Biden's Pro-Abortion Bill Is Off-The-Charts

By Bill Donohue, Catholic League president

"The Administration strongly supports House passage of H.R. 3755, the Women's Health Protection Act of 2021." That is the statement released by the White House on September 20. In actual fact, the proposed law has nothing to do with women's health—it is a pro-abortion bill.

This is true notwithstanding the bill's contention that "Abortion is essential health care and one of the safest medical procedures in the United States." Essential health care would be things like heart surgery and treatment for Covid, not elective abortion. And it is fatuous to say that it is safe. Safe for whom?

The bill maintains that abortion restrictions are "a tool of gender oppression." If this were true, why were America's first feminists staunch opponents of abortion? In 1858, Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke about "the murder of children, either before or after birth." She branded it "evil." Similarly, Susan B. Anthony called abortion "child murder" and "infanticide."

So if the first feminists were strongly opposed to abortion—they said it was analogous to treating women as property—when did abortion restrictions become "a tool of gender oppression"? In the 1960s.

That was when two men, Lawrence Lader and Dr. Bernard Nathanson (who later became a Catholic and a pro-life activist), convinced feminists such as Betty Friedan that abortion should be seen as an example of women's liberation. In other words, it took the boys to teach the girls about their own "emancipation."

As for this bill, it is anything but "women friendly." To be explicit, it would abolish the requirement that abortion can only be performed by a physician, thus allowing mid-wives, nurses and doctor's assistants to do the job. The bill also eliminates health and safety regulations that are specific to abortion facilities.

Now ask yourself this: If a bill were passed that would allow dental hygienists to pull your tooth, and that it could be done in a facility without customary health and safety regulations, would anyone in his right mind consider this to be progress?

Iterations of this bill have been introduced every year since 2013, but it wasn't until this year that dramatically new language was introduced. The neologisms are emblematic of the wild-eyed activists who work in the White House.

For example, the bill talks about "reproductive justice" and the necessity of opposing "restrictions on reproductive health, including abortion, that perpetuate systems of oppression, lack of bodily autonomy, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism."

This is the mindset of those who are positively obsessed with race, the kind of people who find discussions about chocolate and vanilla to have racial undertones. Just as some who were obsessed about communism in the 1950s found communism under every pillow, those who work in the Biden administration find racism under every blanket.

The bill insists that "Access to equitable reproductive health care, including abortion, has always been deficient" for blacks and other minorities. In actual fact, thanks to Planned Parenthood, this is a lie: access to abortion services have been fantastic for blacks.

Planned Parenthood erects 86 percent of its abortion facilities in or near minority neighborhoods in the 25 counties with the most abortions. Although these 25 counties make up just 1 percent of all U.S. counties, they accounted for 30 percent of all the abortions in the U.S. in 2014. 

Is it any surprise that although blacks comprise roughly 13 percent of the population, they account for at least a third of all the abortions? It is therefore dishonest to claim that they lack access to abortion mills.

Another novelty found in this bill is the linguistic game of pretending that males and females can change their sex. For example, it says that abortion services "are used primarily by women (my italic)." This is factually wrong. Only women can get pregnant and only women can abort their child. A man can identify as a woman (or as a gorilla for that matter), but he can never get pregnant.

Similarly, the geniuses who wrote this bill make more than two dozen references to "pregnant people"; this is roughly twice as often as they speak of "pregnant women." Now if a man can get pregnant, in what orifice does his baby exit? His ear?

If this isn't nutty enough, the bill's authors add that it is their intention "to protect all people with the capacity of becoming pregnant—cisgender women [meaning real women] transgender men [meaning delusional women who think they are a man], non-binary individuals [there is no such breed], those who identify with a different gender [the mentally challenged], and others." Who the "others" are remains a mystery.

Catholics need to take note. Though this "off-the-charts" bill is not likely to pass, it is the expressed desire of our "devout Catholic" president that it should. Biden can carry his rosary to the moon and back, but all that matters are his values and his policies, and in many instances they are anything but Catholic.