Bill Donohue comments on the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB):
In 2010, a pregnant woman went to a Catholic hospital after her water broke. She later claimed that she was never appraised of possible dangers to her health, and the option of choosing an abortion. The ACLU is suing the USCCB because it says the bishops’ conference is responsible for the Michigan hospital’s decision not to discuss the abortion option. The baby died shortly after birth.
It makes perfect sense for the ACLU to sue the USCCB over abortion: it has been pro-abortion and anti-Catholic for decades. It became officially pro-abortion in 1967, six years before Roe v. Wade.
Subsequently, when Rep. Henry Hyde introduced legislation to restrict federal funding of abortion, the ACLU dispatched an agent to spy on him in a Catholic Church; he was reported going to Communion amidst “pregnant women and children” who bore “gifts for life.” A judge threw the case out—the ACLU was trying to show the nefarious effect of Hyde’s Catholicism on his bill. When asked about this tactic, the Illinois congressman said, “I suppose the Nazis did that—observed Jews going to synagogue in Hitler’s Germany.”
The ACLU is so radical in its defense of abortion that it has held auctions to pay for them. It is so radical in its hatred of Catholicism that it championed the Freedom of Choice Act, a bill that would have required Catholic hospitals to perform abortions or lose federal funding; it never made it to President Obama’s desk, though he pledged to sign it.
There is one more reason why the ACLU is now suing the bishops: its friend in the White House sponsors pro-abortion causes and anti-Catholic policies. The dots are not hard to connect.
