Catholic Bishops Speak on Abortion and Voting

This election season, it seems that a larger number of U.S. Catholic bishops have made clear and unambiguous statements on abortion and voting. Here are the statements that I have found so far:

USCCB Statement by Cardinal Rigali and Bishop Murphy
Archbishop Chaput
Bishop Robert Hermann
Bishops Farrell and Vann
Bishop Arthur Serratelli
Bishop Martino
Archbishop Chaput
Bishops Naumann and Finn
Bishop Robert Finn
Bishop Rene Gracida
Cardinal Rigali
Bishop James Johnston

Please note that this list does not include statements that deal with abortion in a more general way, without specifically addressing voting (such as Cardinal Egan's recent column), or those that seek to correct Catholic politicians who have misstated Catholic teaching on abortion (such as the statements listed here).

Reason #1 why I will not be voting for Barack Obama

Reason #1: Senator Obama is radically pro-abortion, so much so that he opposed legislation to protect babies who are born alive during a botched abortion. I'm talking here about babies who have already been born, who are fully outside their mother's womb, who are breathing, crying, and struggling for life -- and who sadly had often been left to die in the absence of legal protection.

Terry Jeffrey at Cybercast News Service presents some details:

Obama Is the Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever

He is so pro-abortion that he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede -- as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor -- that these babies, fully outside their mothers' wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact "persons." . . .

State and federal versions of this bill became an issue earlier this decade because of "induced labor abortion." This is usually performed on a baby with Down's Syndrome or another problem discovered on the cusp of viability. A doctor medicates the mother to cause premature labor. Babies surviving labor are left untreated to die.

Jill Stanek, who was a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill., testified in the U.S. Congress in 2000 and 2001 about how "induced labor abortions" were handled at her hospital.

"One night," she said in testimony entered into the Congressional Record, "a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down's Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have the time to hold him. I couldn't bear the thought of this suffering child lying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived." . . .

Stanek testified about these bills in the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, where Obama served. She told me this week he was "unfazed" by her story of holding the baby who survived an induced labor abortion.

On the Illinois Senate floor, Obama was the only senator to speak against the baby-protecting bills. He voted "present" on each, effectively the same as a "no." . . .

The article goes on to explain how a similar bill passed the U.S. Senate (which Obama was not yet a member of at that time) by a vote of 98-0. Therefore, one could draw the conclusion that Obama's opposition to the essentially equivalent bill at the state level makes him more radically pro-abortion than just about any other member of the U.S. Senate.

Terry Jeffrey also has a follow-up piece here:

More on Obama and Babies Born Alive