By CHRISTOPHER MANION
On Friday, February 28, the Senate voted on the Motion to Proceed to HR3755. Called by its sponsors the “Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021,” the bill is the most radical pro-abortion legislation to reach the Senate floor in years.
The bill had passed the House last September by a vote of 218 to 211, with all Republicans opposed and all Democrats save one voting in favor. That lone Democrat was Henry Cuellar, who in last Tuesday’s Texas Democrat primary was forced into a runoff with a socialist challenger strongly backed by the abortion lobby.
All Senate Republicans voted against proceeding to the bill, and all Democrats save Joe Manchin (D., W. VA.) voted to debate it.
According to Senate rules, sixty votes are required to proceed to consider a bill — at least they are required now, since Democrats have not yet succeeded in discarding the time-honored rule allowing opponents to “filibuster” a bill.
According to its official title, the bill would “protect a person’s ability to determine whether to continue or end a pregnancy, and to protect a health-care provider’s ability to provide abortion services.” In practice, its proponents assert that it would “codify” Roe v. Wade, making abortion up to (and possibly after) birth the law of the land from coast to coast.
Fourteen Catholic senators supported the bill (Ben Ray Lujan [D., N.M.], a sponsor of the bill, was absent due to illness): Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.), Bob Casey (D., Pa.); Catherine Cortez Masto (D., Nevada), Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.), Tim Kaine (D., Va.), Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), Ed Markey (D., Mass.,), Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), Patty Murray (D., Wash.), Alex Padilla (D., Calif.), and Jack Reed (D., R.I.).
Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin, Sen. Reed’s ordinary, was blunt: “Fortunately, the very extreme pro-abortion bill did not pass in the U.S. Senate,” he tweeted. “Unfortunately, both R.I.’s Senators, Reed and Whitehouse, voted for its approval. Shameful. The judgment will be God’s. ‘Abortion is murder.’ (Pope Francis).”
Several other bishops wrote in opposition to the bill as the vote approached, or praised its defeat afterwards. So far, we have not found any mention of any other ordinary calling out a pro-abortion Catholic senator in his diocese by name.
We replied to Bishop Tobin with gratitude and with a question: “Thank you, Your Excellency, for naming names. So many of our shepherds (including ours here in Virginia) are afraid to. If you’re allowed to, please tell the faithful, why this massive silence? 100 pro-abortion Catholics on Capitol Hill and how many bishops call them out? One or two?”
There are many bishops who should ponder that question. After all, when the USCCB adopted its long-awaited teaching document, The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church, last November, they reprinted the text of Canon 915 in footnote n. 71.
Have they dared to apply their own teaching in practice?
We can find no reference to indicate that any of them have even mentioned it since.
Plato’s Cave Lives
On In Bidenworld
In his address to Congress Tuesday, March 1, Joe Biden invoked abortion rights in light of the failed Senate vote as well as the Supreme Court’s current reconsideration of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“The constitutional right affirmed by Roe v. Wade — standing precedent for half a century — is under attack as never before,” Biden said. “If you want to go forward — not backwards — we must protect access to health care. Preserve a woman’s right to choose and continue to advance maternal health care for all Americans.”
Democrats attending the speech applauded lustily. Perhaps in their view this represented the high point of the address. Abortion continues to be the strongest, most uniting issue among America’s increasingly radical Left. After all, if you can kill the most innocent, there’s no limit to the violence that a budding tyrant can inflict on his political opposition, as we have seen recently in the events surrounding the trucker convoy in Canada.
Simply put, the comatose Joe Biden has been a train wreck. He pretends to ignore it, but his fellow Democrats can’t, and it shows: In the past fortnight, America’s Left has suddenly reversed course. Masks, diktats, vaccination passports are out. Fauci and “the science” have disappeared.
So the China Virus is out, but Ukraine is very much in. On Tuesday, Biden lamely avoided addressing any aspect of the state of our Union. The country knows why: on both on the foreign and domestic fronts, Joe Biden has been a disaster.
Remember, this is the guy who said during the 2020 Democrat primaries that “Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be president. He doesn’t want me to be our nominee. If you’re wondering why — it’s because I’m the only person in this field who’s ever gone toe-to-toe with him.”
Well, fat chance, Big Guy.
So the rest of “Toe-To-Toe Joe’s” Tuesday snore was filled with slop, a weary slog to dodge the manifest calamities of the past year (Afghanistan, inflation, masks, vaccination diktats, white supremacist moms, border disasters, energy collapse, playing China’s lapdog, paying Putin $100+/barrel for oil every day…).
Biden apparently expects events of the past week to erase his record of the past year. But how to pull it off?
Joe’s got the answer: war.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might well be over by May, but Joe Biden’s Democrats, amplified by DC’s armchair warriors, won’t let us forget it. For five years, “Russia!!!” is all they’ve had, and they aren’t going to let a crisis go to waste just because it’s six time zones away.
Like Wilson and FDR before him, Biden will brand his critics as unpatriotic, traitors, Putin’s pawns, seditionists, and more.
Desperate for distractions, Democrats will use this war to launch a savage campaign to destroy their opposition. They can’t defend their record, so Knute Rockne will rule: The best defense is a good offense, and they’ll do their best to keep us on the defensive and shame us into silence.
Until last week, we had them running scared. Now’s the time to fight back like Ukrainian freedom fighters. Biden wants to treat us like a defeated people. It’s up to us to prove he’s wrong.
Leftovers
So now it’s all war, all the time. How ready is Gen. Milley’s military for a two-front American action in Ukraine and, at Dear Leader Xi’s pleasure, Taiwan?
Well, first the good news. U.S. military commanders at all levels in all services are being trained with the latest methods in all aspects of gender identity, including all varieties of “gender dysphoria” (hey, I bet you didn’t know how many there were, did you?).
And our stalwart allies? Blimey, those Brits are up to cruising speed! With their eye on the ball, their intelligence agencies have revealed the key to victory in Ukraine:
“With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard-won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights,” wrote Richard Moore, chief of MI6, the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, last Friday.
What a relief!
Meanwhile, Catholic Joe has actually delivered on a promise, nominating a black female, who is also a radical leftist, to the seat soon to be vacated by Mr. Justice Breyer.
Regarding her confirmation hearings, Democrats have made clear that no Anita Hills or Christine Blasey Fords need apply.
And lastly, the USCCB is worried because more than two floors of its opulent DC headquarters are vacant, due to the number of its dedicated bureaucrats who are working from home.
Perhaps our shepherds might call their Catholic Charities colleagues who are trafficking illegals at our southern border to come back Washington and use that valuable space to care for the homeless Americans crowding the sidewalks of D.C.
Just a thought.
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