Bishops: health care for all, abortion for none - National Conference of Catholic Bishops

National Catholic Reporter, July 29, 1994 by Dorothy Vidulich

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Catholic bishops this summer have stepped up their efforts to lobby Congress on national health care reform - for universal coverage and against abortion coverage.

The first step came May 26 when Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, in a radio address carried nationwide, advanced the same message and told a National Press Club audience he was willing to testify before Congress if asked.

Then, July 13, the bishops' second impetus was a U.S. Catholic Conference news session at the same venue to announce a renewed campaign in the dioceses to pressure Congress to pass reform without abortion.

In launching their July campaign, the bishops said they will rely on exhortation at the parish level, an advertising campaign and bishops themselves walking congressional corridors and knocking on doors. The conference already has a campaign under way using postcards, placed in the backs of churches, to be mailed to Congress.

The July news conference opened with Helen Alvare of the bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities commenting on the recent nationwide Tarrance Group survey which showed that "although 70 percent of the public support universal coverage, you lose 68 percent of this support when you introduce abortion." Alvare said, "When you make abortion a mandatory benefit, you dramatically depart from the status quo."

Annette Kane, National Council of Catholic Women president, said the hundreds of thousands of Catholic women who share the church's health care agenda "are angry that abortion proponents are using health care as just another vehicle to force abortion into our families and communities."

"When women of America speak for themselves, they oppose government-coerced subsidies for abortion by 2-to-1," said Kane. "We are more than tired of listening to pro-abortion rights women in Congress claim to speak for the women of America."

Kane was referring to Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-Colo., who the same day, with Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and 70 other members, sent a letter to House Speaker Thomas Foley, D-Wash., insisting that any reform package include contraception and abortion services.

Baltimore Auxiliary Bishop John Ricard, the bishops' domestic policy committee chairman, told the news conference that in their letter to Congress the bishops urged: "Put genuine health care coverage in - take abortion mandates out. Without genuine universal coverage, any plan will fall short of real reform and will not have our support."

The bishops, said Ricard, insist that health care is not simply a commodity but a "fundamental safeguard of human dignity and human life."

Sr. Carol Keenan, president of Washington's Providence Hospital, which works with the poor, minorities and undocumented, told the gathering that "the mandated inclusion of abortion in the health care reform plan threatens to undermine if not destroy contributions Catholic health care facilities can make in effecting true health care reform in our country."

Said Keenan, "We cannot accept sponsoring plans that require abortion services, buying abortion coverage for our personnel, allowing abortion in our facilities or referring our patients for abortions."