ROME — Aborting unborn children is the opposite of healthcare, the U.S. Bishops declared Monday in a statement condemning the Women’s Health Protection Act as “the most unjust and extreme” abortion bill our nation has ever seen.
On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Women’s Health Protection Act (H.R. 8296), a bill that would impose abortion-on-demand nationwide at any stage of pregnancy and would eliminate pro-life laws at every level of government.
In response to the vote, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, chair of the bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, chair of the Committee for Religious Liberty, have issued a joint statement on behalf of the bishops’ conference (USCCB) deploring the move.
“The majority in the House of Representatives voted last Friday to pass the most unjust and extreme abortion on demand bill our nation has ever seen,” the bishops write. “Answering the needs of women by promoting taxpayer-funded elective abortion, as this bill would do, is a grave evil and a failure to love and serve women.”
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“Offering free or low-cost abortions, instead of increasing the resources women need to care for themselves and their children, is not ‘choice’ but coercion and callous abandonment,” the statement declares.
“Simply repeating the mantra that abortion is healthcare doesn’t make it so. Deliberately ending the lives of defenseless and voiceless human beings is the antithesis of healthcare,” it reads.
Pulling no punches, the bishops urge U.S. lawmakers to come to the aid of women in difficult situations rather than leading them down a “path of death and despair.”
“We implore those who see abortion as a legitimate ‘solution’ to the needs of women to abandon this path of death and despair,” the bishops state.
In its place, the bishops invite legislators to pursue a vision “that upholds the truth that every human life is sacred and inviolable — a society in which the legal protection of human life is accompanied by profound care for mothers and their children.”
“We exhort our nation to prioritize the well-being of women, children, and families with both material resources and personal accompaniment so that no woman ever feels forced to choose between her future and the life of her child,” they insist.