NEWS STORY: Catholic prelates rip `shameful’ Clinton abortion-bill veto

c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-In a strongly worded letter, American cardinals and the president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops have condemned President Clinton’s recent veto of a proposed law banning a controversial late-term abortion procedure. “Your veto of this bill is beyond comprehension for those who hold human life sacred,” they said. […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-In a strongly worded letter, American cardinals and the president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops have condemned President Clinton’s recent veto of a proposed law banning a controversial late-term abortion procedure.

“Your veto of this bill is beyond comprehension for those who hold human life sacred,” they said. The Catholic leaders, who said their writing in unison was “virtually unprecedented,” vowed to continue to educate people about the procedure and to urge Congress to override Clinton’s “shameful veto.”


The two-page letter was sent to the White House today (April 16). House Republicans have delayed a vote on overriding the veto, which had been expected on Thursday (April 18). Instead, the measure is in the hands of the Judiciary Committee with no scheduled date for a vote.

The third-trimester procedure is known medically as “intact dilation and evacuation,” but its foes call it “partial-birth abortion.” It involves partially extracting a fetus, feet first, and then collapsing the skull in the birth canal by suctioning out the brain.

“Mr. President, you and you alone had the choice of whether or not to allow children, almost completely born, to be killed brutally in partial-birth abortions,” the Catholic officials wrote to Clinton.

Patricia Lewis, a White House spokeswoman, said Clinton would not have vetoed the ban if Congress had included an exemption for cases where the physician felt the procedure was necessary to protect the health of the mother.

“Since they refused to do that, it’s something he was just unable to do,” she said. “I think that it is sad that this is a private medical issue that is becoming so politicized.”

The proposed measure would have permitted the procedure if the mother’s life were in danger.

The cardinals and Bishop Anthony Pilla, president of the bishops’ conference, said the courts have defined “health” in the context of abortion as “virtually anything that has to do with a woman’s overall `well being.”’


“From your study of this issue, Mr. President, you must know that most partial-birth abortions are done for reasons that are purely elective,” they wrote.

Lewis said the stories presented by several women at the veto ceremony demonstrate that their decision to have the procedure was far from cavalier. The women told of the torment of learning from their doctors that the child they were looking forward to bearing was no longer a healthy fetus.

“Listening to the stories that those women told, that was as far from elective as you can get,” she said. “This is not a decision that any of these women made lightly, and it is disturbing to see people who seem to be saying that it is.

“No one doubts that people have very strong feelings on all sides of this issue. Certainly no one in the White House is impugning the motives or the beliefs of people who oppose this. I think they’re just saying, look … at the whole story.”

Clinton said during the veto ceremony that the women who joined him were in situations where “their own lives, their health, and in some cases, their capacity to have children in the future were in danger.”

But the Catholic leaders noted that Clinton did not include a physician in the ceremony who could explain how a woman’s health was protected by “almost fully delivering her living child, and then killing that child in the most inhumane manner imaginable before completing the delivery.” They went on to say, “As a matter of fact, a partial-birth abortion presents a health risk to the woman.”


The Catholic officials also stated in their letter that Clinton’s action marks a “critical turning point” in the nation’s treatment of life issues.

“It moves our nation one step further toward acceptance of infanticide,” they wrote. “Combined with the two recent federal appeals court decisions seeking to legitimize assisted suicide, it sounds the alarm that public officials are moving our society ever more rapidly to embrace a culture of death.”

The letter was sent by Pilla and the eight cardinals of the United States: Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, James Hickey of Washington, William Keeler of Baltimore, Bernard Law of Boston, Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, Adam Maida of Detroit, and John J. O’Connor of New York.

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