The cover story of the summer edition of Human Rights, the American Bar Association journal of the Section on Rights and Responsibilities, concerns the implications of hospital mergers between Catholic and secular institutions. The piece by Tena Jamison (“Should God Be Practicing Medicine?”) is highly critical of such mergers. But it is not the article that the Catholic League objects to (flawed though it is), rather it is the cover illustration. On the cover is an image of a pregnant woman lying on an operating table in a crucifix-like pose. Ready for an abortion, the woman’s child is shown inside her body in a fetal position; hands and legs are being held down by band-aids.
William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League, released the following statement on this incident:
“The cover of the summer edition of Human Rights would be considered disturbing had it appeared on the cover of any publication. But when it appears on the cover of a journal of the American Bar Association, it is doubly disturbing. Most offensive is the fact that the journal is published by the ABA’s Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities. Evidently, this ABA group thinks that amongst its rights is the right to disabuse the rights of those with whom it disagrees. As such, it is clear that the term individual responsibility has no principled meaning for the ABA’s Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities.
“We demand an apology from the ABA. And we request that a panel discussion on what the ABA means by rights and responsibilities be held at its next convention.”
The Catholic League is the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization. It defends the right of Catholics—lay and clergy alike—to participate in American society without defamation or discrimination.
