RC Bishops rebuke Biden over ‘deeply disturbing’ pro-abortion stance

Leading Roman Catholic bishops in the US have decried President Joe Biden’s decision to recommence funding for abortions abroad.

In one of his first acts on entering office, the new US President issued an Executive Order repealing the Mexico City Policy.

The policy prevents US government funding of organisations which promote or provide abortions overseas. It was first introduced by President Ronald Reagan and then implemented by the Bush and Trump administrations but removed under Clinton, Obama and now Biden.

‘Moral evil’

Biden attends mass regularly but his strong pro-abortion stance is at odds with Roman Catholic teaching, prompting the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to issue a stark rebuke.

actively promotes the destruction of human lives in developing nations

USCCB President, Archbishop Jose Gomez, wrote: “our 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”.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City called it “grievous” that one of President Biden’s first official acts “actively promotes the destruction of human lives in developing nations”.

The divide was noted by the secular as well as religious press. In Newsweek, law professor Brian Bird wrote: “It is unseemly to invoke a faith to dignify legislative or policy decisions which contradict it. It is all the worse when, as in the case of abortion and Catholicism, politicians use the faith as cover for a decision it deems ‘gravely contrary to the moral law.'”

Africa

Africans also pleaded with the President not to recommence funding abortion on the continent.

In ‘A Message for President Biden: The Unified Voices of Africa’, made by Roman Catholic group Culture of Life Africa, twenty-five women from across Africa urged the new President not to repeal the Mexico City Policy.

The presenter, Culture of Life Africa founder Obianuju Ekeocha, said that the Western backlash to the policy’s re-introduction in 2017 was “quite shocking”.

‘Horrifying’

The video also featured a clip of President Biden speaking at an event organised by abortion giant Planned Parenthood prior to his election. He stated his opposition to the Mexico City Policy and his support for US taxpayer funds being used to provide abortion overseas.

Ekeocha said she found the video “horrifying”, saying: “I know what exactly that means, that this man, now being the newly elected President of the United States, then means that money will go into the pockets of organisations that are in fact, abortion giants”.

She warned that these organisations “will now go with a strong mandate, and fortified mandate by the United States”.

More pressing needs

Family counsellor Aïcha said: “Abortion is not an African problem – on the contrary, the Africans will live much better having access to clean drinking water, access to good education and by having good governance.”

“We have real problems in Africa and it is not abortion.”

We have real problems in Africa and it is not abortion.

Student teacher Rose added: “Children walking homelessly on streets, youth drop out of school, people dying of hunger every day, children being abused and used as slaves in their homes – these are the things we need funds on, but not abortion. God will never bless a nation that destroy its children.”

Businesswoman Stella Maris said: “Five things Nigeria needs more than abortions: Poverty alleviation, employment, education, electricity and better infrastructure. Please help us, don’t kill us.”

Canadian colonialism

Ekeocha has also criticised the Canadian Government for promoting similar foreign aid programmes that attack African attitudes on abortion, marriage and the family.

She said that the Government “doesn’t care about what the receiver or the recipient is thinking, or how their way of life is, they’re just coming to impose upon us something that they have already preconceived in Ottawa and in Toronto.”

Please help us, don’t kill us

The campaigner concluded that “no country should be able to come into another country and make their own dictates, make their own demands, or push the power of their money or their wealth.”

Strings Attached

In 2019, Ekeocha wrote and presented ‘Strings Attached’, a documentary exposing how the UK, Canada and other European nations were funding abortion giant Marie Stopes International (MSI), which uses the money to perform illegal abortions in Africa.

She stated: “Most of the African nations do not have legal abortion because they don’t want legal abortion”, adding that the view that life begins at conception is still held strongly.

Later in the year, she told The Christian Institute that the UK Government should provide aid for education, water and food, rather than funding abortion giant MSI.