Pro-life activists protest the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. (2022 Getty Images)
By Christopher Wells
July 12 2022
The chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities says the US president’s decision to use his presidential power “to promote and facilitate abortion in our country” is “deeply disturbing and tragic.”
The US Bishops’ point man on pro-life activities, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, has denounced President Joe Biden’s decision “to use his power as President of the United States to promote and facilitate abortion in our country, seeking every possible avenue to deny unborn children their most basic human and civil right, the right to life.”
Archbishop Lori made the statement in response to an executive order on abortion access – euphemistically and misleadingly described as “reproductive healthcare services” – that was issued by President Biden on Friday. The president’s order covers a range of issues, including morally objectionable practices such as abortion “care” and contraceptive services, as well as genuine healthcare issues such as ensuring women have access to emergency medical services in cases of miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies.
Lori to Biden: ‘Choose life’
“Rather than using the power of the executive branch to increase support and care to mothers and babies,” said Archbishop Lori, “the president’s executive order seeks only to facilitate the destruction of defenseless, voiceless human beings.”
He implored President Biden “to abandon this path that leads to death and destruction and to choose life,” while adding that “the Catholic Church stands ready to work with this Administration and all elected officials to protect the right to life of every human being and to ensure that pregnant and parenting mothers are fully supported in the care of their children before and after birth.”
President Biden’s executive order follows the United States Supreme Court decision last month in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned two previous rulings that had effectively made abortion on demand legal throughout the country. The Court ruled that the previous cases had been wrongly decided, and restored power to regulate abortion to the people and their elected representatives.
Serving God’s great plan of love
In his statement on Saturday, Archbishop Lori noted the USCCB’s earlier call “for the healing of wounds and repairing of social divisions, for reasoned reflection and civil dialogue, and for coming together to build a society and economy that supports marriages and families, and where every woman has the support and resources she needs to bring her child into this world in love,” in a statement issued in the wake of the Dobbs ruling.
With that statement, the Archbishop said, “as religious leaders, we pledged ourselves to continue our service to God’s great plan of love for the human person, and to work with our fellow citizens to fulfill America’s promise to guarantee the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people.”
