In the wake of a potentially temporary reduction in the pace of baby-killing abortions in Texas, “devout Catholic” President Joe Biden said Friday the Texas state law that bans
abortion after a baby’s heartbeat is detected is "almost un-American," pointing specifically to a provision allowing individuals to take civil action against people who help a woman get an abortion.
According to reporting by CNN, Biden told reporters at the White House he has asked the Justice Department to see if there are ways within existing law to limit the independent action of individuals enforcing a state law.
"The most pernicious thing about the Texas law, it sort of creates a vigilante system," Biden said. The President added: "It just seems -- I know this sounds ridiculous -- it's almost un-American, what we're talking about."
Biden said he was launching a "whole of government" effort to respond to the law, tasking the Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department "to see what steps the Federal Government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions." He said the effort would be led from within the White House, reported CNN.
Asked last Wednesday by reporters what options Biden had available to him, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the President would push Congress to codify Roe v. Wade as law.
"That is a specific course of action that can be taken to help protect from these type of lawsuits in the future," she said.
The prospect of Congress enshrining a right to abortion in law remains a long shot; doing so would require 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a certain Republican filibuster, and even passage in the House is unclear given Democrats' narrowest of majorities.
Biden's statement on Friday and vow to launch a whole of government war on Texas to overturn the new heartbeat law seemingly conflicts with prior comments on his Catholic beliefs. In an interview in 2015 with the Catholic magazine America, Biden said "he was prepared to accept that the moment of conception is a human life and being."
After last week’s statements about the Texas law, Joe Biden’s fake Catholicism has finally sunk-in to a Catholic hierarchy that has largely, but not universally, given him a pass on his anti-Catholic stance on this fundamental element of Catholic dogma.
A bishop in Wisconsin criticized Joe Biden Friday, after the president said he doesn't believe that life begins at the moment of conception, which seems to contradict previous statements he has made on the issue.
"People always claimed that President Biden was personally opposed to abortion," Bishop Donald Hying, of Madison, tweeted.
"Today, he said, 'I respect those who believe life begins at the moment of conception and all, I respect that-don't agree, but I respect that.' Today, we've all learned the painful and disturbing truth," Hying added.
San Francisco archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on Sunday shared a message to Catholics like President Joe Biden and House speaker Nancy Pelosi who have condemned Texas’s new abortion law: “You cannot be a good Catholic and support expanding a government-approved right to kill innocent human beings.”
Cordileone’s comment, reported by Yahoo News, came in an essay for the Washington Post stating Catholics’ duty to challenge Catholic politicians who support abortion.
“This summer, we provoked an uproar by discussing whether public officials who support abortion should receive the sacrament of the Eucharist,” Cordileone wrote. “We were accused of inappropriately injecting religion into politics, of butting in where we didn’t belong.”
“I see matters differently,” he said. “When considering what duties Catholic bishops have with respect to prominent laymen in public life who openly oppose church teachings on abortion, I look to this country’s last great human rights movement — still within my living memory — for inspiration on how we should respond.”
Cordileone recounted how former New Orleans archbishop Joseph Rummel admitted black students to seminary, ordered an end to segregation throughout the archdiocese of New Orleans and the removal of “colored” signs from churches. Rummel also shut down a church over its refusal to accept a black priest and excommunicated several people who supported segregation.
“Rummel did not ‘stay in his lane,’” Cordileone said. “Unlike several other bishops throughout this country’s history, he did not prioritize keeping parishioners and the public happy above advancing racial justice. Instead, he began a long, patient campaign of moral suasion to change the opinions of pro-segregation White Catholics.”
He notes that Rummel’s excommunication of segregationists was not wrong or an example of “weaponizing the Eucharist” because Rummel “recognized that prominent, high-profile public advocacy for racism was scandalous: It violated core Catholic teachings and basic principles of justice, and also led others to sin.”
Cordileone said that abortion “kills a unique, irreplaceable human being” and that anyone who advocates, funds, or presents abortion as a legitimate choice “participates in a great moral evil.”
“The answer to crisis pregnancies is not violence but love, for both mother and child,” he said. “This is hardly inappropriate for a pastor to say. If anything, Catholic political leaders’ response to the situation in Texas highlights the need for us to say it all the louder.”
We commend Bishop Donald Hying and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and pray that other Bishops and priests will join them in bringing those who participate in the great moral evil of abortion back into harmony with the Church’s teachings and God’s commandments.
SB 8
Texas law
U.S. Supreme Court
abortion
pro-life
Gov. Gregg Abbott
Chief Justice John Roberts
Fetal Heartbeat laws
Planned Parenthood
Attorney General Ken Paxton
civil lawsuits against abortion providers
Bishop Donald Hying
San Francisco archibishop Salvatore Cordileone
codify Roe v. Wade