By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer

While U.S. Bishops meeting in Baltimore were concentrating their efforts on how to oppose the anticipated pro-abortion policies of an Obama administration, two Catholic Democrats published an editorial in a Baltimore paper calling on the bishops to focus on issues other than abortion.

According to a report by the Catholic News Agency (CNA), Patrick Whelan, president of Catholic Democrats, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, made their case in a Sunday editorial in the Baltimore Sun. Claiming that Catholic voters’ majority preference for Obama shows they care about other issues.

The letter goes on to make the erroneous argument that the abortion rate actually declined under the pro-abortion president Bill Clinton.

However, this argument has been discredited due to the fact that most of the decreases in abortion rates during the 1990’s occurred in the first few years of that decade when President George H.W. Bush was president.
They also advocated social programs instead of legal protections for the unborn as more effective means to reduce the numbers of abortions.

Whelan and Townsend cited episcopal statements making pro-life issues central to responsible voting considerations. They said “all this talk about abortion,” which they characterized as defending “the need to vote Republican,” showed some bishops wanted a Republican victory.

Whelan and Townsend’s editorial followed action at the U.S. bishops’ fall meeting last week in which American prelates pledged to work with the Obama presidency “for the common good of all” on issues such as immigration, education, health care, and religious freedom.

However, on the issue of abortion, the bishops vowed to put up a rigorous fight, something Whelan previously said would be counterproductive and “only alienate Catholics.”

At the fall meeting, the bishops insisted that life itself is a “fundamental good,” lamenting the removal of legal protection for the unborn mandated by the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. They also attacked the proposed Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) as “legislation that is more radical” than Roe v. Wade which President-elect Obama has promised to sign.

The bishops are not taking the advice of Whelan or Townsend and have instead defended their focus on pro-life issues.

“The bishops are single-minded because they are, first of all, single-hearted,” the bishops’ statement said.

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