Pelosi's Family Planning Bailout

A few days ago, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi defended the inclusion of hefty earmarks for family planning services in the economic stimulus package. In a television interview, Pelosi insisted that family  planning services will "reduce" costs" for federal and state governments. Pelosi acknowledged  earmarks for contraceptives and said she made "no apologies."

"Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost," she repeated in the television interview. "The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."

Now, it looks like Pelosi's remarks have forced President Obama to make his own apologies:  the Associated Press reported that Obama will ask "Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the committee with jurisdiction over Medicaid, to drop funding for family planning, including contraceptives, for low income families" from the stimulus bill. That doesn't mean the issue is resolved, but it suggests that the new administration has received some unexpected push back.

Pelosi, is a self-described "ardent, practicing Catholic." Yet she routinely adopts political positions that oppose Catholic teaching.  Contrary to her recent remarks, the Catholic Church, while encouraging responsible parenthood, actually embraces children as a gift, not a burden.

The most complete articulation of Catholic teaching on the inherent goodness and inviolate dignity of human life is John Paul II's "The Gospel of Life,"  the encyclical that first introduced the "culture of death" and the "culture of life" into the modern lexicon. The late pontiff warned against a "culture of death" that calculates the good of each person according to their utility and productivity. He emphasized that Catholics have a special obligation to defend human life from conception to natural birth:

"In a special way, believers in Christ must defend and promote this right, aware as they are of the wonderful truth recalled by the Second Vatican Council: "By his incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every human being" This saving event reveals to humanity not only the boundless love of God who "so loved the world that he gave his only Son" (Jn 3:16), but also the incomparable value of every human person."

There is a great chasm between John Paul Ii's vision of the human person and Nancy Pelosi's public remarks on everything from family planning, to abortion and embryo-destructive stem cell research. Last August, during the presidential campaign, Pelosi offered a tangled history of Catholic teaching on abortion that prompted a slew of corrections by irate American bishops . Earlier this month, she expressed her hope  that the federal government would resume funding of embryo-destructive stem cell research "I myself would favor legislation, so it is the law," she said.

At U.S.News and World Report, Capital Commerce blogger, James Pethokoukis, expressed dismay at Pelosi's utilitarian calculus regarding the cost-benefits of contraception.
But Pethokoukis also points to additional economic arguments for encouraging families to welcome children. He suggests that Pelosi review data supporting the strong correlation between rising national birth rates and rising tax revenues. Pethokoukis quotes Phil Longman's argument in his book, "Empty Cradle", "Population aging also depresses the growth of government revenues."

Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House and an "ardent, practicing Catholic." On paper, she seems to be the ideal advocate for abortion rights and other controversial policies: Her Catholic roots give her political positions a measure of moral credibility and help deflect the arguments of orthodox Catholics. But Obama's retreat on the family planning earmarks, and last summer's furor over her statements on abortion, suggest that Pelosi may be precisely the wrong messenger to win the American public over to the progressive social agenda.

Comments

[Richard Durando]

Joan, I enjoyed reading you compilation of subjects. We were in Boston this late summer and Ms. Nancy had just dropped her Abortion Bomb,"The Church has a mixed historical view on the morality of Abortion". The Catholic Newspaper in Boston and in S.F. called Ms. P on the table and a mention of excommunication was broached in a obtuse way. It will be interesting to see what steps the Church will take along the lines of Effectively dealing with an "a moral" Catholic.