By
WASHINGTON (CNS) — New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan described
the recent pledge from the Democratic National Committee’s chair to support
only pro-abortion candidates “disturbing” and “intolerant.”
The cardinal,
who is chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on
Pro-Life Activities, urged members of the Democratic party to “challenge
their leadership to recant this intolerant position.”
The
cardinal’s April 26 statement was in reaction to recent comments by DNC chair
Tom Perez who said: “Every Democrat, like every American, should support a
woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is
not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”
Perez
went on to say in an April 21 statement: “At a time when women’s rights
are under assault from the White House, the Republican Congress, and in states
across the country, we must speak up for this principle as loudly as ever and
with one voice.”
Perez’s
statement came after a DNC “unity tour” rally in Nebraska, where another
DNC leader and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, appeared April 20 with a former state
senator, Heath Mello, the Democratic mayoral candidate in Omaha. The DNC tour was
sharply criticized by pro-abortion groups for joining forces with Mello, who sponsored
a 2009 state Senate bill requiring that women be informed of their right to request
a fetal ultrasound before having an abortion.
“The
actions today by the DNC to embrace and support a candidate for office who will
strip women — one of the most critical constituencies for the party — of our
basic rights and freedom is not only disappointing, it is politically
stupid,” NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue said in an April
20 statement.
Sanders
responded to the criticism by saying different views on abortion within the
party were natural. Perez took this a step further saying he fundamentally
disagreed with “Mello’s personal beliefs about women’s reproductive health.”
On
NBC’s “Meet the Press,” April 23, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,
D-California, was asked if a Democratic politician could be pro-life.
“Of
course,” she said, adding that she has “served many years in Congress
with members who have not shared my very positive — my family would say
aggressive — position on promoting a woman’s right to choose.”
Dolan,
who offered prayers at the Democratic and Republican national conventions in
2012, had strong words for the Democratic party in his April 26 statement
saying the party’s “platform already endorses abortion throughout the nine
months of pregnancy, even forcing taxpayers to fund it; and now the DNC says
that to be a Democrat — indeed to be an American — requires supporting that
extreme agenda.”
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