Catholic League president Bill Donohue looks at recent comments about babies made by presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris:

Everyone loves babies, don’t they? Kamala Harris says she does, but in reality she does not.

On January 28, 2019, Harris was asked in a CNN town hall meeting about the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut where innocent young students were gunned down. She took the occasion to blast those who don’t endorse stricter gun laws, saying, “I think somebody should have required all those members of Congress to go in a room, in a locked room, no press, nobody else, and look at the autopsy photographs of those babies. (My emphasis.) And then vote your conscience.”

In February 2018, Harris spoke about the Parkland shooting where innocent young people were gunned down. “We cannot tolerate a society and live in a country with any level of pride when our babies are being slaughtered.” (My italic.)

Harris shows great compassion but has her facts wrong. The Free Dictionary defines “baby” as (a) a very young child; an infant or (b) an unborn child; a fetus. The Newtown students killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School were young, but they were not babies. Parkland was a high school; teenagers, not babies, go to high school.

Some may say Harris is so sincere in her commitment to the well being of young people that she regards as babies everyone from an unborn baby to an adolescent. But they would be wrong.

A year ago, on January 26, 2018, she tweeted the following: “The GOP has scheduled a vote on a 20-week abortion ban on Monday. Add your name to demand Congress votes down this immoral bill.”

Harris can’t be more clear than that. It is immoral to save the life of babies beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy.

More recently, on January 23, 2019, the American Health Line, a nonpartisan health care policy and industry news organization, noted that Harris “is one of Planned Parenthood’s most vocal supporters, and she has voted against legislation to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.” Indeed, she likes Planned Parenthood so much that she previously asked it for support on her campaign website.

Some experts say that an unborn child can feel pain at 8 weeks. Others disagree. But no one maintains that a third trimester baby cannot feel pain. They are the ones that Harris does not want to protect.

I would like to make Harris a wager.

I will find her a congressman who supports the NRA “to go to a room, in a locked room, no press, nobody else, and look at the autopsy photographs” of students killed in the Newtown shooting if she agrees “to go in a room, in a locked room, no press, nobody else,” and look at the sonogram pictures of babies subjected to third trimester abortions. I will also send her a vomit bag.

If Harris is the face of the new Democratic Party—the Democratic governors of New York and Virginia support infanticide—God help the little ones.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on remarks made today by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam:

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, following the lead of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, is not content to promote the killing of children in the womb through term. He wants, as Cuomo has already sanctioned, the killing of children who survive an abortion.

When asked about a bill by Democrat Kathy Tran that would allow women going into labor to abort their child, Northam said he was just fine with that.

“If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

It is so thoughtful of Gov. Northam to assure us that the baby would be “kept comfortable” before they put him down or let him die.

Here’s an early 19th century analogy.

“The slave would be resuscitated if that’s what the master and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between lawmakers and the owner.”

The Democratic Party is fast becoming the party of death. Every Democrat running for president, including those who may run, should be asked whether they agree with Northam. This is a defining moment. They should also be asked who else they think does not merit the most basic of human rights.

Contact press secretary Alena Yarmosky: alena.yarmosky@governor.virginia.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a poll that says New York Catholics support the new abortion law:

The media, and now even a polling company, are to blame for keeping New Yorkers ignorant about the new abortion law signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Consider the following.

In the January 30 edition of the New York Post, there is a news story on the New York State abortion law. “In the most recent Siena survey,” it says, “59 percent of Catholics backed Albany’s push for an updated abortion law, while only 30 percent were opposed.”

When I read that sentence, I knew it was inaccurate. Non-Catholics, never mind Catholics, would not support the law if they had an accurate understanding of what it says. They do not, thanks to the media. Siena College Research Institute is also to blame.

Regarding the media, virtually every news story on this issue reported that Cuomo’s law simply codifies Roe v. Wade. Many New Yorkers, like other Americans, have become accustomed to the 1973 decision, so the alarms don’t go off when they learn of a new law which makes that ruling concrete. But that summary is dishonest.

Here are three aspects of the law that the media skirted: a) the right to terminate a pregnancy through term; the right to allow babies born alive as a result of a botched abortion to die unattended by staff; and the right of non-physicians to perform abortions.

Some stories said abortions would be allowed beyond 20 weeks, but they never said that would include partial-birth abortions where the child is 80 percent born. Allowing for infanticide was never mentioned. And the public was never told that the non-physicians can perform abortions.

Cardinal Dolan said it well when he said the law “drops all charges against an abortionist who allows an aborted baby, who somehow survives the scissors, scalpel, saline and dismemberment, to die before his eyes.” New Yorkers were never told that.

The Siena poll which says Catholic New Yorkers approve the law by a margin of 59 percent to 30 percent is badly flawed. It did not address any of the three aspects of the law that I noted. It simply probed whether respondents agreed if “New York’s law on abortion [should be made] consistent with the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.” That is not what Cuomo’s law is all about.

What if respondents were told the truth? They were in 2013 when Cuomo tried to get his law passed then.

A poll of New Yorkers by the Chiaroscuro Foundation found that 75 percent opposed the provision allowing non-physicians to perform abortions and that 80 percent opposed allowing unlimited abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. They were not asked about allowing a baby who survives an abortion to die unattended. Also, the poll did not disaggregate on the basis of religion, so we don’t know what Catholics might have said, never mind what practicing Catholics might have said.

No one can be expected to come to a reasonable conclusion about any issue unless he is accurately informed about its contents. New Yorkers were not informed by the media, and the Siena poll did not tap into the truth of the matter.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the removal of “God” from a House committee oath:

Democrats on the House Committee on Natural Resources want to excise the word “God” from the oath that witnesses take. The changes they seek include deleting “so help you God” from the oath.

The new version that they are proposing reads, “Do you solemnly swear or affirm, under penalty of law, that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

“Under penalty of law” would replace “so help you God.”

Democrats have long had a “God” problem.

President Barack Obama omitted the words “by their Creator” on several occasions when citing the Declaration of Independence. He also erroneously said that the national motto is “E Pluribus Unum”; it is “In God We Trust.”

The Democratic Party Platform in 2008 spoke to the issue of having a government that “gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.” In 2012, the words “God-given” were stricken. After an uproar (the Catholic League protested, along with others), they reinstated the taboo words. Liberals tried to downplay the significance of the issue.

Democratic National Committee chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the excision was “essentially a technical oversight.” CNN’s David Gergen echoed her position. Michelle Obama, whose first Christmas in the White House had an ornament of mass murderer Mao Zedong on her Christmas tree, said the whole thing was “a non-issue,” calling it a “distraction.”

We are contacting all members of the House Committee on Natural Resources about this. If they succeed, this will be just the beginning.

Two days ago, Cuba announced the construction of the first new Catholic church in 55 years. It is sad to note that the Communists in Cuba appear more religion-friendly than many Democrats are in the United States.

Contact Adam Sarvana, press officer for the House Committee on Natural Resources: adam.sarvana@mail.house.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest attack on the Catholic Church:

Following passage of the Child Victims Act yesterday, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s enthusiastic embrace of it, there is a full-page ad in today’s New York Post by Jeffrey Anderson that proves what the Catholic League has been saying all along. It’s all about us.

The ad shows a picture of a man dressed in priestly garb and a white collar (his face is blacked out), with the inscription, “ABUSED by CLERGY in NEW YORK?”, inscribed at the top. At the bottom is Anderson’s New York City number, 718-473-0264. His ad is consistent with his pledge, namely, to “sue the s*** out of the Catholic Church.”

Anderson is a reformed alcoholic whose first case involved his defense of a man who had been arrested for indecent exposure in a church basement. He went on to make over $100 million suing the Catholic Church, always having his many cases suing the Vatican thrown out. The liberal Minneapolis/St. Paul publication, Citypages, once referred to him as a “wisecracking ambulance chaser with a reputation for hunting priests and an advanced degree in self-promotion.”

The Child Victims Act allows alleged victims of sexual abuse a one-year opportunity to file a claim for offenses that took place at any time in the past. Unlike most previous versions of this bill, it applies equally to the public sector.

In other words, Anderson could have run an ad saying he is willing to represent those who were victimized by anyone—priest, rabbi, minister, public school teacher, guidance counselor, camp counselor—but he chose to focus exclusively on those abused by Catholic priests. That’s what he does.

On a more positive note, I fielded a phone call from Ibrahim Khan, the chief of staff to New York Attorney General Letitia James. He called in reference to the news release I issued yesterday, “NYS To Pass Child Victims Act,” wherein I complained that on the website of the Attorney General there was a “Catholic Clergy Abuse” hotline. I asked why Catholics were being singled out; his email contact information was given and that is why he called.

Khan made it clear that his team has been in place for just a few weeks (James was elected Attorney General in November and didn’t start work until a few weeks ago), and that the hotline was set up by James’ predecessor, Barbara Underwood. Fair enough.

I spoke to him again, telling him about the Anderson ad, asking if they would now change the hotline to reflect every New Yorker, and he said they would.

Then I received a call from Attorney General James. She was cordial and very professional, acknowledging that it is wrong to single out Catholic victims of abuse. She said she would make the hotline change and let me know if there will be a new phone number.

In stark contrast to Attorney General Letitia James is Gov. Andrew Cuomo. His office got bombarded with emails yesterday as well, but no one from his office is reaching out to me.

Cuomo has made up his mind—he doesn’t care what Catholics think about his lust for abortion (which now includes infanticide) or his previous attempts to go after the Catholic schools while giving the public schools a pass.

Cuomo and James may be from the same party (I am an independent having previously been a Democrat and a Republican), but they are hardly cut from the same cloth. James must be given a chance to prove herself. Cuomo already has.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest attacks on the Catholic Church made by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo:

Celebrating the imminent passage of the Child Victims Act, Gov. Andrew Cuomo lashed out at the Catholic Church again today.

Cuomo lamented the repeated failure of the bill to get past the New York Senate, until today. He said, “we were foiled by the conservatives in the Senate.” Then he took it back. “I don’t even believe it was the moderates in the Senate. I believe it was the conservatives in the Senate who were threatened by the Catholic Church. And this went on for years.”

Threatened? Which members of the Catholic Church threatened which members of the Senate? We need names. What was the content of the threat? This is serious business. Cuomo did not say that some politicians “felt” they were threatened by Catholics—he said categorically that they “were threatened by the Catholic Church.” (My italic.)

Has Gov. Cuomo ever blamed Asians, African Americans, Hispanics, gays, Jews, Muslims, Protestants, or union leaders for threatening politicians when they lobby for or against a bill? This is more than religious profiling—Cuomo is demonizing the Catholic Church.

“To the Catholic Church, I am, I am sorry about the situation. I’m not sorry about my position. I’m sorry they [the Catholic Church] have taken the position they’ve taken.”

Not sure what is worse—Cuomo’s dishonesty or his demonization. It was Cuomo, up until this month, who repeatedly endorsed legislation that discriminated against Catholics. Almost all previous bills that allowed for the suspension of the statute of limitations for crimes involving the sexual abuse of minors—providing a one-year “lookback” provision for old offenses—did not apply to the public schools.

Cuomo supported those bills but never, until now, has he supported any bill that would have treated Catholic and public schools equally (alleged victims of public school employees had only 90 days to file a claim but for Catholic students there was no time limit).

Perversely, Cuomo is now blaming Catholics who objected to being discriminated against on the basis of their religion for “threatening” politicians whom they contacted.

Cuomo then exploited the pope, misrepresented his position, and lied about the bishops. He said that “I’m with the pope” and that “the bishops may have a different position than the pope.”

Cuomo is not “with the pope” on marriage or on the rights of the unborn, or on a host of other key teachings. Indeed his lust for abortion rights now extends to infanticide: a child born of a botched abortion—and there will be more of them now that he is allowing non-physicians to perform them—is allowed to die on a clinic table, unattended by staff.

Is Cuomo saying the pope is “with him” on this?

Moreover, the pope has never said it is acceptable to discriminate against the Catholic Church. He has never said, nor would he support, holding the Church to one standard and the public sector to another. Only bigots do that.

It is the bishops who stand with the pope—not Cuomo.

If Cuomo is going to stick his middle finger in the face of Catholics, can he at least stop trotting out his alleged Catholic credentials (he did so again today)? My Jewish pro-life friends, who also oppose religious discrimination, are more Catholic than this man has ever been.

Contact Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor: melissa.derosa@exec.ny.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on New York State’s Child Victims Act, which is expected to pass today:

The Catholic League has been fighting the Child Victims Act for many years, primarily because it discriminates against Catholics. Most of these bills, which suspend the statute of limitations for offenses involving the sexual abuse of minors, have never applied to the public sector, thus letting the public schools off the hook. But due in part to our efforts, public and private institutions will now be treated equally.

On April 1, 2016, I criticized New York State Senator Brad Hoylman for sponsoring a bill that would exclude public institutions from legislation eliminating the statute of limitations for these crimes. I was happy to note that he got the message and quickly pivoted. Ten days later I commended him for doing so. The bill failed, as did another version in 2017.

On May 11, 2018, I had a phone conversation with Senator Hoylman saying that Catholic lawmakers were not convinced that the language of the most recent iteration would cover public schools retrospectively. He insisted that the “lookback” provision applied to the public sector. On June 6, he assured Rick Hinshaw, our director of communications, that we had his word that all institutions would be treated equally.

Just this month there were new questions regarding this issue. Would the “lookback” provision—allowing a one-year window for old allegations of abuse to be filed—apply to the public schools? As is often the case with these bills, the language lacked clarity, allowing for different interpretations. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers added some new language that made it clear that the public schools would be covered by the Child Victims Act.

The New York Attorney General, Letitia James, has posted on her website a “Catholic Clergy Abuse” hotline. This is a classic example of religious profiling. Is she not aware of sexual abuse involving minors committed by the clergy of other religions?

What if an Attorney General in some other state were to have an “African-American Drug Abuse” hotline reporting incidents of illegal drug use among blacks, and blacks only? Would not James, an African American, go berserk?

Now that the public schools are covered, we need a “Sexual Abuse” hotline, one that is inclusive of all institutions.

Contact Ibrahim Khan, NY Attorney General Chief of Staff: ibrahim.khan@ag.ny.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a segment from “Saturday Night Live”:

Everyone knows that homosexual priests are largely responsible for the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, though in liberal TV land that is rarely acknowledged. But sometimes it is, however unwittingly. That happened on the January 26 edition of “Saturday Night Live.”

“The Vatican has released a new app allowing Catholics to pray with the pope replacing the old app for Catholic prayers, Grindr.”

Grindr, for the uninitiated, is the “largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people.” “SNL” sure wasn’t talking about the laity since most Catholics are not queer. We know what they meant.

Contact Lauren Manasevit, press manager: lauren.manasevit@nbcuni.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s abortion bill:

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream: it was to unite the races. While that dream remains unfulfilled, much progress has been made, thanks largely to him. Gov. Andrew Cuomo also had a dream: to allow children to be killed in their mother’s womb right up until birth by non-physicians. Now his dream has been realized.

It is indisputable that in the third trimester the baby is capable of feeling pain, so when the baby has his head punctured with a blunt instrument—that’s what happens in partial-birth abortions—he feels it.

Cuomo has also sanctioned the killing of infants. Even babies who survive a botched abortion are now allowed to die unattended by staff. Infanticide is usually associated with Hitlerian regimes, not democratic ones.

Cuomo was so ecstatic about winning that he ordered One World Trade Center to light up the sky in pink. Red would have been a more apt choice.

It would be impossible to find any politician in the United States who is more enthusiastic about abortion than Andrew Cuomo. He is literally orgasmic about it. “Because it’s her body, it’s her choice. Because it’s her body, it’s her choice. Because it’s her body, it’s her choice.”

Cuomo’s three-time refrain was voiced in 2013. He failed then, largely because of the Republican controlled Senate. But now that the Democrats own both houses of the legislature, he finally won. Gloria Steinem, who aborted her child when she was 22, was among the first to congratulate him. In his victory speech, the former altar boy ended by saying, “God bless you.”

If this isn’t demonic, the word has no meaning.

There are many parts of Cuomo’s bill that are obscene, but there is one part that deserves special mention. That is the part that allows non-physicians to perform abortions. Not surprisingly, the media downplayed this aspect of the law.

Under the new law, physician assistants, midwives, and nurse practitioners can now perform abortions. This has never been done in New York State. That this is being championed by those who say they are pro-women makes it all the more sickening.

Licensed midwives, for example, are trained in maternity care, pre-conception counseling, routine gynecological care, family planning, and how to administer health screenings and exams. They are not trained to perform an abortion, and they certainly have no competence in how to deal with serious complications arising from an abortion.

Cuomo knows there aren’t enough doctors who will agree to suction a baby out of the mother’s womb at nine months, so he has to allow those who have no training as a physician to do so. By the way, when Planned Parenthood pushed for the same type of legislation in California in 2012, the California Nurses Association fought it.

What will Cuomo do if there aren’t enough non-physicians to do the dirty deed? Permit orderlies to do it?

Here’s a fast quiz. Which women will be the most likely to have a non-physician do their abortion? Rich white women? Or poor blacks and Hispanics?

Doing an abortion successfully (meaning not hurting the woman) takes a lot of experience, so don’t expect the foot doctors to catch on quickly. In 1990, Minnesota abortionist Jane Hodgson received The Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood. Here is what she said.

“When I first started doing abortions, I took my boards in Obstetrics and Gynecology, and therefore I knew I was competent to do it. After I had done my first few hundred I realized how silly I had been. At this point, having done somewhere around 12,000 procedures, I’m beginning to think I am reasonably competent.”

It is not likely that the average nurse practitioner will be able to reach that level of competence about this “procedure” any time soon.

So what happens to the women who undergo an abortion and wind up bleeding all over the place? What will the dentist do? We know from the work of emergency room physician Dr. Matt Zban that trained doctors have a difficult time as it is tending to women pushed out of clinics after experiencing severe complications following their abortion. What can we reasonably expect the eye doctors will do?

The family of the first woman to die as a result of an abortion performed by a non-physician should sue New York State.

Rep. Lee Zeldin is an observant Jewish congressman from Long Island. Here is what he said the day Cuomo signed his bill.

“As a parent of identical girls born in their 2nd trimester at less than 1.5 pounds, I’m especially disgusted by the NYS legislature voting today to allow late term, partial birth abortions up to the end of the 3rd trimester & allowing non doctors to perform abortion. So wrong!”

It’s a tragedy that the non-observant Catholic governor of New York can’t see the truth in Zeldin’s observation.

Contact: Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor: melissa.derosa@exec.ny.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on who the guilty parties are in the Covington Catholic controversy:

The Catholic white boys from Covington Catholic High School—hated because they are Catholic, white, male, and Trump supporters (some of them)—have been indicted by lots of pundits, politicians, reporters, and celebrities, both liberal and conservative. Yet the record shows that the students were the only innocent party to this fracas. None of them said or did anything bigoted, but this is not true of the Indians and the black Israelites.

A group of about 20 Indians, led by activist Nathan Phillips, tried to storm a Mass on January 19 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C. They were stopped by security who had to lock the doors. This is what the Nazis did to the Jews in Hitler’s Germany—they crashed the synagogues during services.

It is against the law in D.C. to disturb a religious service. Had Phillips succeeded, it would have been a hate crime. If the Catholic students had barged into a crowd of Indians while they were praying, they would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country and it would be the lead story on the broadcast and cable news outlets.

However, this unprovoked attack by Phillips and company—on innocent persons exercising their First Amendment right to religious liberty—was ignored by most of the mainstream media. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, ABC News. CBS News, NBC News, CNN and MSNBC never said a word about it. Only Fox News did.

Phillips also made disparaging remarks about Catholicism, saying the students are not being told the truth about their religion. Yet not one student made a disparaging remark about Indians. But the black thugs did—they called the Indians “savages.” That being the case, why didn’t Phillips and his merry band of church busters confront them? Why did they seek to crash a Mass instead? They are the bigots, not the kids.

The black Israelites bashed white people, black people, Christians (especially Catholics), Puerto Ricans, and homosexuals. Where were the gay rights groups? If the kids called gays “faggots”—which is what these thugs did—the media would have been up in arms. So it is not the content of an insult that matters, it is the identity of who says it.

The mainstream media picked up a few of the anti-Catholic statements by the black activists, but overall they did a lousy job. We watched the video and here are some of the most anti-Catholic statements that were made.

• [Black Israelite responding to a question] “You want to see hate in the Bible? Let’s see hate in the Bible. Let’s see what the Christians and the Catholics don’t go into.” [He then reads a verse from Ecclesiastes]
• [Black Israelite pointing out a Catholic priest standing nearby] “And like this, child molesting faggot priest right there… the Catholics are a bunch of child molesters.”
• [Black Israelite speaking to crowd] “You want to talk about R. Kelly. Why we don’t talk about the Catholic Church? Why we don’t talk about the Roman Catholic Church, and especially you so-called Hispanics and Negroes, you got no business calling yourself a Roman Catholic. When’s the last time you’ve been a Roman?”
• [Black Israelite speaking to Covington students] “And Jesus Christ is not a white man. This ain’t Jesus Christ…the truth matters. This is a faggot child molester. This is not Jesus Christ. If you look in the Bible, you will see he is a man of color” [man referring to a Catholic/Christian depiction of Jesus]
• [Black Israelite speaking to a Catholic prayer circle nearby] “The child molesting Catholic Church here. This is what we’ve come to. How long are we going stay in the Catholic Church? How long are we going to continue worshipping idols in the Catholic Church? Where is Hail Mary in the Bible? There’s no Hail Mary in the Bible. You can’t worship Mary. You’re supposed to worship the Lord.”
• [Black Israelite speaking to prayer group] “You have your reward. Your reward is your Catholic Church being tax exempt, being child molesters and getting away with it. You’ve been raping children since 1492 in the Catholic Church. You’ve been raping children in Rome before you got here. “
• [Black Israelite speaking to separate group of students] “When you walk in a Catholic Church, it is filled with idols. When you worship and kiss and bow down to a statue, you’re breaking the commandments of God. So the Catholic Church is totally against God, not even speaking about the child molestation. We’ll leave that one alone. But against God’s laws and commandments, yes. You say ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’. You say that prayer. Where is that prayer in the psalms? Where is that prayer in the Bible?”

No white student responded in kind to either the Indian or black activists. They, and they alone, were innocent.

What happened on January 18 has been nicely captured by my good friend, Rabbi Aryeh Spero. Here is what he told me.

“This is a contrived and false episode pounced on by people who hate religious white Catholics and are always on the look-out to demonize Catholics. These people are bigots. It is all part of the anti-Christianism by many segments in today’s leftist America and media collaborators. If they could, they would physically beat up Catholics and take away their jobs and livelihood simply because they are white, conservative, and people of biblical faith. They are consumed by hate. Who taught these people to SO hate white, religious Americans?”