Bill Donohue comments on a couple of interesting ironies:

The quest for autonomy has reached such a macabre level in the Netherlands that last year the Royal Dutch Medical Association expanded the list of conditions legalizing euthanasia to include “loneliness.”

In the state of Washington, a debate is currently raging over whether to expand the list of conditions legalizing euthanasia to include those who are not terminally ill, as well as those who are mentally disabled.

By contrast, this week in Tennessee a dog was rescued from being euthanized (one news outlet said he was being spared “the Gas Chamber”) because the condition driving the dog’s death was his alleged homosexuality (the owner was ticked when he saw his Fido hunch another male dog). For reasons that appear entirely reasonable, the gal who rescued the dog named him Elton [click here to read the story].

The place where Elton was dropped, Euthanasia Jackson TN, encourages dog adoption, but it also promotes dog euthanasia. Not, however, in Elton’s case: the shelter has no stomach for putting dogs down on the basis of sexual orientation. It must be said, though, that the shelter is not exactly inclusive in its policies. To wit: Had poor Elton not been identified as a homosexual, his heterosexuality would not have been enough to save his hide.

The moral of the story is: Being gay is not only a bonus for humans these days, it is a definite plus for dogs as well. As for straights, the lonely and the disabled, that’s another story altogether.

Bill Donohue issued the following remarks today:

On Monday, a bipartisan committee of U.S. senators offered a reasonable proposal to reform our immigration policy. Yesterday, President Obama, speaking in Las Vegas, outlined his ideas, and while they differed somewhat from the senatorial plan, they were not dramatically different. However, Obama’s speech did not include all that he is proposing: he made no mention of his decision to include homosexuals in his immigration proposal.

Yesterday, the White House released a “Fact Sheet” on the subject, “Fixing our Broken Immigration System so Everyone Plays by the Rules.” Toward the end of this statement is a section, “Keep Families Together” that includes the following sentence: “It [the proposal] also treats same-sex families as families by giving U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents the ability to seek a visa on the basis of a permanent relationship with a same-sex partner.”

In other words, homosexual unions are to be treated equal in status to naturally formed families. The term “permanent relationship” is, of course, shorthand for what the Obama administration seeks to redefine as gay “marriages.”

No institution has been more supportive of comprehensive immigration reform than the Catholic Church. But just as its support for universal healthcare was stymied by the Obama administration’s inclusion of abortion in ObamaCare, and the inclusion of abortion-inducing drugs in the HHS mandate, the Church’s support for immigration reform is now in jeopardy.

It is startling how an issue that has always been primarily about Hispanics has all of a sudden become a gay issue. In doing so, the Obama administration is risking the support of Catholics, evangelicals, Mormons, Muslims and observant Jews. Abortion and homosexuality—those are real issues that drive this administration. It’s all about sex without consequences.

R&B singer Chris Brown got into a fight on Sunday night over a parking space in West Hollywood. Feeling disabused, he has now decided to depict himself as Jesus on the Cross on Instagram.

Bill Donohue comments as follows:

What is it about these self-absorbed, self-pitying entertainers that they cannot handle adversity like a man? By exploiting Christian iconography to make a cheap personal point, Brown only adds to his already damaged reputation.

If Brown wants to emulate Jesus, let him begin by giving up violence for Lent. Then he would be making good on his latest inscription, “Focus on what matters!” It might even prove habit-forming.

A documentary about those who perform late-term abortions, “After Tiller,” previewed at the Sundance Film Festival this week. The directors of the movie, Lana Wilson and Martha Shane, were interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! about their film. Bill Donohue found much of what they said revealing [click here to read it]:

George Tiller was the most maniacal child killer in U.S. history, and it is testimony to his deeds (he was the king of partial-birth abortion) that there are only four “doctors” left in the entire nation who are able to do what he did for a living (three of whom worked with him). “After Tiller” is their story. But it is also our story: these people unwittingly validate the pro-life position.

Goodman discusses how these abortionists are faced with “dilemmas” and “agonizing” decisions. Dr. Shelley Sella uses the term “baby” to speak of the unborn children she readily discards, and director Shane mentions how these women go on “grieving the loss of their child.” Best of all is Dr. Susan Robinson who recounts what she tells her patients:

“Look, of course you don’t want an abortion. Nobody wants an abortion. You have three choices: You can have a kid that you say you can’t take good care of; you can have a kid and give it to somebody else, who you know or don’t know; or you can have an abortion, which you think is the wrong thing to do. Those are your three choices. They all suck.”

Robinson is to be commended for her brutal honesty, though she failed to note that the child wouldn’t weigh all three choices equally. She also needs to explain why “nobody wants an abortion.” Why not? Why is it that none of her patients really want to undergo the surgery she is happy to perform? What makes her patients so different from the patients of, say, back surgeons?

“After Tiller” tries to put a human face on an inhuman practice, and it fails. Here’s the proof: the film never shows the patients’ faces, though permission was granted.

Yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein invited Rev. Canon Gary Hall, Dean of the National Cathedral, to open her comments on gun control with a prayer. Bill Donohue comments on what happened:

Had Sen. Feinstein invited a member of the clergy to open her press conference with a non-partisan prayer, it not only would have been unobjectionable, it would have been commendable. There are so many issues involved in the rash of gun violence that we have witnessed, and so many people of goodwill on all sides, that a prayer asking the Lord for guidance and wisdom would have been much appreciated. But that is not what happened.

What happened yesterday was nothing less than the religious exploitation of a serious public policy issue. When Rev. Hall condemned the “terror of the gun lobby,” he politicized the issue just as badly had the NRA invited a clergyman to condemn gun control advocates. There should be no place for such rank partisanship by a clergyman on this complicated issue.

Colorado’s Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing today on a civil unions bill. Bill Donohue addresses its flaws:

In 2006, the people of Colorado said no to gay marriage. Last year, lawmakers took up the issue of civil unions for homosexuals, allowing religious adoption agencies an exemption. Today the Senate Judiciary Committee is taking up the issue again, although this time the religious exemption has been gutted. Hence, the resistance from Colorado bishops and the Colorado Catholic Conference. Their concerns are genuine.

Supporters of the bill argue that if civil unions are legalized, they will not affect the state law that limits marriage to one man and one woman. Perhaps not directly, but it will certainly undercut the special place reserved in law for marriage: the effect of the civil unions bill is to substantively demolish the distinctions between marriage and civil unions, even if the nomenclature is not identical.

Far and away the biggest problem for the Catholic community, and for the rights of other faith communities, is the matter of religious liberty. To demand that Catholic adoptive agencies place children in a household of two adults of the same sex is to eviscerate their Catholicity. There is no getting around it.

It is not without meaning that Senate Bill 11 explicitly says, “A priest, minister, rabbi or other official of a religious institution or denomination or an Indian nation or tribe is not required to certify a civil union in violation of his or her right to free exercise of religion.” So if the sponsors of the bill recognize the religious liberty implications of forcing the clergy to give their blessings to homosexual unions, they should also recognize the religious liberty implications of forcing religious social service agencies to give their blessings to such arrangements. To offer one exemption but not the other is illogical and unconstitutional.

On Friday, Catholics will rally at noon on the steps of the State Capitol in Denver. We urge all area Catholics to attend.

Bill Donohue comments on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade:

“An abortion kills the life of the baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health.”

Those are not the words of a pro-life activist in 2013—those are the words of Planned Parenthood fifty years ago. So what’s changed since 1963? After all, abortion still kills. What’s changed is the decision of Planned Parenthood to float a fiction: it decided that the nascent feminist movement had to include the right of a woman to kill her unborn child. In doing so it broke ranks with the first feminists.

When President Obama invoked Seneca Falls yesterday in his Inaugural Address, he sought to call attention to the first women’s rights convention in that upstate New York town in 1848. What he didn’t say is that the organizer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, saw abortion as another case of treating women like property, “and it was degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.” Susan B. Anthony also branded abortion as anti-women.

Pro-abortion feminists know that abortion kills. Here’s an example. Gloria Allred, the famous feminist lawyer, was once asked on TV whether it would be better if there were no abortions. She refused to budge, saying, “Not necessarily.” Yet three years later when she took the side of a pregnant woman, Laci Peterson, who had been killed by her husband after naming her unborn baby Connor, Allred contended, “The fact that there are two individuals who are dead here, Laci and Connor, that has to be the most important consideration of everything.” She got it exactly right—there were two individuals who were murdered.

Hillary Clinton upset some feminists in 2005 when she said, “We can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women.” She did not say why abortion is sad, or how it was different from any other surgical procedure, and she didn’t have to: everyone knows abortion kills.

Bill Donohue issued the following remarks today on abortion:

As we approach the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it behooves us to recall the anti-Catholic roots of this infamous decision.

What paved the way for Roe was NARAL. Founded by Lawrence Lader in 1969, he knew he had to take down the greatest defender of the unborn, the Catholic Church. One of his close colleagues was Dr. Bernard Nathanson (he would later become both pro-life and a Catholic). Speaking of NARAL’s early years, Nathanson said the original members all agreed that anti-Catholicism was “probably the best strategy we had.”

Lader, in fact, referred to the Catholic Church as “our favorite whipping boy,” making it plain that his goal was to “bring the Catholic hierarchy out where we can fight them.” Ever blunt, he added, “That’s the real enemy.” Lader’s animus against the Church was so deep that he called it “the biggest single obstacle to peace and decency throughout all of history.”

Looking back at those days, Nathanson, who passed away in 2011, said, “I was far from an admirer of the Church’s role in the world chronicle, but his [Lader’s] insistent, uncompromising recitation brought to mind the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It passed through my mind that if one had substituted ‘Jewish’ for ‘Catholic,’ it would have been the most vicious anti-Semitic tirade imaginable.”

NARAL officials shared Lader’s hatred and decided to launch a propaganda campaign against the Church. According to Nathanson, they concluded, “it was an easy step to targeting the Catholic Church in its opposition to abortion as making opposition to abortion a pro-fascist, reactionary position.”

What NARAL did paid big dividends. Writing for the majority in Roe, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun cited favorably eight times a book by Lawrence Lader titled, Abortion. The nexus of the ruling was born of bigotry and blood.

Bill Donohue comments on a Pew Research Center survey on abortion that was released yesterday:

The title of the Pew survey reads, “Roe v. Wade at 40: Most Oppose Overturning Abortion Decision.” Not surprisingly, the media reported what Pew found. Here are some examples:

• “Majority Upholds Landmark U.S. Abortion Ruling: Poll,” AFP (French News Agency)
• “As ‘Roe v. Wade’ Turns 40, Most Oppose Reversing Abortion Ruling,” Reuters
• “Roe v. Wade at 40: Pew Poll Finds Abortion Not a Key Issue,” Los Angeles Times
• “Poll: Most Americans Oppose Reversing Abortion Ruling,” Washington Post
• “Survey: Few Religious Groups Want Roe v. Wade Overturned Despite Belief Abortion Morally Wrong,” CNN

Only CNN indicated that most Americans are conflicted about abortion. In fairness to the other media outlets, their headlines were not inaccurate. What was misleading was the survey.

Generally, Pew does excellent research. The problem with this survey is that it gave respondents only two choices: “Would you like to see the Supreme Court (a) Completely Overturn Roe v. Wade or (b) Not Overturn Roe v. Wade.” Either/or questions on complex issues are inherently flawed. Pew should have known this when it learned, in the same poll, that 47 percent say abortion is “Morally Wrong”; only 13 percent say it is “Morally Acceptable.” Among Protestants, the figures are 56 percent to 9 percent; among Catholics, it is 55 percent to 9 percent.

A more sophisticated poll by Gallup last May found that the majority of Americans (52 percent) want abortion legal under certain circumstances; 25 percent want it legal in all cases and 20 percent want it illegal in all cases. In other words, only a quarter of Americans support Roe v. Wade as it was written. Most want restrictions.

Bill Donohue comments on liberal clergy members and abortion:

Next Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Those who support abortion rights are in denial, and for eminently good reason: the public has turned against them. Indeed, more Americans consider themselves pro-life than at any time since 1973.

On November 21, the Centers for Disease Control released a report, “Abortion Surveillance—United States, 2009,” that found there was a 5 percent decrease in abortions between 2008 and 2009, the largest single-year decrease in a decade. This makes sense given the general revulsion against abortion. Then there is the increasing reluctance of doctors to kill children in utero: it takes a special kind of person to do that. This is why New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to allow non-doctors to do abortions—they don’t have the same scruples about killing the innocent.

The number of abortions peaked in 1990 and has been declining ever since. The number of abortion providers peaked in 1982, and while they have been steadily declining, a leveling off has been evident since 2005. The good news is that 27 states and the District of Columbia have experienced a decrease in abortion providers.

Pro-abortion activists are in denial. For instance, the Center for American Progress’ (CAP) Faith and Reproductive Justice Leadership Institute issued a statement yesterday by a few clergy members that is classic doublespeak. It says they are committed to “justice and dignity for all God’s people” [my italic], which is obviously a lie. They also say they “affirm the sacredness of conscience…as a foundation of religious liberty.” This is also a lie: Sally Steenland, director of CAP’s Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative, who is touting this statement today, cheered when Catholic conscience rights were nixed by the HHS mandate.

For the record, George Soros funds CAP and the Ford Foundation funds its Faith and Reproductive Justice Leadership Institute.