disgraceful, dangerous and self-serving. Advising postabortive women with severe complications to withhold important information from doctors and nurses is reckless and deceitful.
This is not in the best interest of women, but helps the abortion industry hide the actual number of postabortive women with significant complications after a chemical abortion.
Abortion providers do not show women ultrasound images of their children. Why? Because it is bad for business. This is one of the reasons the abortion industry is attacking pregnancy resource centers.
Most pregnancy resource centers are equipped to provide women with ultrasound images of their children. Once a mother has the opportunity to see images of her child, she will most likely choose to give birth.
Abortion proponents have been lying to women for more than 50 years. Before ultrasound imaging was available, women were often told that their pregnancy was just a glob of cells. Ultrasound imaging is a window into the womb that shows clearly the humanity of the child.
In every pregnancy, there are two “patients,” the mother and child. With every abortion, the child is killed and the mother sometimes experiences physical complications and always suffers emotional and psychological difficulties that often are suppressed for a time. In postabortion healing ministry, women contact Project Rachel sometimes shortly after the abortion; others decades later and everything in between. “Procedures” that harm patients cannot be considered health care.
Pope Francis, in October of 2018, said this about the morality of abortion: “How can an action that ends an innocent and defenseless life in its blossoming stage be therapeutic, civilized or simply human? I ask you: Is it right to do away with a human life in order to solve a problem? Is it right to hire a hit man in order to solve a problem? One cannot. It is not right to do away with a human being, however small, in order to solve a problem, it is like hiring a hit man.”
Abortion remains the pre-eminent human rights issue of our time for three reasons:
1) abortion attacks innocent human life when a child is most defenseless and vulnerable;
2) abortion harms the family by attacking the most important of human bonds, the relationship of a mother and her child; abortion advocates falsely pit the welfare of women against the life of their child;
3) the sheer magnitude of the number of human lives destroyed by abortion, more than 65 million babies killed since 1973 and currently almost one million American children are killed each year.
Of course, when you vote and choose individuals to represent you, there are many important issues to consider.
However, I urge you not to forget the unborn and their mothers when you cast your ballot.
“[Senators Warren and Menendez] seem to think that every failure of a woman to abort a child is a tragedy.”
This demonstrates a serious lack of good faith engagement and understanding of abortion as a political issue. The Archbishop wasted literally millions of the funds of our fellow parishioners on the VTB campaign with unseemly and ineffective partisan rhetoric like this. He clearly hasn’t learned much from that loss and is far too content to blame the opposition rather than adjust tactics.
Catholics in our archdiocese deserve a leader who has a true moral vocabulary that will actually persuade voters to vote for pro-life causes rather than smear political opponents as monsters with bloodlust.
“Sadly, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey have introduced legislation asking the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit what they called deceptive advertising by pregnancy centers. Senators Warren and Menendez are both financially supported by the abortion industry.”
Seems fairly straightforward to me. Thank you Archbishop for your wisdom and courage to speak Truth when others do not. This diocese is blessed to have such a wise and charitable spiritual leader.