The abortion industry and its media allies are actively stirring up anti-Catholic bigotry over the case of a Catholic high school student who was told to remove a sticker in support of abortion giant Planned Parenthood, or risk being asked to leave the school.
Kate Murray, a sophomore at Sacred Heart High School in Greenwich, Connecticut was told to remove a sticker from her laptop that said, “I Stand with Planned Parenthood,” reports Greenwich Time.
“Kate, Planned Parenthood is so proud to count you as a supporter,” tweeted outgoing Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards to Murray. “Keep fighting for what you believe in.”
“This comes very close to home for me,” said President and CEO of Planned Parenthood for Southern New England Amanda Skinner, who says she attended another school in the Sacred Heart Network. “In my Sacred Heart education, I learned to use my voice. … This particular situation strikes me as in contrast to lifting up young women and encouraging them to use their voices.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a formal investigation into Planned Parenthood in the wake of allegations that the abortion vendor has profited from harvesting the body parts of babies aborted in its clinics.
Planned Parenthood also recently condemned the U.S. House’s approval of a bill that would require abortionists to immediately provide emergency medical care to an infant born alive during an abortion.
Kate’s parents say she has been victimized.
“It is a small sticker,” Kate’s mother Tracy Murray said, according to the news report. “It is not incendiary, it is not vulgar. It is not hurtful. It is a statement of my daughter’s belief and she deserves the same respect for her beliefs that the administration and part of the faculty are demanding for theirs.”
“It seemed an extreme reaction to a very small sticker, which puts forth a political point of view about a government funding matter and does not, at least the way I read the sticker, violate church doctrine or specifically advocate the murder of innocent babies,” said Brian Murray. “It is a really small sticker that does not seem to be able to cause that much damage to anybody.”
Kate reportedly removed the sticker in order to attend classes on Wednesday and Thursday as she and her parents – both attorneys – discuss the situation with school officials.
Head of School Pamela Hayes told Greenwich Time the school’s academics are “grounded in the beliefs and teachings of the Catholic Church.”
The Catholic Church is rooted in the doctrine that life begins at conception and that abortion is “intrinsically evil.”
As Breitbart News has reported, Pope Francis has condemned the notion “that supporting abortion somehow helps women,” calling it a “false compassion.”
Pope Francis has also referred to abortion as a “scourge” on society and has insisted that “a just society recognizes the primacy of the right to life from conception to natural death.”
Francis also emphasized to the United Nations General Assembly “the foundations of a right understanding of universal fraternity and respect for the sacredness of every human life,” which includes “the unborn.”
He also said abortion is “a crime” and an “absolute evil” not just because of religious objections, but because it is “evil in and of itself.”
Media have minimized the significance of the sticker supporting abortion on demand and highlighted the “threat” of expulsion by the Catholic officials.
The Daily Mail’s headline about the story reads: “$44,000-a-year Catholic school that claims to nurture students’ ‘freedom and independence’ threatens to EXPEL sophomore because she has a Planned Parenthood sticker on her laptop”
The Associated Press headline reads: “Catholic school may bar girl over Planned Parenthood sticker”
Bishop Frank Caggiano of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport has upheld the school’s decision to tell a student she cannot return to the school next year if she continues to keep the sticker on her laptop, the news report states.
A statement from the diocese read:
The Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion is almost universally understood, as is its consistent pro-life ethic, which defends the right to life of all those among us, particularly the most vulnerable in our society. As such the diocese fully supports the commitment of Head of School Pamela Hayes to affirm the Church’s teaching, while also recognizing and respecting the right of students to question and challenge as they grow in the learning process and prepare to address the important moral and ethical issues they will face in their lives.
More than 2,500 people have signed an online petition called, “I Stand With Kate Murray.”
The petition states, “Unless Kate is allowed her freedom of speech, all of my future donations that would have been allocated to Sacred Heart Greenwich will now and forever be donated to Planned Parenthood.”
Sacred Heart High School is an independent Catholic high school, meaning it is not directly operated by the diocese.