Surprise: US Catholic Bishops are… Catholic (*gasp*) and Cecile Richards thinks abortion should be publicly funded

Cecile Richards, President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, took her gloves off in an editorial in the Huffington Post critical of the US Catholic bishops for coming out against (surprise!) taxpayer funded abortions (via LifeSiteNews.com). Her mastery of the arts of observation are pretty unimpressive.

Does anyone else see the irony in the U.S. bishops wanting to define universal health care as covering everything except for what they don’t support? Under this theory, I suppose women are supposed to wait to see just exactly how the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops comes down on a variety of health care needs to understand what in fact will be considered universal. Since when does universal health care mean denying comprehensive reproductive health care supported by the majority of Americans?

Um… anyone see the irony in Planned Parenthood wanting to define universal health care as covering everything that they support? Or, does anyone else consider it “ironic” that the Catholic bishops are, uh… Catholic?

Note she doesn’t quote them directly. Bishop Murphy put it this way: “no health care reform plan should compel us or others to pay for the destruction of human life, whether through government funding or mandatory coverage of abortion.” I think they’re arguing that health care isn’t killing rather than putting forth some subjective set of procedures that qualify for universal healthcare, but maybe I’m just not observing hard enough.

It’s hardly worth getting into the specifics of most of the article, because it’s based on such a fundamentally flawed assumption:

I’d welcome the bishops’ commitment to focus on these “universal”‘ problems, rather than continue to fight to diminish a woman’s right to make personal decisions that should be kept between her and her doctor.

That decision should be kept between her and her doctor. Except, you know, when taxpayers are being asked to fund it.

Obama is willing to admit that there are serious moral questions involved in abortion, but that would apparently be too much to ask of Cecile Richards. To suggest that abortion is a “personal” decision ignores the person who’s life is in question right from the start. It doesn’t even leave open the possibility for disagreement. I’m sure that’s intentional.

It’s also a terrible way to argue about abortion.

Maybe that’s why she focused on talking about contraception instead:

The bishops agree with Pope Benedict that condoms can worsen the AIDS pandemic in Africa [PDF]; that contraception should not be covered under most health plans and that it is not basic health care; and argue that emergency contraception will not reduce either the need for abortion or unintended pregnancy.

No matter what you think about contraception, does anyone else find it “ironic” that an organization called Planned Parenthood considers fertility as some sort of problem that requires “health care” to fix? Again, totally unwilling to acknowledge that anyone would disagree with her worldview (and not even talking about abortion anymore).

Seems that, if the U.S. Conference had its way, the national health care system would make American women second-class citizens and deny them access to benefits they currently have.

Does anyone else consider it “ironic” that Planned Parenthood views a burden of responsibility as a benefit? Even the ever-so-classy folks as AskMen.com can figure out that if abortion is easy, then, hey, it’s also easy for a guy to walk away if his partner isn’t willing to have one. Oh, right, not allowed to disagree here either. We don’t question, just accept in the Church of PP. (I suppose Cecile Richards would be God? I’d say Obama, but even he realizes that other tenable perspectives exist…)

Notice that she doesn’t use the word “choice” once. Think about it for a second: an entire article about abortion from a “pro-choice” perspective without using the word choice. I wonder why. Maybe it’s because of the irony of our money paying for their choice, or about the irony of “choice” being medically “necessary.” I guess when you’re arguing for taxpayer dollars, you use “medically necessary,” and when you’re talking about morals or ethics, you use “choice.”

Richards thinks it’s ironic that Catholic bishops are Catholic, but that irony escapes her?

If the bishops are pissing off Cecile Richards, they’re probably doing something very, very right.