The Catholic Church Jumps into the Politics Pool, Part 1
Does the Detroit Archdiocese think it can say anything, regardless of truth or legality?
I thought Catholic Archbishops were supposed to tell the truth, at least publicly. Silly me. I’ve learned not to give them so much credit after reading a political mailer sent to parishioners by the Archbishop of Detroit.
The issue of abortion rights is the hot issue in Michigan’s November election. A citizen-approved ballot measure called Proposal 3 is up for a vote, and if approved, a new right to "reproductive freedom" would be added to the state constitution. That will invalidate a 1931 abortion ban and reinstate rights established by Roe v. Wade and other Supreme Court precedents that were tossed out by the court this year.
Obviously, abortion is an important issue for the Catholic Church. But that neither justifies nor excuses the Catholic Dioceses of Michigan to wade into politics by telling parishioners how to vote, in this case by sending out mailers that read like they have been written by the worst of propagandists. Add to that how easily all churches with tax-free status thumb their noses at IRS regulations - becoming a tax-free financial war-chest for the Republican Party - and the action of the Archdiocese just becomes infuriating.
The mailer came in an October 3 letter to parishioners written by the Archbishop of Detroit, the Most Reverend Allen H. Vignoron. That letter contains so many falsehoods, so many arguments literally lifted from the political group opposed to the measure, that it even contradicts edicts set down by Pope Pius XII in a 1957 speech. More on that in a later part in this series.
Like most political mailers from advocacy groups, the Archbishop’s letter trots out a series of boogey-men so absurd that only someone immersed in daily delusions (Fox News anyone?) could possibly believe any of it is true. In fact, the letter was the first thing I ever read about the Michigan ballot measure, and it was so patently ridiculous that I didn’t even need to review the proposal to know that the Archbishop was lying. Once I did review the language that would be added to the state constitution if the measure is approved, I was horrified at how far the Catholic Church was willing to go to scare its parishioners. In fact, if the Archbishop wants to argue his statements are true, I will make a bet with him: If the ballot measure passes, and his arguments prove true, I will pay the Detroit Archdiocese $10,000. If not, then he will write a letter to his parishioners apologizing for lying to them.
The very first sentence of the letter contains both a lie and such a gross misrepresentation it is disgusting. In it, he says that the ballot measure would allow “unregulated abortion demand through all nine months of pregnancy.” Now, start off with the first lie in that sentence - “unregulated abortion.” If any parishioners were unclear about what that meant, the Archbishop helpfully lies later in the letter to explain it. He says the new Constitutional words would result in “unregulated and unsafe abortion clinics (and) abortions performed by unqualified individuals.”
Sounds pretty bad. Also completely ridiculous. The state has dozens of laws regulating certain abortion related and general health care issues. All of these passed Constitutional muster under Roe v. Wade - in fact, no one filed a lawsuit during the Roe era for the right to get an abortion at 7-Eleven or tanning salons because the idea is so absurd. (And don’t miss the Archbishop’s seeming belief that women are too stupid to know who is qualified to provide them with health care.)
The foundation of law related to rights is compelling state interest. That’s why, even though there is a First Amendment right to free speech, both state and federal governments have laws against terroristic threats, child pornography, even yelling fire in a crowded theater; these all related to public safety, a compelling state interest.
Public safety in health care is a compelling state interest. That’s why the laws in Michigan regulating the delivery of health procedures, including abortions, would stand. “The constitutional language doesn’t remove the state’s ability to regulate those things that are within their powers to do,” said Michelle Richards, associate professor of law at University of Detroit Mercy. “The regulation of the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of the state of Michigan is exactly what the state is permitted to do.”
In fact, the words that would be added to the Michigan Constitution specifically allow for regulations to protect patients’ health. It’s right there, in the second sentence: “An individual’s right to reproductive freedom shall not be denied, burdened, nor infringed upon unless justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means.” (Italics mine.) The Archbishop hides this from his parishioners. The reason for the words “by the least restrictive means” is because of how duplicitous politicians who oppose abortion have been. For example, in 2016, Texas required abortion clinics to meet hospital-like standards, something that no other facilities providing outpatient procedures are required to have. Because the Supreme Court knew the definition of precedent back then, it threw out the restriction as a patently obvious attempt to override Roe.
But here is the other thing about the Archbishop’s lie that abortions could be provided at massage parlors - history has proven that the exact opposite is true. Making abortions illegal don’t stop them. They don’t result in thousands more happy, gurgling babies. Surveys throughout decades show that one-third of women obtained abortions, pre-Roe and post, according to Dr. David A. Grimes, obstetrician and gynecologist who is considered the nation’s top researcher on the history of abortion. The only difference is that, pre-Roe desperate women did get illegal abortions provided by untrained, unqualified money-grubbers who perform procedures in unregulated locations. That, in fact, is one of the primary reasons for Roe - keeping women safe.
Pre-Roe, as many as 1000 women were known to have died each year because of complications of illegal abortion, with the true number almost certainly higher. Survey data indicated that, in those times, between 200,000 and 1.2 million illegal, and usually unsafe, abortions took place annually. Every large hospital had septic abortion wards for women who had been infected by illegal procedures performed by unqualified people. There, those women often died in agony, or if they survived, usually ended up infertile. The highest cause of incomplete abortions was when the procedure was provided by untrained people, including the women themselves. At Bellevue Hospital in New York, more than 7,000 cases of incomplete abortions were treated from 1940 to 1954, according to Grimes, and more than a third of these were complicated by infection. For a self-induced abortion, women used household cleaners, or the insertion of tubes and liquid poisons into the uterus. Coat hangers, knitting needles, and slippery elm bark were common insertion methods; the bark would expand when moistened, causing the cervix to open.
So, the Archdiocese is telling parishioners that, somehow, reinstating the rights that existed under Roe v. Wade will result in the horrors that existed before Roe v. Wade - and disappeared after women obtained the right to an abortion. Does the Archbishop not know he is lying, can he not be bothered to learn about the period before Roe, or does he not care about women? No matter. If his lie results in Proposal 3 being knocked down, the blood of these women is on the hands of him and the Catholic Dioceses of Michigan.
Not all women pre-Roe suffered though, and the same will hold true if Proposal 3 gets knocked down. Instead, we will return to the days when the rich simply traveled to another state where abortion remained legal. In 1972, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 44% of all women having abortions nationwide received care in a State where they did not live. Again, nearly half of all abortions were performed on people who traveled to states where abortion was legal. The size of this medical tourism was unprecedented and led to significant hardship for those who had barely enough money to make the journey.
That doesn’t even include the babies born after a botched abortion. Since the untrained didn’t know how to perform the procedure, the unsuccessful abortions damaged the fetuses. Huge percentages of the babies born pre-Roe were severely damaged. Post-Roe, hospitals reported a collapse of 36% of babies born prematurely, those weighing between 500 to 999 grams. The number of babies that died shortly after birth also dropped precipitously, from 57 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1969 to 40 deaths per 100,000 after Roe.
The magnitude of maternal deaths was well-known in the years pre-Roe. That is why, when the lobbying began to legalize abortion in the 1960s, religious leaders joined hands with physicians and public health officials to accomplish the goal of protecting the health of women. It was only after 1980, when the Republican Party figured out that the public was forgetting the bad-old-days and that the religious could be ginned up to vote for the GOP if they believed in the myth of happy babies waiting to be born, that groups of the faithful fell away.
Ok, that deals with the first word in the first sentence of Archbishop’s letter, “unregulated.” (This also points out the problem of dealing with political lies about abortion and many other topics - throwing out nonsense is easy. Explaining why the nonsense is nonsense requires holding people’s attention for quite a while.)
Unfortunately, to keep exposing the Archbishop’s lies is going to require more and more of this kind of lengthy analysis and loading it all into one post would be demanding of readers. But suffice to say, things get worse.
Coming in Part 2: The fictional abortion at nine months