In May, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul directed the Division of Criminal Justice Services to coordinate $10 million in funding for “safety and security capital grants for abortion providers and reproductive health centers to further secure their facilities and ensure the safety of patients and staff.”

No abortion clinics have been firebombed in New York State but a crisis pregnancy center in Buffalo has. So who gets the money to protect staff? The abortion clinics.

On June 13, Hochul signed legislation to protect abortion rights ahead of the expected high court decision on Roe. She also took the opportunity to declare war on crisis pregnancy centers. The bill she is promoting authorizes an investigation of these entities.

It is essentially a form of harassment. According to Jim Harden, who operates the Buffalo pro-life center that was targeted, the bill will require crisis pregnancy centers to turn over information on donors and confidential patient records. Indeed, all internal memos, files and policies must be made available to government authorities. This is phase one. The second phase will be a host of regulatory measures designed to crush them.

What Hochul is doing proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that pro-abortion activists never believed in “choice” for women. Real choice means being allowed to have access to those who offer advice and services on both sides of the abortion issue. She wants to kill the pro-life message.

President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are both self-described “devout Catholics.” Given the rash of attacks on Catholics and Catholic Churches, it would be reasonable to expect that they would condemn these acts of anti-Catholicism. Yet neither has said a word.

It is not as though they are indifferent to bigotry—they are quick to pounce on discrimination and prejudice when non-Catholics are targeted. Here are some comments they made either this year or last year:

Biden

• Asians: “The Federal Government should combat racism, xenophobia, and intolerance against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and should work to ensure that all members of AAPI communities—no matter their background, the language they speak, or their religious beliefs—are treated with dignity and equity.”
• Blacks: “In my campaign for President, I made it very clear that the moment had arrived as a nation where we face deep racial inequities in America and system—systemic racism that has plagued our nation for far, far too long.”
• Jews: “In the last weeks, our nation has seen a series of anti-Semitic attacks, targeting and terrorizing American Jews….These attacks are despicable, unconscionable, un-American, and they must stop.”
• Transgender Persons: “My entire Administration is committed to ensuring that transgender people enjoy the freedom and equality that are promised to everyone in America….To transgender Americans of all ages, I want you to know that you are so brave. You belong. I have your back.”

Pelosi

• Asians: “While Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have long been the targets of racism and xenophobia, the pandemic has fueled a heartbreaking wave of hateful speech and violent attacks against these communities…let us always stand with our AAPI friends, family and neighbors….”
• Blacks: “As we remember with open eyes the injustices of the past, we also recognize the inequities of the present: from the scourges of systemic racism and police violence to the plights of economic inequality and health disparity, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic.”
• Jews: “Antisemitism cannot be tolerated.”
• Latinos: “As vile, xenophobic rhetoric continues to target Latino communities across the country, House Democrats remain committed to embracing America’s beautiful diversity and building a more just future.”
• Muslims: “Racism and bigotry of any form, including Islamophobia, must always be called out, confronted and condemned in any place it is found.”
• Transgender People: “This year in particular, our transgender neighbors and loved ones have endured a heartbreaking and accelerating campaign of violence and persecution….”

We found no instances when either Biden or Pelosi condemned anti-Catholicism, despite the fact that they have been in government for a combined total of 85 years.

Even when Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was subjected to blatant anti-Catholic attacks by Sen. Dianne Feinstein—”the dogma lives loudly within you”—neither Biden or Pelosi complained. The best they could do was to say that her faith should not matter.

How to explain their silence, especially in light of their extremely strong denunciations of bigotry against other demographic groups? That’s not as hard to figure out as some may think. Consider what has been happening lately.

The recent rash of vandalism against Catholic churches, firebombings of crisis pregnancy centers, Masses being interrupted, illegal protests outside the homes of Catholic Supreme Court Justices, coupled with an assassination plot against one of them—these are all the acts of pro-abortion zealots.

Neither Biden nor Pelosi has done anything, or said anything, to stop or condemn these despicable acts of anti-Catholicism. Catholics would merit a better response from fair-minded agnostics than they are receiving from these two pro-abortion zealots. Looks like they checked their “devout Catholic” status at the church door.

A memo issued in May by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on abortion protesters warned that in the wake of the leak of the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, abortion rights extremists “on both sides” merit scrutiny.

Bill Donohue responded by saying, “There is no evidence upon which this unwarranted accusation can be made. If anything, not counting the violence that defines the conduct of abortion clinics, it is pro-abortion extremists who have historically driven most of the violence.”

We could find only one case where a pro-life protester engaged in violence since the leak took place. That was when Michael Merritt Graham was arrested at the state Capitol of Arizona on May 3rd for punching another person at a rally attended by protesters on both sides.

The DHS is playing politics. Its contrived moral equivalency game tells us a great deal about its mindset. Not all abortion protesters are equal.

Fr. Virgil Blum, who founded the Catholic League in 1973, must be looking down from heaven with a smile: the paramount issue for him was school choice. On June 21, that movement took a big step forward.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that it is unconstitutional for Maine to provide public funds for private schools but not religious schools. It is an important victory for religious liberty and school choice.

Maine has many rural areas where there is no public school. It was decided in 1873 that the state would pay for students in those areas to go to any school they wanted, including private and religious ones. In 1980, the state’s attorney general ruled that religious schools would no longer be an option, citing separation of church and state concerns.

The Supreme Court ruled that if the state is going to provide public funding for private schools, it cannot deny funds to religious schools. That amounts to religious discrimination.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, said that Maine’s decision to exclude religious schools “effectively penalizes the free exercise of religion.”

During oral arguments last December, Roberts made plain his thinking.

He astutely noted that if the issue is the promotion of “sectarian” thinking, then “if one religion taught the same way as a public school but a different religion taught differently, the first would be able to participate in the program but the other would not.” He added, “So it is the beliefs of the two religions that determines whether or not the schools are going to get the funds.”

What Roberts said would most surely apply to situations where Christian schools that entertain secular views (e.g., on creation and marriage) would be eligible for public funding but orthodox ones would not. What else would this be but discrimination based on religion?

It is no secret that African Americans and Hispanics are the two minority groups that have been pushing the hardest for school choice. They want a way out from being confined—condemned would not be too strong a word—to the local public school. While the Maine decision may not have direct application to them, it will surely inspire school-choice activists and lawmakers to craft new school-choice initiatives that will.

The big losers are the teachers’ unions, the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Their efforts to deny equal opportunity to blacks and Latinos took a big step backwards.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to affirm the religious rights of a football coach who prayed after the game on the field. This was an important victory for religious liberty, as well as for freedom of speech.

For seven years, Bremerton High School football coach Joe Kennedy prayed after a game on the 50-yard line. No one complained. When school officials learned of this they made an issue of it: they asked him not to lead the players in a prayer. He complied.

When he decided to take a knee and say a silent prayer, some students asked if they could join him, and he said “this is a free country.” He soon learned that he might have been wrong. Administrators at the school, which is outside Seattle, objected again. Finally, he was fired and prayer was banned altogether.

Kennedy sued and twice lost before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It said that public speech of “an overtly religious nature” is forbidden, arguing that it gives the impression that the government is endorsing religion. His lawyers charged that the Ninth Circuit was now saying that “even private religious speech” by teachers and coaches is prohibited (italic in the original).

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, characterized Kennedy’s behavior as “a brief, quiet, personal religious observance” which was protected by the First Amendment: both his free speech rights and free exercise of religion rights were affirmed.

The attempt to squash Kennedy’s right to free speech was invidious. Administrators, teachers and students are permitted to voice the most obscene statements and lyrics—all in the name of free speech—but when a football coach engages in private prayer the alarms go off.

Gorsuch saw right through this bogus reasoning. “The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.”

No students were required to pray with the coach as a condition of playing. No students were bullied who did not join with him in prayer. Yet this did not stop Americans United for Separation of Church and State from charging as such.

If Kennedy had lost, the next thing school officials would do is prohibit students from blessing themselves before meals or on the playing field. Treating religious speech as second-class speech, worthy of censorship, is flatly un-American.

Tolerance for people of faith is something that militant secularists need to learn—they are an existential threat to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

In 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized abortion in its Roe v. Wade decision, Catholics were nearly alone in their opposition to it. There were some elements in the Lutheran Church, and in the Orthodox Jewish community, who opposed it, but most Protestants and Jews supported the ruling. As a major religious group, Catholics were the only ones to speak out against it.

The 1970s saw a wholesale reversal among evangelical Protestants. Two decades ago, Richard Land, who at that time served as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, explained what happened. “Nowhere has the shift on the pro-life issue been more dramatic than among Southern Baptists.”

Regarding abortion, Land said that “many [Southern Baptists] perceived it as a Catholic issue. While I was in the seminary from 1969 to 1972 in New Orleans, there was no pro-life consensus among the student body or faculty.” What changed them? He said that “the subsequent horror of 1.5 million abortions a year caused Southern Baptists who took biblical authority seriously to begin to re-examine what the Bible had to say about God’s involvement with life in the womb from conception onward.”

By the late 1970s and the early 1980s, evangelicals had moved to the pro-life camp. It is also true that during this decade, the Republican Party, which was more closely aligned with the pro-abortion side, became pro-life, and the Democrats, who had been mostly pro-life, became activists for abortion rights. For example, both Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sen. Ted Kennedy had been staunchly pro-life at the time of Roe, but by the end of the decade they had switched to the pro-abortion side.

The Catholic Church never had to jump ship. It has always been pro-life.

Today, most mainline Protestant denominations are more enthusiastic about defending abortion rights than they were in 1973. In a recent Pew survey, 83% of Jews support abortion in all or most cases, though Orthodox Jews are mostly pro-life and certainly opposed to abortion-on-demand.

It is sad to note that President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both of whom identify as “devout Catholics,” are champions of the most radical abortion laws and policies imaginable, putting them at odds with science, as well as the Catholic Church.

Overturning Roe v. Wade has not banned all abortions, so the fight for the life of the unborn will continue. We expect the Catholic Church will continue its noble legacy of offering alternatives to abortion, caring for the women seeking forgiveness for having an abortion, and promoting the pro-life cause from conception to natural death.

A Wall Street Journal/NORC (WSJ) survey found that 68% of Americans believe that Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion, should not be overturned. Yet a Rasmussen survey of American voters found that only 5% believe abortion should be legal in all cases, with no restrictions whatsoever. How to explain the apparent contradiction?

The Rasmussen survey was limited to registered voters; the WSJ poll was not. But that alone would hardly account for what appears to be a huge difference. There is something else going on that explains the differing outcomes.

Recent surveys by the Pew Research Center and Gallup come to the same conclusion as the WSJ poll on the issue of public support for Roe: they all conclude that most Americans, while supporting restrictions, do not want Roe overturned. Their singular failure is in assuming that most Americans know what Roe allows: as interpreted by the courts, it allows for abortion-on-demand. That would surely come as a surprise to most.

Virtually every survey that asks about restrictions, including those by WSJ, Pew and Gallup, finds that the vast majority of Americans want them. This clearly put them at odds with what Roe permits, thus undercutting the narrative that most Americans do not want Roe overturned.

Similarly, surveys that do not inform respondents that overturning Roe would not ban all abortions are dishonest. This matters gravely because the conventional wisdom assumes that overturning Roe would do exactly that. In fact, now that Roe has been overturned, each state’s legislature can decide what the terms should be.

The value of the Rasmussen survey is that it is not conditioned on the perspective of respondents regarding the provisions of Roe. “In aggregate, when asked about specific restrictions, such as notifying the father, notifying the parents of a teenager, and waiting periods,” 5% say that “No restrictions should be placed on abortion.”

The findings of the Rasmussen survey should prompt other survey houses to reconsider the wording of their questions. Questions that presume an accurate understanding of the issue are bound to provide an inaccurate picture, which further feeds misperceptions.

Survey research can be a great way of judging the pulse of the nation.

This assumes, however, that it is done in an unbiased manner.