A Planned Parenthood spokesperson claimed that Christians can support abortion, and pointed to pro-abortion groups like Catholics for Choice, a falsely named group of people who support abortion .
The comment came in response to news that Gonzaga University, a Catholic, Jesuit university, had denied the application by a Planned Parenthood student group to be officially approved. As a Catholic university, Gonzaga stands for the dignity of all human life, and evidently that university did not support a pro-abortion group being connected to their school.
The article quotes Paul Dillon, the vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood as saying, “Faith and Planned Parenthood aren’t in opposition of each other…That’s a common misconception about our work. There’s a national group called Catholics for Choice and a lot of our patients and staff are practicing Catholics, so I think this comes down to more extreme interpretation of those values.”
Hmm. Actually, no.
First, it’s not an “extreme” interpretation of Catholicism or any other denomination of Christianity, to say that all human life as value and that abortion violate human dignity. The heart of social teaching on issues like homelessness, immigration, the death penalty, and poverty comes from the fundamental belief that all human life has value; while people can have different opinions on the best approaches to these issues, abortion 100% of the time, violates human life.
Second, Students for Life has spoken before about the role churches must play in ending abortion and reaching out to people who are in difficult pregnancy and situations. But not shaming women for having abortions isn’t the same as not speaking out boldly against how abortion harms both women and child.
Finally, Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups and supporters regularly denigrate religion, often mocking Natural Family Planning and religion.
Rather than use federal family planning funding to increase access to hormonal birth control options (you know, like it’s intended), the Trump admin is weaponizing Title X to only support Vatican-approved “natural family planning” methods instead. https://t.co/VNWdckoDvd
— NARAL (@NARAL) October 2, 2019
