WASHINGTON—A nationwide survey commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has found widespread public opposition to including abortion in health care reform and majority support for conscience rights protection – views shared by those who favor efforts to pass health care reform.

Conducted by International Communications Research (ICR) from September 16-20, 2009, the phone survey of 1,043 U.S. adults found that 60 percent favor – and only thirty percent oppose – “efforts to pass health care reform to provide affordable health insurance for all.” Focusing on that sixty percent, the survey found that:

• Sixty percent of those favoring reform oppose – and only 25 percent support – “measures that would require people to pay for abortion coverage with their federal taxes.”
• By a 49-39 percent plurality, those who favor reform oppose “measures that would require people to pay for abortion coverage with their health insurance premiums”; and
• Among those favoring reform, those who favor maintaining “current federal laws that protect doctors and nurses from being forced to perform or refer for abortions against their will” outnumber those who oppose keeping such laws in place by a margin of two to one (60-30).

Opposition to abortion coverage was somewhat stronger in the total sample of U.S. adults – for example, 67 percent of the total sample opposed requiring people to pay for abortion coverage through their taxes and 56 percent opposed making them do so through their insurance premiums.

The survey also asked: “If the choice were up to you, would you want your own insurance policy to include abortion?” Sixty-eight percent of U.S. adults said ‘No’ and only 24 percent said ‘Yes.’

“The USCCB survey confirms other recent polls conducted by Public Opinion Strategies (August 30-September 1) and Rasmussen Reports (September 14-15) on health care policy and abortion,” said Deirdre McQuade, Assistant Director for Policy & Communications at the USCCB’s Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities. “With each passing week it gets clearer: The American public generally does not want to pay for abortion coverage and does not want health care reform used to promote abortion,” she said.

“Abortion is not health care. The bishops of the United States are working hard to ensure that health care reform serves the most vulnerable among us – especially the poor, immigrants, and the unborn,” McQuade said.

For more information on the U.S. bishops’ position on health care reform, visit www.usccb.org/healthcare.

Survey Methodology
ICR / International Communications Research, based in the Philadelphia suburb of Media, PA, is a top-ranked and nationally recognized market research organization. ICR fielded this study in their national, weekly EXCEL Omnibus telephone survey on behalf of the USCCB from September 16-20, 2009, interviewing a nationwide sample of 1,043 adults aged 18 and older. EXCEL is weighted to provide nationally representative and projectable estimates of the population ages 18+. At a 95 percent level of confidence, the margin of error for this sample of 1,043 is +/-3.0 percent. A full methodology and profile of the pollster are available upon request.

Last week, our editorial argued that one of the most important lessons pastors of the Church in the United States need to draw from the history of interactions with Senator Ted Kennedy on the sanctity of human life is that a strategy of conscience education alone with “personally opposed,” but  publicly “pro-choice” Catholic politicians hasn’t worked. The attempt to engage, teach and help persuade such politicians to conversion didn’t succeed with Senator Kennedy, and it hasn’t succeeded yet with other “pro-choice” Catholic legislators.

To say that it hasn’t succeeded, however, is really not strong enough. It’s possible, after all, to fail a test with a grade of 59; in such a case, a student would be able to take some solace in the fact that, while there are some areas in need of improvement, he was close to minimal success. If a student fails a test with close to a zero, on the other hand, he obviously needs to make some radical changes if he ever hopes to succeed. And that is closer to the candid assessment that leaders of the Church need to make relative to the education-alone strategy during the past few decades.

Let us take an honest look at the numbers. When we survey the long list of “pro-choice” Catholic politicians from both parties—Kennedy, Kerry, Giuliani, Schwarzenegger, Daschle, Dodd, Durban, Leahy, Mikulski, Pelosi, Delahunt, Capuano, Markey, McGovern, Meehan, Granholm, Sebelius, Pataki, Richardson, Cellucci, Cuomo and Biden, to name just a handful—is it possible to say that the strategy has worked with any of them? Over the last three and a half decades, can we point to even one success story?

Another way to assess the results of the education-alone strategy is to measure the direction in which “pro-choice” Catholic politicians have moved over the years. Even if they haven’t experienced a total conversion, have they moved closer toward limiting abortions or toward making abortions easier to access? The facts show that the vast majority of “personally opposed,” but publicly “pro-choice” Catholic legislators have become far less personally opposed and far more publicly in favor over the duration of the strategy.

In the initial years after Roe versus Wade, publicly “pro-choice” Catholic legislators generally whispered their support for abortion. They displayed a palpable sense of shame, letting their abortion position out just enough so that it wouldn’t cost them the votes of abortion supporters. That discomfort began to dissipate after Governor Mario Cuomo’s 1984 “pro-choice” defense at Notre Dame.

We’ve now come to a situation in which “pro-choice” Catholic legislators vigorously curry the favor of Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Emily’s List; scores of Catholics in Congress have the chutzpah to cosponsor the Freedom of Choice Act, which would eliminate almost every abortion restriction ever passed at the federal or state level; and 16 out of 25 Catholic senators vote against conscience protections to prevent their fellow Catholics in the medical field from being forced to participate in abortions and sterilizations.

After looking at these facts, it seems clear that the education-alone strategy has even failed to deter many Catholics in Congress from becoming some of the most radical supporters, defenders and would-be public funders of abortion on Capitol Hill.

Why has the education-alone strategy been such a colossal failure? There are several reasons, but one of the most important, and least noted, is that it shares many of the same flawed approaches as the “personally opposed,” but publicly “pro-choice” position it seeks to remedy.

Today there are many “personally opposed,” but publicly “pro-choice” Catholic legislators for whom this phrase seems to be just an empty slogan, because they give almost no evidence that they even have any personal opposition to abortion. At least initially, however, there were some who sincerely held that irreconcilable position. These public figures had a deep personal repugnance for abortion but, for various reasons, were uncomfortable voting in favor of any laws that would prevent others from doing what they they maintain they would never personally do. Many hoped that women would not choose to abort their unborn sons or daughters. Some even spoke out on why they thought abortion was wrong and supported educational endeavors to help women in difficult pregnancies learn about fetal development.

No matter how much some politicians stressed education in the early days, however, it was trumped by the educational value and power of the law. The law taught forcefully that there was nothing wrong with abortion as long as a mother, and a mother alone, deemed it desirable for her physical or mental health. Even though the politicians held offices in which they could work to change what the law itself teaches about the morality of abortion, they did not exercise them, and even though they professionally were accustomed, in every piece of legislation, to imposing some notion of the good on those who disagree with them, with regard to the issue of abortion, they left everything to the judgment, ill-informed or not, of the conscience of the mother.

The essence of their position has been that, no matter how wrong they know abortion to be, the mother should have the right to do that wrong—a lethal, permanent wrong to her unborn child. They give the ill-informed conscience of the potential wrongdoer greater weight than the truth about abortion, the life of the unborn child, and the soul and psyche of the soon-to-be-forever-wounded mother combined.

When we examine the education-alone approach of pastors with respect to “pro-choice” politicians, we see that it too has basically become a “personally opposed,” but publicly “pro-choice” position as well. There’s obviously a clear personal repugnance on the part of pastors to the “pro-choice” Catholic politicians’ separation between faith and moral action, schizophrenia between private and public personality, and lip service to the Church’s teachings. Many pastors have sought to exercise their teaching office, stating forthrightly what abortion is and what the responsibilities of all legislators are with respect to it. All of their teaching, however, has been trumped by the weightier educational value of the de facto “law” that has left everything to the conscience, however ill-informed, of the “pro-choice” Catholic politicians.

These men and women have learned over time that, regardless of what canon law says, they are at liberty to ignore the Church’s teachings on life. Even though the U.S. bishops have taught with one voice that “pro-choice” Catholic legislators should not present themselves to receive Holy Communion, if they pay no heed to that teaching and present themselves anyway, they have observed that, in practice, they will almost never be denied. With Senator Kennedy’s funeral, they have now grasped that even a 100-percent pro-abortion voting record will not only not prevent them from having a Catholic funeral, but will not even stop them from receiving possibly one of the most publicly panegyrical Catholic funerals in U.S. history.

The upshot—these smart men and women have concluded—is that the Church’s practice is essentially “pro-choice” with respect to “pro-choice” Catholic politicians. The politicians’ own determination in conscience, erroneous or not, is given greater weight than, combined, the truth proclaimed by the Church, the duty to protect the politicians’ souls from a potentially mortal wound, and the responsibility to do all that is possible, according to one’s office, to try to stop the killing.

The education-alone approach has failed for the same reason that the “personally opposed,” but publicly “pro-choice” position has led to massive abortion on demand: The nature of sin is that the easier it is to commit and the fewer the consequences for doing it, the more sin we’ll have.

Jesus spoke of a different way in the Gospel (Mt 18:15–18). It involves not merely general educational statements that we hope offenders will apply to themselves in conscience, but the type of one-on-one instruction traditionally called fraternal correction. If that fails, and fails repeatedly, Jesus enjoined us to regard the offender as someone who no longer belongs to the community, who is no longer a member in good standing.

This may seem harsh, but we should remember that Jesus always seeks nothing but the best for his Church and for individual sinners, even obstinate sinners. Implied in Jesus’ strategy is that education involves not just information, but also formation, and that you can’t form disciples without discipline. This is a lesson that, after four decades of the undeniable failure of another approach, we need to consider anew.

Kourtney Kardashian one of the stars of the popular reality TV program, “Keeping up with the Kardashians” is surprising Hollywood and maybe even herself as well.

The 30 year old model and socialite announced recently not only that she was pregnant but that she had decided to keep her baby.  Now I know what you’re thinking; having a baby out of wedlock in the 21^st Century, and especially in Hollywood, isn’t exactly breaking news. As a matter of fact, in the last few years it has become a status symbol and almost a rite of passage – especially in Tinsel Town.  Well, that’s the case if you “want” the baby. If you want the baby then the Hollywood types might event throw the Mom a chic shower and have their picture taken with her for the latest segment of Entertainment Tonight. If you don’t want the baby, then in Hollywood and lots of other places, unfortunately, some of your friends and acquaintances think nothing of pointing you to the nearest Planned Parenthood office.

And maybe that’s what first led to Kourtney Kardashian’s decision to keep her child, even though the news was a surprise to her and her family.  Getting pregnant, after all, wasn’t part of the “Keeping Up with the Kardashian” TV script.  But in an article for PEOPLE magazine Kourtney explained she was even more surprised by the flippant attitude of so many friends concerning her pregnancy. 

 ”I can’t even tell you how many people just say, ‘Oh get an abortion’ like it is no big deal.”

Maybe it was the callousness of her friends that got Kardashian to think differently about her pregnancy.  Although she still considers herself a support of legalized abortion (although I think that will soon change), she did take a big step that too many people in similar situations ignore; she did some research about the impact of abortion on women.  Her on-line search stopped her in her tracks.

“I looked on-line and I was sitting on the bed hysterically crying, reading these stories of people who felt so guilty from having an abortion,” Kardashian said.   “I was reading these stories on how many people are traumatized by it afterwards.”

Kardashian said her decision came after the research and some intense soul-searching. She came to the conclusion that this “is meant to be” because “God “does things for a reason.”

We know as believers that nothing happens outside of God’s providence.  Scripture tells us every hair on our head is counted and His eye is on the sparrow.  Now I am certainly not in any position to try and second guess almighty God but I do know Him, love Him, and try to serve Him as best I can.  And I know Him well enough to recognize that He works in mysterious ways.  Maybe just maybe He allowed this to happen because He knew this young woman, even though she hasn’t quite grasped the entire pro-life idea yet, would be open to not only reading the stories of post abortive women but to sharing with the world at least a little what she has learned.   Maybe just maybe some other young woman who finds herself in a similar situation will think twice before heading to the local abortion mill.  And maybe another one will learn about the devastating impact of abortion; the killing of 50 million babies since Roe vs. Wade since 1973, the connection between abortion and breast cancer, the increase rates of drug and alcohol abuse among post abortive women and men.  The list goes on and on.

“Keeping Up with the Kardashians” will soon have a new star on the popular TV show and the program could in turn have a whole new meaning by pointing many in the right direction; not toward what so many see as the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle but to life itself.

Editor’s Note:  Teresa writes from beautiful Southeastern Michigan and is the host for Ave Maria Radio’s “Catholic Connection” which also is heard on EWTN.  Teresa is a best-selling author and speaker.  Her website is www.TeresaTomeo.com.

Fr. Thomas Rosica, director of the Salt and Light Catholic Television Network in Canada, recently wrote a shameless condemnation of pro-life people who objected to the August 28th Canonization in Boston, more commonly known as the funeral of Senator Edward Kennedy. Fr. Rosica had a problem with good Catholics being scandalized by the public funeral of a man who lived his life utterly rejecting the Church’s core principles. There was absolutely no recognition of the heroism of the thousands of faithful Catholics who have stood on the front lines of this battle for many decades or of the marvelous contribution that we have made to saving babies and witnessing to the Truth of Christ. Unfortunately, Father’s criticism simply feeds the flames of anti-life sentiment against pro-lifers and ultimately against the sanctity of human life.

Now, the first of his many ironies was that, in condemning pro-lifers, Father was attempting to convince his readers not to condemn anyone. He reads the Scripture passage, “judge not lest ye be judged” with a bit of jaundice. He called pro-lifers all kinds of names that could have come right out of Planned Parenthood’s verbiage for us, and he even insinuated in a subsequent interview that, of all people, EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo was somehow part of this “uncharitable” problem in the Church because Raymond spoke out forcefully against the Kennedy scandal. Then he attacked the best pro-life news organization in the business, LifeSiteNews, saying that they were doing “the work of the devil” in shining the spotlight on this travesty. If this is the Gospel model of non-judgmentalism, I am reading the Good Book wrong.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Luther pastor who was killed in the Nazi Holocaust, called this kind of sell-out “cheap grace” because it costs the pious churchman absolutely nothing to say it. In fact it must apparently feel real good because so many of them indulge in it. Let these churchmen try disciplining “Catholic” dissenters who scandalize Christ’s faithful, and they would see the value of their grace increase in proportion to their suffering at the hands of these renegades.

Worst of all is that people with this strange ethic of non-judgmentalism apply a standard of mercy to public Catholic reprobates that is never applied to the aborted children who will not get a funeral or graveside service offered by prelates reading pious sentiments from a very strange gospel book. What Fr. Rosica’s denunciations have thus highlighted for us is the extent to which the “judge not lest ye be judged” ethic reigns in ecclesiastical circles, and for that reason our Church is in trouble. Those who come out of a non-judgmentalism Gospel ethic, lay and cleric alike, will have nothing to offer our suffering souls in the darkness that is even now hovering over our Church like a black shroud. The pagan world is already coming after all that we hold dear and sacred, and if the murder of pro-lifer James Pouillon last week is any indication, they will soon be doing so with a vehemence that we have not experienced in our land since the days of the North American Martyrs.

To the ethic of hypocritical diatribes that defame pro-lifers, I can only say, “No deal, Father Rosica.” Anyone who will use “non-judgmentalism” against faithful Catholics needs to wake up and smell the gunpowder on Jim Pouillon’s pro-life t-shirt. The Church stands with all men and women of good will against the increasingly pagan and violent culture that militates against us and our values. Those who use this ethic to keep the Church totally unprepared for battle need more than a re-reading of Scripture. They need a good kick in the back end and a refresher course on Catholic bravery which St. Paul tells us makes us “strong, loving and wise.” (2 Tim 1:7-8)

In the Our Father, we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” These words are a cornerstone of the culture of life. After all, to say, “thy will be done” is exactly the opposite of saying, “my will be done; it’s all up to my choice.” When we see a child living in the womb, we see the will of God. The Lord does not ever make human beings by accident. Each child exists precisely because God wants that child to exist, no matter what the circumstances surrounding his or her existence.

When we say “Thy will be done,” we are expressing confidence that because God says yes to the child, so can we. He will give us all the strength we need to follow his plan.

LONDON, September 21, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Under new guidelines to be issued Wednesday, individuals who help others kill themselves will escape prosecution and punishment in Britain as long as prosecutors can discern no motive of personal gain in assisting in the suicide.

This past weekend Keir Starmer, Britain and Wales’ Director of Public Prosecutions, gave several news outlets a preview of changes made to the assisted suicide law’s guidelines. The new guidelines are due for publication Wednesday.

Starmer told BBC’s Andrew Marr that “while we’re certainly not changing the law,” the new guidelines intend to “clarify when individuals are more likely to be prosecuted or more likely not to be prosecuted.” 

“The general approach we’ve taken is to try to steer a careful course between protecting the vulnerable from those that might gain from hastening their death, but also identifying those cases where nobody really thinks it’s in the public interest to prosecute,” said Starmer.

The DPP confirmed that the prosecution guidelines will apply to suicides committed in Britain and Wales, as well as those outside the country, suggesting that it would be unfair to discriminate those who “can’t afford” to travel to Switzerland to kill themselves. 

“The one thing I hope I have made clear is that this policy will cover assisted suicide wherever it takes place,” Starmer told the Guardian, “including in England and Wales [Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own prosecution services]. It shouldn’t be something that covers those who go to Switzerland and not those who can’t afford to do so.”

While the new guidelines appear to be set to effectively allow assisted suicide in the country – in practice, if not in official law – Keir says, “As for legalising assisted suicide altogether, that really is a matter for parliament.”

“Is that somewhere that the politicians think the public now is, such that they’ll move ahead?”

More than one hundred Britons, some of whom were not terminally ill or had no illness at all, have traveled overseas to kill themselves at the Swiss suicide facility Dignitas since 1992.  As the suicides mounted, the DPP’s office repeatedly asserted that accompanying relatives would not be prosecuted.  According to British law, assisting suicide is technically an offense that carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

The House of Lords recently ordered a further “clarification” of prosecution guidelines as part of their ruling in a case brought by Debbie Purdy, a British woman with multiple sclerosis.  In July, Purdy won her argument that the government should clarify whether her husband would be prosecuted, in the event he helped her kill herself in Switzerland.

The Telegraph’s George Pitcher slammed the planned guideline revisions as, “in reality, a change in the law” effected not “by Parliament, but by a ginger group of Lords and lawyers.”

“The DPP, Keir Starmer QC, has dutifully played his role in this legislative charade. He made some respectable noises after the Law Lords’ ruling that it wasn’t for him to change the law,” wrote Pitcher.  “Then he proceeded in effect to do just that.”

Pitcher lamented that “a deathly cabal is succeeding in usurping an age-old provenance of life over death without proper parliamentary debate.”

“We will end up with a Dignitas-style clinic, with its grotesque aspirations to self-destruction as a consumer choice, in Britain,” he wrote.

In the meantime, members of the Swiss government have begun moving toward tightening assisted suicide laws in an attempt to curb the increasing popularity of “suicide tourism.”

Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer Schlumpf reportedly supports a bid to tighten the country’s assisted suicide law that will be presented to the Swiss parliament. Two Swiss cabinet members are seeking to have the law abolished altogether, although their position is not expected to garner much support.

Swiss doctors have also criticized Dignitas for helping non-terminal and mentally ill individuals kill themselves.  The facility aroused fierce controversy in April, when founder Ludwig Manelli sought permission from the Swiss government to accommodate Vancouver resident Betty Columbias.  Columbias expressed a wish to be killed alongside her severely ill husband despite being in excellent health herself.

Alex Schadenberg, the head of Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) today that revising the British guidelines were a natural part of the “right to die” lobby’s strategy to strike down anti-assisted suicide laws.

“It’s opened the door to the full striking down of the law, because what you’ve done is you’ve made certain circumstances where we’re going to turn a blind eye to the concept,” said Schadenberg.  “Under the whole concept of being equal and fair, it’s put into [the law] an inequality.” 

Schadenberg, who said he could not comment directly on the guidelines since they have not yet been officially released, also criticized the “clarifications” for stretching the purpose of the law.  “The law really can’t determine motive. Now we’re changing our determinations of the law,” he said.  

John Smeaton of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) suspected that Starmer’s pre-emptive discussion of the new guidelines was a public relations move designed to “soften up public opinion in advance of the new policy.”

“Statute law has not been changed but the DPP’s policy could well make a difference in the way people behave in circumstances of a person’s suicide,” wrote Smeaton on the SPUC blog.  The court decision spurring the revision, Smeaton noted, “included a legal argument to say that committing suicide was part of one’s right to private life which is protected in article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights.”