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8 U.S. Bishops and Abortion Law In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, U.S. bishops as a national body and as individual heads of dioceses have devoted more time, energy, and money to abortion than to any other single issue. The media has given great attention to the role of the U.S. bishops on the abortion issue. This chapter describes bishop involvement and offers analysis and criticism of their approach. In fall 1968 the U.S. Catholic bishops published a pastoral letter, ‘‘Human Life in Our Day.’’ In light of the developing discussion of and mounting pressure for relaxed abortion laws, one would have expected this document to treat the abortion issue. But this was not the case. The document discussed at length the issues of contraception, which came to the fore in Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, and the issues of war (especially in Vietnam) and deterrence. Only three short paragraphs were devoted to abortion. In two paragraphs the bishops cited the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Thus, at this point, abortion was not a high priority for the bishops.1 The staff of the bishops’ conference in Washington, especially Father T. McHugh, the director of the Family Life Bureau, recognized the importance of the abortion issue. McHugh, who founded the National Right to Life Committee and later became a bishop, continued to play a most significant role in mobilizing the bishops in their defense of the fetus.2 In 1969 the bishops issued a short ‘‘Statement on Abortion’’ in response to movement toward less restrictive abortion laws, in which they maintained that abortion was not just a Catholic issue. They also recognized the need for something more than law—a social responsibility to provide health care and sustenance for pregnant women and the need to work for cures for maternal   G Chapter  diseases and fetal abnormality.3 A 1970 statement again described the antiabortion position not just as a Catholic position but one rooted in the U.S. Bill of Rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child. Again, the bishops committed themselves to seek solutions to the problems that lead some women to consider abortion.4 James R. Kelly has described this as a ‘‘social work’’ approach to abortion, which does not raise questions about structures of society that contribute to abortion but seeks to provide help for pregnant women.5 The 1970s The bishops’ involvement changed dramatically after the Supreme Court’s January 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade decision, which came quite close to allowing abortion on demand. Cardinal John Krol, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, condemned the decision as an unspeakable tragedy that involved both bad logic and bad law. By chance the newly formed bishops’ ad hoc Committee on Pro-Life Activities met for the first time the following day and issued a statement advising people not to follow its reasoning or conclusions, while recommending every legal possibility to challenge the decision.6 In a November 1973 statement at their annual meeting the bishops expressed their emphatic support for a constitutional amendment to protect the unborn.7 The bishops insisted that they were not trying to thrust their religious beliefs down the throats of others. In testimony to a Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee in 1974 Cardinal Krol emphasized that the right to life is not an invention of any church but a basic human right that should undergird any civilized society. In addition the bishops have a right as American citizens to advocate positions they believe to be for the good of the country. The bishops did not frame abortion as a Catholic issue, but defended their moral and pastoral obligation and their constitutional right as Americans to defend the right to life of the unborn.8 At their November 1975 meeting the bishops adopted a ‘‘Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities.’’9 This document raises an issue that the bishops have continued to struggle with—the relationship of abortion to other human rights and social issues. Is abortion the only issue, the most important issue, or one among other issues? Throughout the bishops have emphasized they are not interested in single-issue politics and support a broad range of issues, but at a minimum they have given more emphasis and more weight to abortion. Such is the case in this document. Internal consistency requires that the program [3.137.175.224] Project MUSE (2024...

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