Topeka, Kansas, Feb 28, 2020 / 02:41 pm (CNA).- Despite cautioning from the Kansas Catholic Conference that Medicaid expansion in the state could lead to more state-funded abortions, a group of 76 nuns in the state have signed a petition urging lawmakers to go ahead with the expansion as soon as possible.
“Expanding KanCare [Medicaid in Kansas] is a lifesaving measure,” the nuns wrote Feb. 25.
“Expansion increases access to high-quality care for those who would otherwise go without healthcare. We implore you to approve Medicaid expansion, because we cannot wait any longer to give Kansans the care they so desperately need.”
The nuns insisted that the Kansas legislature “listen to the will of the voters and pass Medicaid expansion without any strings attached.”
“It is morally unconscionable to play political games with the lives of Kansans, especially children, seniors, and people with disabilities,” the nuns wrote.
NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, a national group and longtime supporter of Medicaid expansion, coordinated the letter.
There are currently an estimated 400,000 people enrolled in Medicaid in Kansas. The Medicaid expansion bill currently under consideration would extend eligibility to an additional 130,000 low-income adults and children, the Topeka Capital-Journal reports.
Then-governor Sam Brownback vetoed Medicaid expansion in 2017, citing the budget crisis the state was experiencing at the time. The state’s new governor, Democrat Laura Kelly, made Medicaid expansion a key issue in her 2018 campaign.
The Kansas Catholic Conference, while supporting Medicaid expansion in the state, has expressly supported a constitutional amendment stating that abortion is not a “natural” constitutional right in Kansas – known as the “Value Them Both” amendment – as a precondition.
Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of NETWORK, told CNA in an interview that she believes Kansas already has adequate protection against state funding for abortion without the proposed constitutional amendment. The letter makes no mention of abortion.
The impetus for the amendment is an April 2019 ruling from the Kansas Supreme Court blocking a law that would have banned dilation and evacuation abortions, which found that the state consitution protects a women’s right to have an abortion.
In light of the ruling, Republican lawmakers in the state are pushing for a constitutional amendment to ensure Medicaid funds do not go to elective abortions. The amendment has so far failed to garner the two-thirds majority support necessary in the state House.
The proposed amendment would condify that “the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion.” Should the amendment gain support from two-thirds of the Kansas House, the subsequent referendum would take place during the state primaries in August.
Campbell pointed out that there is currently a Kansas statute on the books prohibiting state dollars being used for abortions.
While other states, such as California and Illinois, have chosen to use state dollars to fund abortions, “the state of Kansas hasn’t chosen to do it.”
“I’m not sure why they’re so worried about this,” she said.
“I think there’s adequate protection already. Let’s get Kansans the healthcare they need and stop the political posturing…Let’s get people healthcare, and then let’s see if there’s even this risk that [the KCC] is afraid of.”
For his part, Chuck Weber, executive director of the Kansas Catholic Conference, remains adamant that the idea that Kansas could soon use state money to pay for elective abortions is not as far-fetched as Campell would have people believe.
The federal Hyde Amendment bars federal funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment.
At least 16 states, not including Kansas, currently use their own funds to pay for additional abortions outside of those conditions.
According to records from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Medicaid in Kansas covered one abortion in 2014 and three in 2018, KCUR reported.
Despite this, pro-life advocates have noted that limits on publicly funded abortion through state Medicaid programs have been struck down by the state supreme courts of Alaska, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Jersey, and overall, nine state Medicaid programs now cover elective abortions as the result of judicial rulings, according to National Review.
“It is disingenuous to put on political blinders and ignore the other elephant in the room so closely connected to this issue,” Weber said in an email to CNA.
“If Kansas passes Medicaid Expansion without the protection of the state constitutional amendment … then we are virtually assuring that taxpayer-funded abortion will become a reality in Kansas.”
The Special Committee on Medicaid Expansion, a joint House and Senate panel, held two days of hearings discussing an expansion of KanCare during November 2019.
Weber said in his Nov. 12 testimony that the conference cannot support Medicaid expansion unless it explicitly excludes the expansion of abortion coverage, includes conscience protections for healthcare organizations and individuals, and the state constitutional amendment is enacted to clarify that abortion is not a natural right.
Weber told CNA on Thursday that the KCC has contacted NETWORK to ask: “Why not help legislators to pass Value Them Both, which will then open the logjam to Medicaid Expansion in Kansas?”
“This is the authentically Catholic position, a classic win-win that helps save babies, protect women and provide healthcare to families,” Weber said.
For her part, Campbell reiterated to CNA that she sees the risk of Kansas taxpayer-funded abortions as small, and that for her “the urgency now is getting people healthcare.”
“For me, what I see the Kansas [Catholic] Conference doing is stopping care for everybody else because they have a fear of what the Supreme Court might do. And this is anguish in my heart. We gotta care for the born, also. So let’s deal with the born. Let’s get ’em healthcare.”
Sr. Campbell has led the “Nuns on the Bus” advocacy campaign that has the support of the group Faith in Public Life and U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden. She also delivered a speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
NETWORK has, in the past, disagreed with the USCCB on support for various legislative efforts, including the extent to which the Affordable Care Act adequately forbade federal funding for abortion.
NETWORK also found itself at odds with the USCCB when it came out in support of the 2019 Equality Act, which has passed in the House, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the definition of “sex” in federal civil rights laws.
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Perhaps the legion powers that be should be barred from spreading and imposing their ideological bromides until they’ve been vaccinated with sodium pentothal. But, who knows, they might be allergic.
I suppose if she also refuses to use Tylenol, Advil, Motrin, Aleve, Sudafed, Benadryl, Claritin, Robitussin, Mucinex, Tums, Maalox, Colace, Ex-Lax, Pepto-Bismol, Albuterol, Azithromycin, Lidocaine, and Hydroxychloroquine, she has a case. But that case would be personal religious observance, not Roman Catholic
Remedies you mention are to treat discomfort or disease. Covid vaccines are aimed at preventing disease.
Roman Catholics value life, her position in relation to not injecting aborted fetuses is God honouring and church affirmed.
With respect
Those remedies have the same testing history as the vaccines.
A myth perpetuated by the ignorant particularly those who rely on the discredited, dishonest, autistic Father Matthew Schneider, LC as a source.
The “Everything Was Tested on HEK” Lie
There is a bit more to the story than that:
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https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/lets-get-a-few-things-cleared-up-testing-cell-lines-and-fetal-tissue/
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I will agree that she really does not have much of a case from the standpoint of being a Roman Catholic. The vaccines are a requirement to attend Mass in some dioscese, unless things have recently changed. And the Pope of course requires it for folks at the Vatican
Seriously? The pope didn’t speak ex cathedra on the “vaccines,” so there is no dogma involved, and he could be wrong.. It remains his opinion rather than a teaching of the Church. Study the Catechism, please.
And the Vatican has also made a clear case on the basis of nonproximity using Thomist logic.
Yeah, seriously.
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I really do not care of the Pope spoke ex cathedra or not concerning the vaccines. The fact remains–the Vatican has imposed them on employees and visitors alike. That may have changed recently with the wanning on Omicron, but there are a number of articles on that fact. There are also articles on a couple of diocese requiring the vaccine of priests or employees, or for in-peron Mass attendance, etc.
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Her case will be tried in a secular court, and were I a secular judge, I suppose I would have to look at this and say “Your own relious authorities/superiors mandate this vaccine for this or that; but you say your religion forbids it? Appeal denied.”
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And that is reality, and a mighty sick one at that. I feel for this nun. What has been done, and is being done, is wrong. It is a loss for everyone involved.
The vaccines(sic)
The experimental, mRNA gene therapy injections aren’t vaccines. People need to stop referring to them as such.
You frequently appear here to demonstrate a willful ignorance of the Catholic religion, not to mention a hostility towards its values. You might be more comfortable at the NCR, the silly one.
No one is obligated to cooperate with an intrinsic evil, including the evil of genetic altering serums fraudulently promoted as “vaccines” and immorally derived from the intentional destruction of innocent life.
This would be fake news. As of late, I’ve been commenting on political matters. When I look around, being anti-violence and pro-truth is more of a religious value than Russia apologism, and the promotion of falsehoods. I am sure that being in disagreement is unsettling.
On this thread I merely pointed to a list of commonly used medications with the same remote cooperation. I think a person can state firmly, “I don’t want to do what they’re telling me to do.” Such persons often violate speed limits on roads, safety protocols at work, or receive Communion when they are told they shouldn’t or can’t.
Now, if Sister Byrne opts for non-pharma remedies for headaches, inflammation, and other routine hiccups, her personal stance is consistent. Any Catholic anti-vaxxer who uses ExLax but clings to the remote cooperation principle, that person is treading close to hypocrisy.
To complete the distancing from cooperation, I recommend declining to buy anything made in China. Moral principles are good things, even when they run against the grain of one’s friends and associates. What else is there to be said? Buy North American herbs for aches, pains, and constipation.
If this special lady is prevented from her healing ministry, her patients are the poorer. If she states she is unvaccinated and patients have no qualms, then let her practice! Ultimately God is our protector. Though vaccinated, I would not have taken the vaccine had I known stem cells were used from an aborted fetus.
Her principled stand exalts God and informs her patients. May the Lord bless her.
Proverbs 6:16-19 There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.
Acts 21:31-32 And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul.
Psalm 82:4 Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
A person of character is a great blessing to the church, through fidelity and their godly activity.
And, the “vaccinated” can contract and transmit the virus.
Just a small correction: Sister Deirdre is not a “nun (cloistered)”. She is a “Sister”. https://canonlawmadeeasy.com/2009/03/19/whats-the-difference-between-sisters-and-nuns/
Press on, Sister Dede!
Hey Sister, (nun) try some Circumspect Analysis on your situation. Is it smarter to have medical people vaccinated, so they may not infect their patients? I’ll help you: The answer is yes. ALWAYS look at the other side of an argument before opposing it. This is a policy issue. Don’t take it personal.
The vaccine does not prevent infection or transmission of the SC2 virus. It might help reduce symptoms.
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There is no justification for any mandate for anyone, by anyone, for this vaccine. Including for our medical professionals.
This mandate can’t see the forest for the trees.
The Epoch times recently had an article by a scientist that Omnicron actually did more to eventually ebb the pandemic than the vaccine.
Jews?
I encountered a “Catholic” friend in the grocery store this past week, and in our conversation, I mentioned that I have not been vaccinated because of the connection all the “vaccines” have to abortion. She became adamant and actually strident in her statement that the “vaccines,” according to her immunologist daughter-in-law, had no connection to abortion. Really? Even the USCCB said that the abortion connection of all the “vaccines” was “remote,” clearly acknowledging the connection and recommending that Catholics choose some over others because the abortion connection was “greater” in some than in others. (My response is that there is no statute of limitations on murder). The only persons who can judge anyone’s conscience in any regard are that person and God. The United States government was established by colonists seeking religious freedom. I applaud Sister Dede and pray that her lawsuit is successful.
It basically revolves around governance not acknowledging the science about natural immunity. Why the heavy push for vaccines and total disregard for the effectiveness of natural immunity? big $$$ maybe?
This is definitely a control issue with $$$ directing the power over the peasants. The mandates are enacted irrespective of the facts at hand. A moral rejection is not even necessary, as an intellectually honest assessment of the ‘science’ easily dismisses any argument promoting these mandates. It’s unnatural for tyrants to relinquish power once gained. Thank God for regular election opportunities; pray that they are truly ‘regular’ in the true sense of the word.
Hopefully the following is true:
BREAKING: Sr Dede Byrne’s medical license reinstated and vaccine exemption granted
Good.
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I hope a few bishops take note that rescind their own unjust mandates over their priests and flocks.
If there is one life that cannot be saved (eg. a brain dead patient on life support or a recently aborted foetus), I would have thought our creator would smile favourably upon us if we were to save one little piece of those lives (eg. a whole kidney or a single kidney cell) to save the life of another by kidney transplantation or the lives of millions by the establishment of a kidney cell line to be used in medical research[eg. HEK-293 from which Astra Seneca Covid -19 vaccine comes]. After all, Christ himself taught, ‘There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for another’.(John:15.13) He really meant it as evidenced in the sacrifice of his own earthly life for all others. Perhaps the good nun-doctor is in need of a refresher course at Medical School and of the exhortation to look for the good that comes as a gift from her God in the depths of the bad. Great good came from Christ’s terrible, unethical, human death. Why not from the deaths of we mere mortals?? Being anti-abortion should not be a bar to seeing evil defeated by the ascendance of some good.