Pope Francis considers it an ‘incoherence’ that President Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights

Mexico City, Mexico, Mar 2, 2021 / 02:33 pm (CNA).- In a statement Tuesday responding to media inquiries about US president Joe Biden’s stated devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the bishops of Mexico expressed hope that public office holders would be enlightened by her.

“As the Mexican Bishops’ Conference we are proud that the Virgin of Guadalupe is so loved and appreciated everywhere, beyond the bounds of languages, cultures, and traditions. We wish that all those who hold public office allow themselves to be enlightened by Our Mother in their way of living and serving so that they know how to promote the highest values that give life to peoples, such as health and peace, justice, truth, solidarity, care for the earth, defense of the poor, and promotion of the marginalized,” the bishops said in a March 2 press note.

They said their statement was “in response to inquiries from the media about what was expressed by the President of the United States Joe Biden about his devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe.”

Biden had cited Our Lady of Guadalupe and displayed his rosary in a conversation with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador March 1.

Biden, who is Catholic, claimed a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe from his previous travels to Mexico as vice president.

“During my visits, I got to know Mexico a little bit and its people, and paid my respects to the Virgin of Guadalupe. As a matter of fact, I still have my rosary beads that my son was wearing when he passed,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript of the event.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is patroness, not only of the Americas, but of unborn children.

Biden is the second Catholic U.S. president, and the U.S. bishops’ conference has noted the unique circumstance of having a Catholic president who is not inconsistent with Church teaching on topics such as immigration and fighting poverty, yet contradicts Church teaching on abortion, marriage, religious freedom, and gender ideology.

Biden has supported taxpayer-funded abortion and has pledged to sign the Equality Act, legislation the USCCB has warned would codify gender ideology in law and would “punish” objecting religious groups.

In a Jan. 20 statement for Biden’s inauguration, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles offered prayers for the new president and emphasized his own role as bishop in forming consciences, rather than in being a partisan.

Biden, warned the USCCB president, “has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender. Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.”

Abortion, said Gomez, “remains the ‘preeminent priority’” of the conference, as it “is a direct attack on life that also wounds the woman and undermines the family.”

Although Biden’s staff have referred to him as a “devout Catholic,” the USCCB’s pro-life chair has said they should stop using that term due to his support for abortion.

“The president should stop defining himself as a devout Catholic, and acknowledge that his view on abortion is contrary to Catholic moral teaching,” said Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, in an interview with Catholic World Report published on Feb. 13.

Archbishop Naumann noted that “we bishops have the responsibility to correct him” for using the term. He added that Biden “is usurping the role of the bishops and confusing people” by calling himself a “devout Catholic” while opposing the Church’s teaching on life.

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A mother and her baby who were served by one of Pregnancy Care Alliance’s member centers. / Photo courtesy of Pregnancy Care Alliance of Massachusetts

Boston, Mass., Jul 21, 2023 / 15:02 pm (CNA).

Pro-life pregnancy centers in Massachusetts have allied to enhance collaboration and share resources amid hostility from advocates for abortion.

CNA has tracked more than 60 pro-abortion attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers since May 2022 — four of which occurred in the Bay State — in which vandals have marked pro-life facilities with threatening graffiti and in some cases broken windows and burned down buildings.

The Pregnancy Care Alliance of Massachusetts was also formed in response to another threat — the rise in legislation targeting the work of pro-life pregnancy centers in the state. 

Last year, ordinances were enacted in the cities of Cambridge and Somerville, located north of Boston, to issue fines of up to $300 for every instance of “deceptive” advertising by local pregnancy clinics that do not perform abortions or refer clients to those that do perform them.

Other municipalities have attempted to adopt the same ordinance. The state Legislature is currently considering a bill that contains the same language targeting “deceptive advertising” from pro-life pregnancy centers, although there is no definition of the term in it.

That bill in the state Legislature is “clearly aiming to censor protected speech,” Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL), told CNA on July 20.

MCFL came up with the idea for the pregnancy center alliance in 2022 to serve as a “hub” for the member pregnancy centers, Flynn said.

“The network was formed with a dual mission of building public awareness and also serving more women,” Flynn said. 

One of the ways the alliance is working to share its message is through video testimonials on YouTube of women whose lives were positively impacted through the services of pro-life pregnancy centers.

A 29-year-old woman named “Crystal,” who was able to save the life of her son through the abortion pill reversal method, gave her testimony in a video dated May 17.

After regretting her visit to a Planned Parenthood, Crystal shared her experience with the women working at Abundant Hope pregnancy resource center in Attleboro, Massachusetts.

“There I met the most amazing group of women that really helped me feel confident in my decision and really supported me through the abortion pill reversal,” she said of her visit.

“I am so happy to say that thanks to them and their support, I was able to deliver my son and we had him last April, and he really is the light of my life,” Crystal said.

Flynn said that both MCFL and the pregnancy center alliance are “eager” to tell the stories of women who benefited from the centers. The collaboration means they can wage an effective social media campaign across different platforms.

“Now we work together to come up with creative campaigns, or hashtags or fundraisers, or a series of open houses that we held earlier this year,” she said.

“We’re hitting multiple audiences way more efficiently than each center could do on [its] own. And so, consequently, we hope that in a shorter amount of time, the public in Massachusetts will be better informed and more widely informed about the truth of pregnancy resource centers,” she added. 

Flynn will be testifying in front of a joint committee in the state’s Legislature on July 24 in order to oppose the passage of the “deceptive advertising” bill called “An Act to protect patient privacy and prevent unfair and deceptive advertising of pregnancy-related services.”

The bill says: “No limited services pregnancy center, with the intent to perform a pregnancy-related service, shall make or disseminate before the public, or cause to be made or disseminated before the public, in any newspaper or other publication, through any advertising device, or in any other manner, including, but not limited to, through use of the internet, any statement concerning any pregnancy-related service or the provision of any pregnancy-related service that is deceptive, whether by statement or omission; and a limited services pregnancy center knows or reasonably should know to be deceptive.”

Using data taken from the member pregnancy centers in the alliance, Flynn will testify that no clinic that is part of the Pregnancy Care Alliance has received complaints related to “deceptive advertising.”

“Furthermore, Pregnancy Care Alliance centers maintain consistently high satisfaction ratings by their clients,” she said. “Thousands of women have found pregnancy resource centers via internet searches and are grateful that they did.”

In March of this year, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, signed a $389 million supplemental budget bill that included a $1 million “public awareness campaign focused on the dangers of crisis pregnancy centers and pregnancy resource centers.”

It’s unclear how the state is planning to use the funds, as CNA inquired with the governor’s office but did not receive a response. However, Flynn said that MCFL is planning to launch a counter-campaign soon called “$1 million for women.” 

“The funds raised would support Pregnancy Care Alliance’s member centers and, by extension, women,” Flynn said.

“By nature of the fact of being a network, these pregnancy resource centers become stronger, and with MCFL as the hub, we can help to make them stronger and spread the word about what they do and correct misinformation in the public sphere,” Flynn said.

Several other states have initiatives bringing pro-life pregnancy centers together in collaboration, such as Indiana, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. 

The Pregnancy Care Alliance website can be found here.

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Lucky Business/Shutterstock.

Washington D.C., Dec 8, 2021 / 16:55 pm (CNA).
Attorneys representing a Maine family at the Supreme Court are feeling confident following Wednesday’s oral arguments in the case Carson v. Makin. The case asks wh… […]