Leaders of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference (USCCB) have blasted proposed legislation that would codify abortion rights into federal law, insisting that abortion is “the opposite of health care and is an extreme violation of human rights.”
In a joint letter to the Senate, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori and New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan urged opposition to the Democrat-sponsored Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), which will face a Senate vote next week.
“In treating abortion as the moral equivalent to the removal of an appendix, this proposal is radically out of step with the American public,” declared the bishops, who head up the USCCB’s pro-life and religious liberty committees. “We strongly urge you to reject this bill and to put the energy and resources of our federal government behind policies that fully recognize and support both mothers and their children.”
“Answering the needs of women by promoting taxpayer-funded elective abortion, as this bill would do, is a failure to love and serve women,” the bishops asserted. “Offering free or low-cost abortions, instead of the resources needed to care for her child, is not ‘choice’ but coercion,” adding that “it communicates to a mother in need that there is no hope for her or her child.”
The legislation is “built on a false and despairing narrative,” they declared, and that abortion is the “only, or best, solution to a crisis pregnancy.”
The WHPA was drafted in response to the Texas Heartbeat Act, a law banning abortions once the unborn child’s heartbeat has been detected. The new bill would guarantee the right to abortion on demand prior to fetal viability, as well as the right to an abortion after fetal viability when doctors deem that the “continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.”
Abortion “has no clear justification in terms of women’s health,” the bishops wrote. “Abortion may even harm women’s health, and their lives, including or especially low-income women.”
“As a nation built on the recognition that every human being is endowed by its Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we must reject this bill and embrace public policy that fully respects and facilitates these rights and needs of both mother and child,” they declared.