The cover story of the summer edition of Human Rights , the American Bar Association journal of the Section on Rights and Responsibilities, concerned the implications of hospital mergers between Catholic and secular institutions. The piece by Tena Jamison (“Should God Be Practicing Medicine?”) is highly critical of such mergers. But it was not the article that the Catholic League objected to (flawed though it was), rather it was the cover illustration. On the cover was an image of a pregnant woman lying on an operating table in a crucifix-like pose. Ready for an abortion, the woman’s child was shown inside her body in a fetal position; her hands and legs were being held down by band-aids.
The ABA refused us the right to reprint the cover illustration. The Catholic League response to the media was as follows:
“The cover of the summer edition of Human Rights would be considered disturbing had it appeared on the cover ofany publication. But when it appears on the cover of a journal of the American Bar Association, it is doubly disturbing. Most offensive is the fact that the journal is published by the ABA’s Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities. Evidently, this ABA group thinks that amongst its rights is the right to abuse the rights of those with whom it disagrees. As such, it is clear that the term individual responsibility has no principled meaning for the ABA Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities.
“We demand an apology from the ABA. And we request that a panel discussion on what the ABA means by rights and responsibilities be held at its next convention.”
