Today, hours after Archbishop Chaput issued his broadside against the Senate health care bill, and expressed his frustration with "Catholic" groups that appeared to undercut the Catholic church's united effort to defend the unborn, Cardinal George issued his own compelling statement, printed in full below:
PRESIDENT OF U.S. BISHOPS SAYS COST IS TOO HIGH, LOSS
IS TOO GREAT FOR HEALTH CARE BILL NOT TO BE REVISED
The Catholic Bishops of the United States have long and
consistently advocated for the reform of the American health care system.
Their experience in health care and in Catholic parishes has acquainted them
with the anguish of mothers who are unable to afford prenatal care, of
families unable to ensure quality care for their children, and of those who
cannot obtain insurance because of preexisting conditions.
Throughout the discussion on health care over the last
year, the bishops have advocated a bipartisan approach to solving our
national health care needs. They have urged that all who are sick, injured or
in need receive necessary and appropriate medical assistance, and that no one
be deliberately killed through an expansion of federal funding of abortion
itself or of insurance plans that cover abortion. These are the provisions of
the long standing Hyde amendment, passed annually in every federal bill
appropriating funds for health care; and surveys show that this legislation
reflects the will of the majority of our fellow citizens. The American people
and the Catholic bishops have been promised that, in any final bill, no
federal funds would be used for abortion and that the legal status quo would
be respected.
However, the bishops were left disappointed and puzzled to
learn that the basis for any vote on health care will be the Senate bill
passed on Christmas Eve. Notwithstanding the denials and explanations of its
supporters, and unlike the bill approved by the House of Representatives in
November, the Senate bill deliberately excludes the language of the Hyde
amendment. It expands federal funding and the role of the federal government
in the provision of abortion procedures. In so doing, it forces all of us to
become involved in an act that profoundly violates the conscience of many,
the deliberate destruction of unwanted members of the human family still
waiting to be born.
What do the bishops find so deeply disturbing about the
Senate bill? The points at issue can be summarized briefly. The status quo
in federal abortion policy, as reflected in the Hyde Amendment, excludes
abortion from all health insurance plans receiving federal subsidies. In the
Senate bill, there is the provision that only one of the proposed multi-state
plans will not cover elective abortions – all other plans (including
other multi-state plans) can do so, and receive federal tax credits. This
means that individuals or families in complex medical circumstances will
likely be forced to choose and contribute to an insurance plan that funds
abortions in order to meet their particular health needs.
Further, the Senate bill authorizes and appropriates
billions of dollars in new funding outside the scope of the appropriations
bills covered by the Hyde amendment and similar provisions. As the bill is
written, the new funds it appropriates over the next five years, for
Community Health Centers for example (Sec. 10503), will be available by
statute for elective abortions, even though the present regulations do
conform to the Hyde amendment. Regulations, however, can be changed at will,
unless they are governed by statute.
Additionally, no provision in the Senate bill incorporates
the longstanding and widely supported protection for conscience regarding
abortion as found in the Hyde/Weldon amendment. Moreover, neither the House
nor Senate bill contains meaningful conscience protection outside the
abortion context. Any final bill, to be fair to all, must retain the
accommodation of the full range of religious and moral objections in the
provision of health insurance and services that are contained in current law,
for both individuals and institutions.
This analysis of the flaws in the legislation is not
completely shared by the leaders of the Catholic Health Association. They
believe, moreover, that the defects that they do recognize can be corrected
after the passage of the final bill. The bishops, however, judge that the
flaws are so fundamental that they vitiate the good that the bill intends to
promote. Assurances that the moral objections to the legislation can be met
only after the bill is passed seem a little like asking us, in Midwestern
parlance, to buy a pig in a poke.
What is tragic about this turn of events is that it
needn’t have happened. The status quo that has served our national consensus
and respected the consciences of all with regard to abortion is the Hyde
amendment. The House courageously included an amendment applying the Hyde
policy to its Health Care bill passed in November. Its absence in the Senate
bill and the resulting impasse are not an accident. Those in the Senate who
wanted to purge the Hyde amendment from this national legislation are
obstructing the reform of health care.
This is not quibbling over technicalities. The deliberate
omission in the Senate Bill of the necessary language that could have taken
this moral question off the table and out of play leaves us still looking for
a way to meet the President’s and our concern to provide health care for
those millions whose primary care physician is now an emergency room doctor.
As Pope Benedict told Ambassador to the Holy See Miguel H. Diaz when he
presented his credentials as the United States government’s representative to
the Holy See, there is “an indissoluble bond between an ethic of life and
every other aspect of social ethics.”
Two basic principles, therefore, continue to shape the
concerns of the Catholic bishops: health care means taking care of the health
needs of all, across the human life span; and the expansion of health care
should not involve the expansion of abortion funding and of polices forcing
everyone to pay for abortions. Because these principles have not been
respected, despite the good that the bill under consideration intends or
might achieve, the Catholic bishops regretfully hold that it must be opposed
unless and until these serious moral problems are addressed.
update; The Vatican newspaper published an article identifying the U.S.bishops as the authoritative voice for the Church on the health care reform debate--an implicit repudiation of any attempt to provide moral equivalence between the USCCB and the Catholic Health Association.
Recent Comments