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WFF Statement on
Health Care Reform Proposal
For Immediate Release
Contact: Helen Hull Hitchcock
Director, Women for Faith & Family
Ph 314 863-8385 – E-mail: [email protected]
March 18, 2010
We are deeply concerned about the Senate health care bill (H.R. 3590) that is scheduled to come to the floor of the House for a vote imminently. We strongly agree with the US bishops’ opposition to the Senate’s version of the health care legislation under consideration because of its expansion of abortion funding and its lack of adequate provision for conscience protection of health care providers.
We are convinced that this Senate bill is fatally flawed, and directly contradicts the essential moral beliefs and ethical principles of most Americans throughout history.
We agree with Pope Benedict XVI’s vigorous affirmation of the intrinsic link between respect for truth and human freedom, in his address to our US Ambassador to the Holy See, Miguel Díaz, on October 2, 2009:
“Genuine progress … cannot prescind from the truth about human beings and must always be directed to their authentic good. In a word, fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom and real development.…
“The preservation of freedom is inseparably linked to respect for truth and the pursuit of authentic human flourishing. The crisis of our modern democracies calls for a renewed commitment to reasoned dialogue in the discernment of wise and just policies respectful of human nature and human dignity …
[In particular] “there is a need for clear discernment with regard to issues touching the protection of human dignity and respect for the inalienable right to life from the moment of conception to natural death, as well as the protection of the right to conscientious objection on the part of health care workers, and indeed all citizens. The Church insists on the unbreakable link between an ethics of life and every other aspect of social ethics…” (Emphasis added.)
As Women for Faith & Family, representing more than 50,000 Catholic women in the United States, we firmly believe that it is our duty as Americans to preserve, protect and defend these self-evident truths about the fundamental and inalienable rights to life and to freedom — for all.
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Related statements: April 10, 2009 : Opposition to Rescinding Provider Conscience Regulation, 73 Fed. Reg. 50274 — http://www.wf-f.org/WFF_Conscience09.html
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