Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a new abortion law in Hawaii:

Hawaii’s new abortion law yields different fruit. The bad news is that feminists are once again endangering the lives of women. The good news is that fewer doctors want anything to do with abortion.

Feminists scored another victory this week by championing a law in Hawaii that allows nurses to perform an abortion. In a time when lawmakers demand that every segment of the population be afforded the highest standards of medical care, it is striking to note that there is one exception: The credential bar is actually being lowered for abortionists; Hawaii is one of several states that allow non-physicians to perform an abortion.

If a woman were to have her tooth extracted, instead of her baby, the qualifications of those doing it would be more exacting.

Hawaii now allows women seeking an aspiration abortion to bypass a hospital or clinic and get it done in a nurse’s office. How convenient. As Thomas D. Williams accurately puts it, this procedure involves putting “a vacuum to suck the fetus out of her mother’s womb through the cervix.” While most of these abortions are without complications, not all are, and that is where the danger lies for the woman.

The difference in training that doctors and nurses go through is considerable. After graduating from college, obstetrician/gynecologists must complete another eight years of training. Nurse practitioners are done in two years after college. Quite frankly, they are not equipped to handle serious problems that may arise.

Common issues following an abortion include vaginal and intra-abdominal hemorrhage, infection, intravascular issues, complications of anesthesia, heart attacks and strokes. Other problems occur following incomplete abortions. This is serious: Non-physicians are almost three times more likely to preside over an incomplete abortion than are physicians.

Dr. W. Matt Zban, a well-respected emergency doctor in Charlotte, North Carolina, told me that he sees “complications of abortion several times a year. Endometritis (uterine infection), sepsis (blood stream infection), pelvic pain, heavy vaginal bleeding, and death are all complications of legal abortion.”

What happens to a woman in need of a doctor after having an abortion? If she is lucky, she may be attended to by a physician at a nearby hospital. That’s assuming the nurse’s office isn’t too far away.

Obstetricians are trained to bring life into the world, not end it. This explains why so few of them want to do abortions. It also sheds light on why some states keep lowering the bar so that those not repulsed by doing them are accommodated.

What makes this so obscene is that persons not trained as physicians are operating on women in the name of women’s liberation. So much for equity in healthcare.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an op-ed that attacks religious and charter schools:

The waiting list to get into charter schools is considerable in most cities. Most on the list are non-white. They want an alternative to the public schools. Why? For the same reason that rich people do: the public schools are unsatisfactory, and in many cases they are positively dreadful. But unlike the rich, most minority parents cannot afford to send their children to private schools.

Enrollment at Catholic schools during the pandemic is down overall, though there are many important exceptions. Many low-income parents, and those who are out of work, cannot pay the tuition. A report by the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) found that “Disadvantaged communities have been particularly affected by recent closures [of Catholic schools] with more than half of the closed schools located in low-income urban areas.”

However, there are some places where Catholic enrollment has surged—Boston and Cleveland are just two cities that have witnessed an uptick. The NCEA study found that “In 2020, nearly 40% of Catholic schools report that they have a waiting list for students—an increase of more than 11 percentage points from 2019.” The increase is due to the failure of the public schools to open. That there has been no outbreak of Covid cases in these Catholic schools is undeniable.

One might think that those educators who are truly interested in quality education for black and brown students might be promoting charter schools and school choice. But few are. One of the most striking attacks on charter, Catholic and Christian schools was published on April 12 in USA Today by Derek W. Black and Rebecca Holcombe; he teaches law at the University of South Carolina and she is the former Vermont Secretary of Education.

They call for an end to charter schools and to school-choice programs. In doing so, they are consigning minority students to dead-end schools, the effect of which is to increase racial inequities. If someone were to devise a policy to punish the poor—to deny upward social mobility for Hispanics and African Americans—they could not suggest a better way to do so.

Public school advocates have always been worried, if not terrified, of competition. Their number-one goal has always been to create a total public-school monopoly, even if it means discriminating against minorities.

Black and Holcombe complain that some Christian schools adopt textbooks that advance “anti-science and white-centric ideology.” Their resort to racist labeling is invidious, but this is what we have come to expect from those who want to indoctrinate students in critical race theory; it is now the norm in California.

These educators are exercised about a Christian textbook that allegedly teaches that “dinosaurs and humans lived together.” They should instead worry about the California curriculum that teaches that Jews are “gaining racial privilege.”

Similarly, Black and Holcombe fret over a Catholic school whose website says faith “is weaved into every aspect of life” at school. It is a sure bet that they are not perturbed by public schools that tell young boys and girls that they can switch their sex. Nor are they likely to object to public schools that weave racism into every part of the curriculum, including math.

If we were sincere about helping minority students, we would promote more charter schools and fund more school-choice initiatives, the exact opposite of what these two sages recommend.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an Oklahoma lawmaker who is under fire:

In the course of debating pro-life legislation in Oklahoma, state Rep. Jim Olsen compared the evil of abortion to the evil of slavery.

“None of us would like to be a slave,” the pro-life lawmaker said. “If I had my choice, I guess I’d be a slave. At least the slave has his life. Once your life is gone, it’s gone. And I’m not minimizing slavery. I’m illustrating the terrible injustice that was finally, finally erased in Great Britain and almost eventually the entire world.”

Pro-abortion activists and politicians exploded. Olsen was accused of using “racist terms” in a “cavalier” fashion. His “insensitive” comments were right out of the “Dark Ages” some clamored.

Olsen stood his ground. “In the context of history in general, I did compare one evil to another and very frankly I make no apology for it.”

No matter, some Democrats are weighing proposals to censure the Republican state lawmaker.

“I never spoke positively of slavery,” Olsen said. “One evil at one time was acceptable in our society, and now it’s not. I look forward to the time when we stop killing babies.”

Olsen’s argument is not only morally defensible, it has a very American pedigree. Recall that in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, Stephen Douglas contended that slavery should not be seen as a moral issue; it was simply up to the people to decide.

Abraham Lincoln answered by drawing on the Declaration of Independence. He maintained that “All men are created equal,” and that their “unalienable rights” come from our Creator, not government. Accordingly, slavery can never be justified, even if the majority want it. It is not up for a vote.

Abortion also violates our “unalienable rights.” Indeed, it violates the most basic of all rights—the right to life.

Rep. Olsen made a great analogy. He is a consistent champion of human rights. Let him know of your support. He can then tell his colleagues on both sides that Catholics stand with him.

Contact: jim.olsen@okhouse.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Holocaust Remembrance Day:

Observing Holocaust Remembrance Day is special for Jews around the world, but it should also be recognized by those of us who are not Jewish. There are many things that we can learn from this monstrous event, among them being the seminal moral lessons that it bequeathed.

At Nuremberg, the standard Nazi defense was to claim that they were only doing what they were instructed to do. It did not work. The London Charter of the International Military Tribunal determined that “following orders” did not exonerate them. Though the Tribunal did not explicitly invoke natural law—e.g., we know in our heart of hearts that certain acts, such as the killing of innocents, is wrong—it essentially validated what Aristotle broached and what the Catholic Church later pioneered.

We need to remember this moral lesson because of the prevalence of moral relativism in our culture, the notion that there are no objective truths. This pernicious idea is not new, though it is more widely embraced today—allowing for glaring inconsistencies—than ever before, especially on college campuses. Its legacy is rich with irony.

“There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense.” Many professors and their students would fully endorse this view today. Hitler is the author.

Before Hitler there was Nietzsche. He spent his adult life trashing the teachings of the Catholic Church. He is famous for opining, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” The Nazis later agreed. Martin Heidegger also embraced Nietzschean relativism and, not surprisingly, he was a big fan of Hitler.

The idea that there are no objective meanings also marks deconstruction, a school of thought that originated in France in the 1960s; Jacques Derrida is its intellectual father. In this country, his views achieved currency through Paul de Man. Many intellectuals were shocked when it was revealed that de Man had been a Nazi collaborator in Belgium. If they understood the logical consequences of denying moral truths, they wouldn’t have been shocked.

In a survey of college seniors, conducted in 2002, three-quarters of them said they were taught that right and wrong depend “on differences in individual values and cultural diversity.”

When James Q. Wilson, a professor of political science who taught at UCLA and Harvard, discussed the Holocaust with his students, he found no general agreement that the Holocaust itself was a moral horror. “It all depends on your perspective,” one student said.

Professor Roger Simon, who taught at Hamilton College, experienced the same reaction. He estimated that 10 to 20 percent of his students could not condemn the Holocaust. “Of course I dislike the Nazis,” one student told him, “but who is to say they are morally wrong?”

Even more troubling, philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers found that students at Williams College, who were taught that “all knowledge is a social construct,” doubted the Holocaust even occurred. As one student said, “Although the Holocaust may not have happened, it’s a perfectly reasonable conceptual hallucination.”

The good news is that the reality of objective truth cannot be erased, even in our cancel culture, though admittedly it is harder to voice this verity than ever before. It is incumbent on those of us who know better to point out the flaws inherent in moral relativism. It does not help when we have a president who will not speak to this issue.

The White House statement by President Joe Biden on Holocaust Remembrance Day is embarrassing. Instead of focusing on anti-Semitism, he twice mentions, in short address, the plight of “LGBTQ+” people; he also denounces “homophobia.” What day does he think he is observing?

It is noble of him to object to “dehumaniz[ing] groups of people,” and to “all forms of dehumanizing bigotry.” But if “LGBTQ+” people are to be cited in this regard, why is there no mention of the most dehumanizing of all behaviors—child abuse in the womb? We all know why: Our “devout Catholic” president champions abortion-on-demand.

The Catholic League salutes Jews all over the world for honorably observing Holocaust Remembrance Day. They prove that this day can be commemorated without exploiting it for political purposes.

To read Catholic League president Bill Donohue’s letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, click here.

To read our report on human rights violations in China, click here.

Contact MLB Commissioner Manfred: rob.manfred@mlb.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest attempt to invent Christian Nationalism:

Scholars rightly take umbrage when pundits and activists exploit their work for political purposes. The latest example, at least in religious circles, is the way in which a new book, Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics, is being received by militant secularists.

The authors, David Campbell, Geoffrey Layman and John C. Green—all of whom have distinguished records—maintain that the number of Americans who no longer claim a religious affiliation is growing quickly, accounting for a secular surge. The data support their thesis.

Their volume becomes somewhat more controversial when they attribute some of the exit from religious institutions to the more conservative members of the Republican Party. The authors say that many Americans have an “allergic reaction” to mixing religion and conservative politics. They further note that “a secular-religious divide” may lead each side to view the other “with suspicion and perhaps even hostility.”

As I have recounted in reviewing their work in the past, these authors are well aware of the fact that the secularization of American society has been going on for decades. Layman previously cited 1972 as the pivotal year when secularists took over the Democratic Party. Twenty years later he wrote that “The Democratic Party now appears to be a party whose core of support comes from secularists, Jews, and the less committed members of the major religious traditions.”

In 2004, Green directed a survey by the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron on this subject and found similar results. Campbell’s work in this area is consistent with these findings.

Unfortunately, those who are more interested in propaganda than scholarship are using their work to advance their own agenda. The latest to do so is Adam Gabbatt, a reporter for The Guardian; it is being flagged by Yahoo.

In his news story of April 5, Gabbatt offers a fair presentation of Secular Surge, but then descends to politics when he says that “Christian nationalists” are “thrust[ing] their version of religion into American life.” He finds support for this view by citing Alison Gill, vice president for Legal and Policy at American Atheists. She cites a report by the organization, “2020 State of the Secular States,” that claims Christian nationalists are at the forefront of this movement.

To begin with, Layman, Campbell and Green never use the term “Christian nationalists” in their book. More important, although this label is mentioned 12 times in the report by American Atheists, never once is it defined. It’s just bandied about, the way it always is.

“Christian nationalists,” according to the report, are those who believe in such things as religious exemptions, pro-life legislation, school vouchers, homeschooling, and our national motto, “In God We Trust.” Fairly common stuff. In other words, American Atheists thinks that a very large swath of the American public qualify as “Christian nationalists.”

To be sure, there are Christian extremists, but I hasten to add that they are far less influential than their secular counterparts. A militant brand of secularism has gripped the country, and this includes many of those in elite positions of power.

We don’t have to worry about “Christian nationalists”—we have to worry about those who are promoting this fiction as a weapon to assault our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the relationship of President Biden and the U.S. bishops at Easter:

During the presidential campaign season last year, it was obvious that candidate Joe Biden was not having an easy time with some U.S. bishops. After he won the election, that observation was validated. Now that we are at Easter, it is undeniably true that the president’s relationship with many bishops is rocky, if not seriously strained.

Last summer, Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin issued a tweet that was both sarcastic and pointed. “Biden-Harris. First time in awhile that the Democratic ticket hasn’t had a Catholic on it. Sad.” The dismissal of Biden’s professed Catholic status was lost on no one.

A month before the election, Cardinal Raymond Burke said that Biden should not receive Communion, adding that he was not a Catholic “in good standing.”

A few weeks after the election, Archbishop José Gomez, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, opined that President-elect Biden supported policies that “attack some fundamental values we hold dear.” Noting that it could be confusing to Catholics to see a Catholic in the White House who rejected the Church’s teachings on abortion and other matters, Gomez appointed a Working Group, chaired by Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron, to help the bishops “navigate” this “difficult and complex situation.”

In December, the recently retired archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, said that Biden’s support for gay marriage and abortion rights meant that he “should stop defining himself as a devout Catholic.” On the day he was inaugurated, Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, called the president a “devout Catholic.”

Archbishop Gomez, speaking for the bishops’ conference, also weighed in on inauguration day. “I must point out that the new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender. Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.”

A week later, Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chairman of the bishops’ Pro-Life Committee, teamed up with Bishop David Malloy, the head of the bishops’ International Justice and Peace Committee, to take Biden to task for promoting abortion overseas. “It is grievous that one of President Biden’s first official acts actively promotes the destruction of human lives in developing nations.” They said his executive order “is antithetical to reason, violates human dignity, and is incompatible with Catholic teaching.”

In February, Naumann, the archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas, said that Biden “should stop defining himself as a devout Catholic,” noting that he is “100% pro-choice on abortion.” He accused Biden of “usurping the role of the bishops and confusing people.” What should be done? “The bishops need to correct him, as the president is acting contrary to the Catholic faith.”

Within days of Naumann’s remarks, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas declared that “Biden is not a real Catholic.” In March, Bishop Richard Stika, who heads the Diocese of Knoxville, tweeted that Biden “likes to brag on his Catholic background when convenient. So very dishonest!”

At the end of March, Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki, who leads the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, said that Biden “should not present himself” for Communion. He cited Biden’s long history of supporting abortion rights, saying that if politicians are “living in a way or holding positions that are contrary to church teaching, then the Minister of Communion has to deny them the sacrament.”

Paprocki’s comments were followed by Cardinal Burke’s. Speaking of Biden, he said that “a person who claims to be Catholic and yet promotes in such an open, obdurate, and aggressive way a crime like procured abortion is in the state, at least, of apostasy.” He concluded that the penalty for the “crime of apostasy” is “excommunication.”

As we approach Easter, the bishops, as well as millions of practicing Catholics, are not going to have their concerns about Biden allayed by photos of him clinging to his rosary beads. He cannot at once declare himself to be a “devout Catholic” while at the same time supporting abortion-on-demand, gay marriage, sex transitioning for minors, and the war on religious liberty.

It’s time for President Biden to stop living a lie.

Contact White House press secretary: jennifer.r.psaki@who.eop.gov