Correspondence
Correspondence ABORTION & THE CONSTITUTION RESPONSES TO OUR EDITORIAL New York, N.Y. To the Editors: What troubles me most about your editorial [Dec. 8], "Do Catholics Have Constitutional...
...Zahn does not expect all to be saints...
...Microfilm from Voi...
...If today's legislative majority can force poor women to bear children, tomorrow' s majority can refuse contraception or childbirth and fund only abortion and sterilization...
...It imposes severe hardship upon women whose religious beliefs do not prohibit abortion, including women whose religious beliefs mandate abortion under some circumstances...
...8], has succeeded in widening the gap of understanding of the abortion rights crisis among religious groups...
...We should be allied in the struggle to transcend and, thereby, respect the colliding moral beliefs on abortion...
...You have misrepresented the position of this organization...
...As a plaintiff in the suit McRae vs...
...For box numbers add 60c per insertion...
...You do not seem to comprehend the depth of our faith commitment in a matter such as this, which has compelled us to plead before the court for our right toffee exercise of religious conscience and that of other women who hold similar beliefs...
...Commonweal: 34 men must, as Js refuse to participate in what they deem unjust or immoral...
...Ramstein, Gemaany...
...Why is this also not true when-the life to be saved is an innocent unborn child...
...Secretary, 1011 First Ave., New York, N.Y...
...If there is validity to this accusation our nation is in a sorry state of affairs...
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...The Chaplaincy is an international, ecumenical, inter-cultural parish ministry...
...The issue in McRae v. Califano is not freedom of speech, but whether it is appropriate within our constitutional system for a basically religious point of view to be imposed on the entire population...
...But when human life begins is essentially a religious question...
...Introducing the Amendment, Mr...
...stead of joining with plaintiffs who seek to preserve religious liberty for all...
...RHONDA COrELON Counsel Center for Constitutional Rights IRA GLASSER Executive Director American Civil Liberties Union JANET BENSHOOF Counsel to the Reproductive Freedom American Civil Liberties Project Is there an ACLU...
...In no way is our organization attempting to "disenfranchise all religious viewpoints form an active engagement in the political process," as you claim...
...The ACLU tends to have an unqualified--one might say dogmatic--position with respect to the free expression clause, as it does also toward the no-establishment clause, while its posture toward the free exercise of religion is considerably less certain...
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...It dramatically poses the questions whether, or in what sense, is ours a secular society, and whether, or in what ways, is the state to exclude the beliefs of the citizenry from its deliberations...
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...As your editorial suggests,however, the challenge--while tainted by antiCatholic impulse--is directed against all believers and even non-believers who understand that democratic polity requires a living relatonship between public policy and the most deeply held convictions of the people...
...A cardinal principle of the program is that no one may be coerced or pressured to abandon conscientious beliefs affecting necessary medical care...
...On the contrary, it simply shows that some legislators are prepared, for political reasons, to vote for legislation favored by one religious group in exchange for that group's sup port...
...The influence of religion should not only be countenanced but should be celebrated when it advances what I want advanced...
...The ACLU has urged before the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice that we listen to the collective voice of religion in opposing the death penalty...
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...8], my answer is that the lawyers for plaintiffs in the McRae litigation have never questioned and indeed would strongly defend the Constitutional rights of Catholics as we would those of any other group...
...The importance of McRae v. Califano goes far beyond the abortion debate as important as that debate continues to be...
...The abortion restriction discriminates based on religious or conscientious choice just as would paying for health care needs of children attending Orthodox Jewish schools but not those attending Roman Catholic or public schools...
...Write Box 82, COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave., N.Y.C...
...It is clear from the legislative history of the Hyde Amendment that the purpose of the legislation was to protect what its proponents believe to be actual human lives...
...Washington, D.C...
...is the assumption (indeed, it is more than that, it is closer to an accusation), that those who oppose the denial of Medicaid reimbursement for abortions seek to deny to Catholics their constitutional rights...
...Hyde said, "The essential question (is) the humanity of the unborn...
...66c, three times...
...In this suit I was one of the witnesses for the defense who attempted to document the many and necessary ways in which moral judgment informed by religious belief interacts with public policy in a democratic society...
...The assumption, not very well hidden, is that of course their engagement is different...
...That campaign led to enactment of the Hyde Amendment, which denies medicaUy safe abortions to poor women-even when a physician believes such abortions to be medically necessary...
...48106...
...3. That the tragic effect of the Hyde Amendment on poor women to coerce unwanted and health threatening childbirth, extra legal abortion and sterilization is inconsistent with our moral and ethical practice of religion...
...63c, six times...
...Perhaps the editors of Commonweal can reconcile the position taken by the Baptists in that case with the indictment that they seek to deny Catholics their constitutional rights in respect to abortion...
...The issue here is not a question of valid religious participation in societal concerns, but rather one of control...
...They do not challenge the bishops' more reasonable efforts to influence legislation on housing, unemployment, and a host of other issues on which "people of good will" are of like mind...
...Nor does it, as you suggest, "subsidize" the free exercise of those who believe in the necessity and fight of choice...
...distorts not only the First Amendment challenge to the Medicaid abortion restrictions we are presenting in McRae v. Califano, but also the principles of the First Amendment itself...
...Address: Msgr...
...The legislative history shows that the Amendment was not passed for any reason except the religious belief that life begins at the moment of conception...
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...Nor does the lawsuit challenge the rights of Catholics to petition, demonstrate, lobby or sermonize against the right to abortion...
...Your earlier editorials criticizing the official anti-abortion mobilization gives voice to one of the fundamental concerns of the guarantee of separation of church and state--that religion degrades itself when it seeks State power to enforce and impose even its deepest beliefs...
...Copyright (~) 1979 Commo~aweal Publishing Co...
...Let us start from the premise, which I trust we share, that the goal of the Medicaid program to provide comprehensive health care coverage for the indigent is necessary, just and humane...
...Neutrality is...
...Absent from your editorial and from the anti-abortion mobilization is respect for the dictates of religious faith and conscience which teach that abortion may be a moral, loving, and religiously required choice...
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...I. 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm...
...The State does not remain neutral by withdrawing funding for abortion...
...Without such a relationship, the moral legitimacy of the polity is thrown into question...
...Around the world on Air Force B~es, the people of God need Catholic priests...
...ROBERT N. BELLAH "The best book yet on the extraordio nacy changes in Dutch Catholicism in the years during and after the Second Vatican CounciL" --ANDREW M. GREELEY The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism 1958-1974 John A. Coleman CALIFORNIA*2~176176 University of California Press Berkeley 94720 2 February 1979:63...
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...That is hardly the "secular pur(Continued on page 61) Commonweal welcomes letters...
...It does not save the government money, and indeed ends up being extremely costly in those instances where it in fact prevents the termination of pregnancy...
...I was struck by the uncanny climate of a hearing in which socially activist Christians--in this case Methodists--were pleading that the government should prohibit precisely the kinds of activities in which they are themselves so deeply engaged...
...We would fight just as hard against a reverse Hyde Amendment that only paid for abortions and sterilization to preserve the religious and conscientious decision of pregnant women for whom childbirth is the moral course...
...Other religions, such as the Catholic religion, believe, as a matter of faith, that the fetus possesses or may possess a soul from the moment of conception...
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...When there are so many varying religious viewpoints on abortion our concern is that the force and power of goverment in the Hyde Amendment supports one religious viewpoint to the exclusion of all others...
...Since then, not only Catholics but other spokesmen for absolutist religious views have engaged in a concerted campaign to undermine the Supreme Court's decision...
...Should their religious code be imposed on Medicaid recipients who do not hold such religious beliefs...
...Since we must assume that these organizations represent the will of their constituents, as does the 'Catholic Church in its opposition to governmental funding of abortion for the poor who do not believe that abortion is murder, the conclusion seems to be inescapable that we are a nation of bigots seeking to deny to Catholics their constitutional rights...
...I II Commonweal is indexed in Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, and Book Review Digest...
...they act out of enlightened and universal principles rather than sectarian motives, and they act as free citizens not under intellectual duress...
...To the Editors: Your December 8 editorial "Do Catholics Have Constitutional Rights...
...Then too, it seems to some of our separated sisters of the Methodist Women's Division that anxiety about the unborn or about the definition of human life is so patently non-rational that it could only be prompted by dogma reinforced by ecclesiastical coercion...
...The First Amendment is the ultimate guarantor of religious pluralism and the right of conscience of all...
...By what right are we Catholics to be denied access to the political process...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...and, thereby interfere with our free exercise of roligion...
...JOHN C ~ Correspondence (Continued from page 34) pose" for legislation which our Constitution requires...
...Just as today's opposition to anti-abortion laws draws accusations of anti-Catholicism, so in the 1920's opponents of the "monkey" laws were labeler"anti-Christian...
...Thus, a Jehovah's Witness is entitled to refuse a blood transfusion, and a woman of Catholic faith or otherwise is guaranteed this same freedom, to refuse or to choose, with respect to family planning services...
...To help the layman in finding a personal pattern and rhythm of prayer, in realizing the effectiveness and special rewards of daily praying, Dr...
...Massey H. Shepherd, Jr...
...8] lifts up most of the crucial questions in a case that has received all too little attention...
...RICHARD NEUHAUS Senior Editor, Worldview Religious liberty for all New York, N.Y...
...But in the ACLU viewpoint the cases are not analogous, dealing as they do with different clauses of the First Amendment...
...A) b o r t i o n . . , is the calculated killing of an innocent, inconvenient human being...
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...8], "Do Catholics Have Constitutional Rights...
...If moral values are to be denied legislative expression, then we are left only with force as the final arbiter between right and wrong...
...Grissom, Indiana...
...LEO PFEFFER Undermining the Court New York, N.Y...
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...Letters of not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance of being published...
...Unfortunately, the cry of religious bigotry is a smoke-screen for religious intolerance...
...John G. Nolan, Nat'l...
...But anti-choice Catholics, like Mormons, Orthodox Jews or fundamentalist Protestants who support the present campaign to restrict abortion for the most vulnerable--poor pregnant women--have no more fight to enact their religious beliefs into law than Jehovah's Witnesses who view blood transfusions as a sacrilege or fundamentalist Protestants who were responsible in the 1920's for the "monkey" laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the schools...
...There is no scientific consensus on this question, and no religious consensus either...
...If your logic were to be followed, how would you regard the constitutional rights of tax paying Jehovah's Witnesses who deem blood transfusions abhorrent...
...In the entire Medicaid program, only the woman whose faith and convictions dictate abortion is denied this right to conscience...
...8] is an excellent statement of an issue that has enormous implications...
...Two days after the Roe v. Wade decision, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee for ProLife Affairs declared, "As religious leaders, we cannot accept the Court's judgment and we urge people not to follow its reasoning or conclusions...
...Most religions teach that a fetus is not a human being...
...Earlier this year I submitted to the Supreme Court a "friend of the court" brief in behalf of the Baptist Joint Committee in the case of National Labor Relations Board v. The Catholic Bishop of Chicago...
...Since Commonweal is edited by and (mainly) for Catholics, it is understandWhy toy with translations, when you can learn the real thing...
...At the trial of the McRae case I submitted, in support of the plaintiffs' position, a "friends of the court brief," in behalf of Protestant and Jewish organizations with a combined membership of about 30 million Americans...
...To the Editors: Your editorial "Do Catholics Have Constitutional Rights...
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...2 February 1979:61 able that your editorial is titled "Do Catholics Have Constitutional Rights...
...HENRY J. HYDE House of Representatives 6th District, Illinois For further comment on this subject, see editorial on page 35...
...The Court held that, since physicians, philosophers and theologians cannot agree on the question of when life begins, the state cannot impose on all women the belief that an unborn fetus is a person...
...It saves your soul, and maybe the souls of some others...
...The fact that some Congressmen who supported the Hyde Amendment did so, not from personal religious conviction, but, as your editorial points out, "because of a political attitude about government's role in morally controverted issues or a pragmatic belief about compromise in a pluralistic society" does not change the essentially religious bias of the legislation, any more than Protestant votes for federal funding of parochial education in Catholic or Jewish schools would change the religious bias of such legislation...
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...While the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, representing perhaps another 30 million Americans, did not join in this brief, its executive director, Dr...
...2. That the efforts of some religious groups to enact the absolutist position on abortion in effect would enforce one religious belief on those who believe otherwise...
...James Wood, did testify at the trial in favor of the plaintiffs' position...
...Along with a superlative selection of personal and intercessory prayers, Dr...
...To the Editors: Your editorial "Do Catholics Have Constitutional Rights...
...Califano, The Women's Division, Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church, has attempted to present to the court these basic points: 1. That a conscientious decision whether to terminate or continue a pregnancy in accordance with the principles of responsible parenthood is a religious obligation for us...
...And in other neighboring countries there are also great needs of food, medicine, clothing and shelter...
...Those who view blood transfusions as a sacrilege are entitled to alternate treatment...
...10022...
...No one of us questions or challenges the right of Catholics voluntarily to observethe Catholic teaching on abortion...
...The Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade that a woman, in consultation with her physician, has a right to an abortion unqualified in the first trimester, and subject, until the fetus becomes viable, only to restrictions imposed for the protection of her health...
...Congressional proponents of the Hyde Amendment all justified their position by religious references...
...In short, they are not Roman Catholics...
...You say the ACLU should be as solicitous of the First Amendment rights of Catholics as it is of Nazis who want to march in Skokie...
...Shepherd has included an illuminating discussion of Prayer...
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...THERESSA HOOVER Associate General Secretary Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church Bcn.ing their clause New York, N.Y...
...According to this view, any fetus--one minute old, one day old, one month old--is fully human, and indistinguishable from an infant, and therefore abortion is murder...
...Each one of us must find Ilis or her pattern and rhythm of prayer...
...The current controversy over abortion is therefore a controversy over religious doctrine...
...instead, he wants all to realize that "no witness is wasted...
...In your attempt to describe our position, you have caricatured our faith stance with insensitivity...
...On this score you are perhaps too kind to the ACLU...
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...Our history as an organization which views social concern as resting at the .aeart of Christian mission would pre:lude such a stance...
...When the object of their solicitude is a convicted murderer, apparently such voices are indeed Constitutional...
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...To the Editors: As one of the attorneys from Planned Parenthood addressed in your editorial, "Do Catholics Have Constitutional Rights...
...Only poor women who determine that abortion is a moral choice are denied a right to conscience...
...You speak of the constitutional rights of religious groups, particularly of Catholics, who do not wish to see their taxes used for a medical procedure which they hold to be immoral...
...lzmir, l9~ r.k ey...
...We must give time and effort to it, set apart regular periods for prayer, gain the habit of praying...
...There I argued that compelling the Catholic Church to bargain collectively with unions representing parochial school teachers violated the First Amendment rights of the Church...
...It is therefore disappointing that Commonweal appears to join the ranks of those who cry religious bigotry inA t)f I'f~ Ayt R L~,II y l'.'1%1...
...To the Editors: The thoughtful editorial on McRae v. Califano [Dec...
...The indigent Protestant woman who believes that responsible parenthood necessitates a decision whether or not to continue a pregnancy is pressured to forego her religious duty...
...In an open society, surely political advocacy ought to be encouraged by groups whose professed goals are the enhancement of civil liberty...
...Obviously not...
...EVE W. PAUL Director of Legal Services Planned Pare.nthood Federation Widening the gap New York, N.Y...
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...THE EDITORS A COMPANION OF PRAYER FOR DAILY LIVING The Rev...
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...so is the Jewish woman whose faith teaches that she place her health and well-being and that of her existing family above the existence of the embryo...
...Moreover the Medicaid program guarantees recipients freedom of conscience in decisions about medical care...
...I must confess, I cannot...
...Commonweal: 62 preserved only by allowing freedom of choice in accordance with individual conscience...
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Vol. 106 • February 1979 • No. 2
