House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tweeted Wednesday that the Texas ban on abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected is a “catastrophe to women” in the state.
Pelosi, who claims to be a “Catholic,” bemoaned the U.S. Supreme Court’s silence on the application by abortion providers for an injunction. The law is now in effect, banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, generally at about the sixth week of pregnancy.
“SCOTUS’s failure to block #SB8 has delivered catastrophe to women in Texas,” Pelosi tweeted. “This radical law is an all out effort to erase the rights and protections of Roe v Wade.”
Pelosi then went on to equate ending the life of an unborn baby to “basic reproductive health care.”
“Every woman, everywhere has the constitutional and moral right to basic reproductive health care,” she continued. “We will fight SB8 and all immoral and dangerous attacks on women’s health and freedoms with all our strength.”
During a press briefing in July, Pelosi used her “Catholic” faith to justify why she supports taxpayer-funded abortions:
As a devout Catholic and mother of five in six years, I feel that God blessed my husband and me with our beautiful family — five children in six years almost to the day. But… it’s not up to me to dictate that that’s what other people should do. And it’s an issue of fairness and justice for poor women in our country.
However, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who oversees Pelosi’s archdiocese, reacted to the speaker’s comments that for her “to use the smokescreen of abortion as an issue of health and fairness to poor women is the epitome of hypocrisy.”
“No one can claim to be a devout Catholic and condone the killing of innocent human life, let alone have the government pay for it,” Cordileone asserted.
“What about the health of the baby being killed?” the archbishop added. “What about giving poor women real choice, so they are supported in choosing life? This would give them fairness and equality to women of means, who can afford to bring a child into the world.”
Other states have passed “heartbeat” bills, but once signed into law abortion rights activists filed lawsuits challenging them. Subsequently, courts have blocked these laws, ruling they are unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions.
The Texas measure, however, contains a unique enforcement mechanism whereby any private citizen may file a civil lawsuit against an abortion provider or any other individual who “aids or abets” a “criminal abortion.”
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