Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2—The Georgia Bulletin, December 24,1981
SOME TOYS WILL HAVE LESS CHILDREN TO PLAY WITH THIS YEAR.
Subcommittee OKs Hatch
Amendment
SOME 1,500,000* ABORTED CHILDREN LESS.
- I 500,000 ABORTIONS WERE PERFORMEC IN THE U S.A. IN RIGHT TO LIFE ASSOCIATION OF TORONTO
PRO-LIFE OFF'CL - ARCHDIOCESE OF ATLANTA
BY STEPHENIE OVERMAN
WASHINGTON (NC) -
The Senate subcommittee
on the Constitution voted
Dec. 16 to approve a
constitutional amendment
on abortion proposed by
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utahj.
It is the first time an
abortion amendment has
been voted out of a
Congressional
subcommittee since the
1973 Supreme Court
decisions eliminating most
state restrictions on
abortion.
The subcommittee
voted 4-0, with one
abstention, to send the
amendment to the full
Senate Judiciary
Committee. The
amendment, SJR 110,
would remove the right to
abortion and allow
Congress and the states to
re-enact abortion
restrictions struck down by
the Supreme Court.
The vote came shortly
after pro-lifers both
supported and opposed it
and pro-abortionists
testified against it at a
hearing.
Dr. John Willke,
president of the National
Right to Life Committee
(NRLC), said his
organization endorsed the
Hatch Amendment but
Nellie J. Gray, head of
March for Life, said the
amendment does not live
up to “life principles” and
would divide the pro-life
movement.
Even the National Right
to Life Committee was
divided in its support,
according to Miss Gray,
who said the directors
recently voted 30-24, with
one abstention, to endorse
the amendment.
In addition to her
testimony she distributed a
“minority report” from
NRLC directors opposed to
the Hatch Amendment
because it “fails to
acknowledge the
personhood of preborn
human beings.”
According to Miss Gray
the Hatch Amendment
violates the ‘‘life
principles” which include
provisions that “the highest
law of our land shall
protect the right to life of
each human being from
fertilization, without
regard to age, health or
condition of dependency.”
Paul Brown, director of
Life Amendment Political
Action Committee
(LAPAC), referring to the
amendment as the
‘‘Catholic Bishops
Amendment,” said it will
“continue to cause a deeper
split within the ranks of the
pro-life movement” and
“our anti-life opponents
... are rejoicing over this
confusion.
‘‘We know this
amendment will not pass,”
Brown said, “but if it did,
you should know that the
majority of pro-life people
will work to defeat it every
step of the way.”
Brown said his
organization will consider a
vote on the Hatch
Amendment as a non-vote.
“We will not count it for or
aginst a member of
Congress.”
However, he said, if the
amendment received
priority “over more
meaningful protection for
the preborn child, LAPAC
may very well have to
reconsider its target races
program for the 1982
elections . . . there may be
some deletions, there may
be some additions.” In past
elections LAPAC has put
out a “hit list” of
prominent candidates it
considered pro-abortion.
The Hatch Amendment
“is ‘anti-abortion,’ not
‘pro-life,’” Norman
Bendroth of the Christian
Action League said.
The amendment would
allow a state legislature to
regulate or prohibit
abortion. The state
legislatures would be
permitted to enact more
stringent legislation than
Congress if the amendment
is ratified by two-thirds of
the House and Senate and
three-quarters of the states.
In the subcommittee
vote the amendment was
supported by Hatch, Sen.
Charles E. Grassley
(R-Iowa), Sen. Dennis
DeConcini (D-Ariz.) and
Sen. Strom Thurmond
(R-S.C.). Sen. Patrick
Leahy (D-Vt.) abstained.
The dissenting pro-lifers
said they are waiting for
Congressional approval of a
simple amendment flatly
outlawing abortion and
saying life begins at
conception.
Other pro-lifers,
however, said they see the
Hatch Amendment as the
first step toward reversing
the 1973 Supreme Court
abortion decisions and the
one which has the greatest
chance for success.
Willke said he believes
that, if the entire pro-life
movement unites, the
Hatch Amendment has
enough support for passage
while other pro-life
measures do not.
Denise Neary, head of
Pennsylvania Pro-Life, said,
“for the first time in eight
years we see a realistic
chance to reverse Roe v.
Wade and to protect the
unborn and women who
have been exploited by the
abortion profiteers.”
Jan Wilkins, of
American Citizens
Concerned for Life, said
that “any pro-life law
passed, in whatever
context, is infinitely better
than one not passed.”
Rep. Christopher Smith
(R.-N.J.), co-sponsor of a
similar amendment in the
House, said with the Hatch
Amendment “those of us
who feel the court itself
violated fundamental
human rights by denying
basic protections to unborn
children will get a chance to
restore those rights. By the
same token, those who
believe the Supreme
Court’s abortion policy is
justified will have the
opportunity to sustain that
perspective.
“This amendment gives
the people, through their
representatives, the right to
decide abortion policy,” he
said. “Surely the
opponents of this
amendment want their
elected representative to
have the right to choose.”
U.S. bishops, at their
annual meeting in
November, had voted to
support the amendment.
At the final
subcommittee hearing
testimony was also given by
opponents who said
women must continue to
have’ the right to choose
abortions.
Former Congresswoman
Bella Abzug, president of
Women USA, said she
opposed “any action to
interpose the government
between a woman and her
fundamental right to
privacy in making a purely
personal decision.”
In the case of the Hatch
Amendment, she said,
“women would be harassed
by government
intervention at all levels.
The Congress, the
president, the state
legislatures, the governors:
all would be authorized to
dictate to a woman the
circumstances under which
she could decide not to
have a child, including no
circumstances, no
exemptions, even if her life
is at stake.”
Jane Wells-Schooley,
vice president of the
National Organization for
Women, .said that
“precisely at the time when
ultra-conservatives are
advocating getting
government off the backs
of citizens it is hypocritical
that they are proposing
legislation which is the
ultimate invasion into our
private lives.”
Hatch said he expected
the full Judiciary
Committee to vote on the
amendment, probably in
late January, with a floor
fight possible in the Seante
by late winter or early
spring.
(The poster to the left of
this article is an award winning
effort of the Right to Life
Association of Toronto.)
Pope John Paul II
Issues Statement On
The Family
BY NANCY FRAZIER
VATICAN CITY (NC) - In the longest document of his
pontificate Pope John Paul II called on Catholics to defend
the rights and value of the family and to become
“communities in communion” despite difficulties.
“The church knows the path by which the family can
reach the heart of the deepest truth about itself,” the pope
said in his 167-page apostolic exhortation, “Familiaris
Consortio,” on the role of the Christian family in the
modern world.
The Latin words “familiaris consortio” mean
“community of the family.” An apostolic exhortation is a
papal document usually focusing on a specific group in the
church, in this case families, and is meant to encourage the
following of a specific set of teachings. It differs from a
papal encyclical which is a letter addressed to the world’s
bishops asking them to transmit to all the people in their
jurisdiction Catholic teachings on a certain topic.
“She (the church) does not impose it but she feels an
urgent need to propose it to everyone without fear and
indeed with great confidence and hope, although she knows
that the good news includes the subject of the cross,” he
added.
The document, dated Nov. 22 and made public at the
Vatican Dec. 15, declares the church’s “will to promote
human life by every means,” describes artificial methods of
contraception as a denial of the total self-giving necessary in
Christian marriage and reaffirms the church’s stand against
allowing divorced Catholics who have remarried to
participate in the sacraments.
It also presents the pope’s views on a wide variety of
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marriage and family issues, including sex education, the role
of women, polygamy, natural family planning and the duty
of families in the political arena.
Pope John Paul wrote the apostolic exhortation after
receiving 43 propositions on the role of the family from the
more than 200 bishops, 10 experts and 42 auditors who
attended the 1980 world Synod of Bishops at the Vatican
Sept. 26-Oct. 25 last year.
The papal document follows closely the
recommendations of the synod participants, which were
not made public but were seen by NC News.
The pope also accepted the synod participants’ proposal
of a Charter of Family Rights, which he said will be
prepared and “presented to the quarters and authorities
concerned.”
“The church openly and strongly defends the rights of
the family against the intolerable usurpations of society and
the state,” the pope said in relation to the proposed charter.
“The church has perhaps never before expressed in such
a complete and articulated vision the four fundamental
duties of the family,” said Archbishop Jozef Tomko,
secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, at a Vatican press
conference Dec. 15.
Those duties, according to the document, are “forming a
community of persons; serving life; participating in the
development of society; and sharing in the life and mission
of the church.”
“The historical situation in which the family lives
appears as an interplay of light and darkness,” Pope John
Paul said.
“The great task that has to be faced today for the
renewal of society is that of recapturing the ultimate
meaning of life and its fundamental values,” he added.
The document restates the church’s teachings on
marriage and family life and rejects the idea that they have
become outmoded.
“Not infrequently ideas and solutions which are very
appealing, but which obscure in varying degrees the truth
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and the dignity of the human person, are offered to the men
and women of today in their sincere and deep search for a
response to the important daily problems that affect their
married and family life,” the pope said.
Reaffirming the church’s ban on artificial contraception,
the pope urged theologians to “collaborate with the
hierarchial magisterium and to commit themselves to the
task of illustrating ever more clearly the
biblical foundations, the ethical grounds and the
personalistic reasons behind this doctrine.”
Catholic couples cannot look on the birth control
teaching “as merely an ideal to be achieved in the future,”
the pope said. “They must consider it a command of Christ
the Lord to overcome difficulties with constancy.”
On the topic of separated and divorced Catholics, Pope
John Paul said those who do not remarry provide a witness
to the chtlrch and the world with “their example of fidelity
and Christian consistency.”
He encouraged pastoral concern for those who do not
remarry and those who do, but said that “the church
reaffirms her practice, which is based upon sacred Scripture,
of not admitting to eucharistic Communion divorced
persons who have remarried.”
Because “their state and condition of life objectively
contradict that union of love between Christ and the church
which is signified and effected by the Eucharist,” their
admission to the sacraments could cause “error and
confusion regarding the church’s teaching about the
indissolubility of marriage,” the pope added.
The only exception would be if such a couple agrees to
live “in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from
the acts proper to married couples,” he said.
Pope John Paul told priests not to perform ceremonies of
any kind for divorced persons who remarry, but also urged
them “to make sure that they do not consider themselves as
separated from the church, for as baptized persons, they
can, and indeed must, share in her life.”
The document condemned pressures exercised by
governments or public authorities to take decisions on
family matters out of the hands of the families themselves.
Pope John Paul called government programs in favor of
contraception, sterilization or procured abortion “a grave
offense against human dignity and justice.”
He said that regarding education “the state and the
church have the obligation to give families all possible aid to
enable them to perform their educational role properly.”
In some countries, the pope said, “the family, which in
God’s plan is the basic cell of society and a subject of rights
and duties before the state or any other community, finds
itself the victim of society, of the delays and-Slowness with
which it acts, and even of its blatant injustice.”
Pope John Paul also commented in the document on
most of the other major issues discussed in more than 300
interventions during the month-long synod. A sampling
includes:
- On Sex education: “A basic right and duty of parents,
it must always be carried out under their attentive guidance,
whether at home or in educational centers chosen and
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controlled by them.” The church opposes sex education
“disassociated from moral principles.”
- On the role of women: “The church can and should
help modern society by tirelessly insisting that the work of
women in the home be recognized and respected by all in its
irreplaceable value” but, at the same time, “there is no
doubt that the equal dignity and responsibility of men and
women fully justifies women’s access to public functions.”
- On natural family planning: “Theological reflection is
able to perceive and is called to study further the difference,
both anthropological and moral, between contraception
and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . Every effort
must be made to render such knowledge accessible to all
married couples.”
- On polygamy: “This directly negates the plan of God
which was revealed from the beginning, because it is
contrary to the equal personal dignity of men and women
who in matrimony give themselves with a love that is total
and therefore unique and exclusive.”
- On the political role of families: “Families should be
the first to take steps to see that the laws and institutions of
the state not only do no offend but support and positively
defend the rights and duties of the family.”
Pope John Paul also encouraged local bishops’
conference to contribute to the preparation of a catechism
for families which “would be clear, brief and easily
assimilated by all” and to draw up a directory for the
pastoral care of the family suitable to local situations.
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