The Right Prescription
Wesleyan Abortions?
Religious left unease over the Stupak Amendment
The Stupak-Pitts’s amendment to the U.S. House version of Obamacare would prevent government health plan coverage for abortion, angering Religious Left agencies like the United Methodist Capitol Hill lobby office.
“Our Christian faith and our Wesleyan heritage compels us to stand with those who struggle for wholeness and peace in their lives and believe that all people should have equal access to comprehensive medical care,” i.e. government-funded abortion, insisted a recent “action alert” from the United Methodist Board of Church and Society.
The United Methodist message to its activists hailed the Speaker Nancy Pelosi-backed legislation in the House as a “major milestone,” even though the church lobby prefers an even more statist “single-payer” system. But the United Methodists lamented that “what should have been a celebratory moment for everyone” had been unpleasantly tarnished by Stupak-Pitts’s “restrictive language” inserted at the “eleventh hour” that “politicized health care and posed the possibility of a tremendous setback for access to comprehensive reproduction health coverage.”
Of course, United Methodists lobbyists are now imploring U.S. Senators not to include a similar “polarizing” abortion funding ban in their health care bill. Is government-funded abortion now a key “Wesleyan” tenet for Methodists?
At a press conference with other Religious left abortion-rights activists, Linda Bales Todd of the United Methodist lobby’s “population project” declared that her agency “acknowledges the varying views on the issue of abortion and the emotional struggles faced by women in situations to consider this medical procedure.” But the “reality, however, is that abortion is legal in the United States, and the position of The United Methodist Church supports access to safe and legal abortion.” Actually, United Methodism’s stance on abortion is more nuanced, recognizing “tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion,” while opposing partial-birth abortion and abortions for gender-selection or birth control. In 2008, the church recognized “the sanctity of unborn human life” and the “sacredness of life and well-being of [both] the mother and the unborn child.” But its ultra-liberal Capitol Hill lobby office insists the church supports unrestricted abortion rights.
“Measures like this [Stupak-Pitts] effectively limit access and delivery of reproductive health care based on one, narrow religious doctrine,” Todd complained, even as she cited her own church’s supposed views to demand government funded abortion. Her press conference was hosted by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), founded by liberal Protestants 40 years ago, with help from the Playboy Foundation, to push for unrestricted abortion with ostensibly religious arguments. Last year, United Methodists narrowly upheld the church’s role in RCRC, with liberal delegates at the church’s governing General Conference emphasizing RCRC’s supposed work to combat AIDS, and with many pro-life African delegates, exhausted by 10 days of debate, having already left the convention floor.
United Methodism, with just under 8 million U.S. members and over 3 million overseas, mostly in Africa, is represented by a host of liberal-dominated official agencies like the Capitol Hill lobby office that often function without accountability. While mostly dependent on church collection plate money, the United Methodist Board of Church and Society also gains rental income from its prominent Capitol Hill Methodist Building, which, along with other assets, originated with Methodism’s old Prohibition-era Temperance Board 90 years ago. Interestingly, current litigation is challenging the lobby office’s exploitation of the temperance endowment fund for political lobbying. The agency also gets funds from outside sources like Ted Turner’s United Nations Foundation, which earlier this year granted the board $150,000 to mobilize Methodists to lobby for greater U.S. funding of “international family planning.”
Linda Bales Todd, of course, will preside over the Turner-funded Methodist “family planning” lobby project, titled “Healthy Families, Healthy Planet.” With President Obama’s lifting of U.S. restrictions against funding international abortionist agencies, Todd’s initiative could facilitate more U.S. tax dollars at least indirectly subsidizing abortions overseas. “This year-long effort is to build a strong constituency of United Methodists to support increased funding from the U.S. government for international family planning,” she excitedly explained about the Turner grant. With 200 million people reputedly lacking “family-planning services,” Todd lamented, they are unable to “plan families, space their children, prevent AIDS transmission, unplanned pregnancies and, as a consequence, abortions,” though it’s not clear why Todd would necessarily regret the abortions.
According to their critics, the Roman Catholic bishops virtually imposed a theocracy when backing the Stupak-Pitts amendment, whose prohibition of abortion funding enthrones a “narrow” religious view, Todd insisted. But statist religious perspectives demanding U.S. government-directed health care as an essential human right, including tax-funded abortions, evidently are not theocratic or “narrow.” Supposedly “Wesleyan heritage” supports abortion and represents healthy religious civic involvement, while Roman Catholic pro-life views unacceptably infringe on democracy. Or at least these are the views of the purportedly “Wesleyan” lobbyists on Capitol Hill, who seem as confused about their own heritage as they are about democracy.
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.
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Mick Lee| 11.30.09 @ 6:56AM
I see. I am free to choose to believe abortion is a profound evil; but I'm supposed to pay for them.
Some choice.
Jon B| 3.13.10 @ 6:01AM
Obama's restoring of funds for pregnancy prevention measures in the world's poorest countries reduced abortions by 10's of millions in the next 8 years. Republicans lie about the Mexico City Policy by falsely claiming it funds abortions, etc. It's been illegal for US $'s to fund abortions overseas since 1973, but we DO fund pregnancy prevention measures, emergency field birth kits, etc.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_wrld.htm
1993: Repeal of the funding ban: President Clinton felt that private, foreign organizations should be able to receive USAID funding for that part of their programs that involved pregnancy prevention, even though they used their funds raised elsewhere to finance abortions or to appeal for abortion reform. On 1993-JAN-22, his second day in office, he rescinded the executive order.
2001: Reinstatement of the funding ban: On 2001-JAN-22, during his first day in office, President George W. Bush reinstated the funding ban for family planning programs run by agencies that also provide abortion services out of their own funds. His rationale was somewhat confusing. He wrote to the U.S. Agency for International Development: "It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion, either here or abroad." But no such funds have ever been granted. Existing legislation prevents foreign grants from being used to fund abortions or provide abortion counseling.
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0126-05.htm
January 26, 2001: Family planning research groups, such as the Alan Guttmacher Institute, last year said that if US funding levels were restored to the $540 million (from $425 million), the following would happen: Nearly 12 million more couples in developing countries would gain access to modern methods of contraception.
There would be 4.3 million fewer unintended pregnancies, 1.5 million fewer unintended births, 500,000 fewer miscarriages; 2.2 million fewer abortions each year; 8,000 fewer deaths from unsafe abortions, 7,000 fewer deaths from other causes related to pregnancy and 92,000 fewer deaths of infants.
Bush cut funding on 1-22-2001, then cut it some more in 2002, so it was roughly 1/2 or just over $200 million. However, some of it was restored because of his 2003 Africa/Aids program, which he didn't fully fund either. Bush cut aids funding completely in early 2001, and dropped another program in Congress (around $800K more) too. then restarted the program 2 years later promising roughly the same $ amount he prevented in the first place.
Mike M| 11.30.09 @ 8:52AM
I like the way the United Methadone Clinic (UMC) ...er, United Methodist Church, claims to be Christian. Chopping up little babies by the millions is Satanic, plain and simple.
KyMouse| 11.30.09 @ 8:55AM
"Our Christian faith and our Wesleyan heritage compels us to stand with those who struggle for wholeness and peace in their lives..."
Babies in their mothers' wombs struggle, too, but cannot escape the abortionist's tools.
Mothers who think that killing their babies will bring them peace should talk to their sisters at Silent No More (www.silentnomoreawareness.org).
Margie| 11.30.09 @ 11:55AM
I thank God for you, KYMouse.
Jeremy| 11.30.09 @ 9:19AM
Anyone surprised by this UMC lobby hasn't visited the UMC-sponsored Boston University School of Theology lately, where the ONLY major issue is gay-rights, specifically the gay-marriage lobby. Alumni should be disturbed by last term's "invention" of a new category of award - Distingished YOUNG Alumnus/a - which, of course, went to a young woman minister graduate who distinguished herself during her academic career by her fascist-guerilla warfare techniques against anyone who dissented from hers, and later, as a UMC pastor-perpetual graduate student, nearly derailed the academic career of a distinguished, internationally-recognized UMC pastor-professor (a woman!) whom the Distinguished Young Alumna thought not gay-friendly enough! That's where the UMC's
future leadership is coming from.
Of course, the UMC has always had an odd approach to ecumenism: providing office space at various times both to "Catholics for Free Choice" and G. Augustus Stallings' schismatic Imani African-American Catholic Temple movement.
At the height of Roman Catholic reciprocal insanity, under Washington's Cardinal Hickey, UMC ministers were ordained in (I think the crypt church) of - of all places - the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception!
When a then-seminarian friend of mine wrote to protest, he received a condescending rebuke in response from one of Hickey's hack Monsignori, a fellow named Donahue who went on to become a Bishop (of course) somewhere down South (Charlotte maybe?).
Thank God for Pope Benedict!
Tony in Central PA| 11.30.09 @ 10:27AM
I was shocked to read that Methodism was proabortion. I can't imagine the tortured reasoning they must employ to fit their ideas into those of John Wesley or more importantly, the Gospels.
Its no surprise to me that their membership has been steadily declining.
Sir| 11.30.09 @ 10:46AM
Sadly, my mother has bought into the UMC's line of bull. Anytime she and I talk politics or life or economics, she agrees with me whole-heartedly, but without fail she votes for whatever the mushy, ride-the-fence position and positioner, i.e. Barry Hussein. The tragic mistake among the dwindling protestant denominations is their failure to adhere to the absolute Truth of the Bible. They stand for nothing, so they fall for anything. Hence, the attrition. It's sad. The Bible, Jesus, the Gospel... Confrontational. It's/they're supposed to be. They're not intended to bend to our will, but the other way around.
Margie| 11.30.09 @ 8:35PM
There are plenty of non-denominational churches where you can meet with other Christians, pray, and read the Bible. Stick to the basics. The Gospels. I can't stomach anything else.
Ray| 11.30.09 @ 10:39AM
I am always amazed that the pro-abortionists always seem to claim that this is a "reproductive health care" issue when abortion, by it's very definition, let alone it's deed, is non-reproductive.
Get this through you thick skull, baby killers: You can't reproduce by killing your unborn children. It's impossible!
Michael Dooley| 11.30.09 @ 11:16AM
The top leadership within my own Lutheran Church (ELCA) so strongly covets the status of being a "mainline" church (from 1500-1989, no Lutheran Church could be close to being considered "mainline"). They would love to endorse "reproductive health care" along with the other "mainline" divines except a majority of Lutherans in the pew have a conscience.
The simple fact is the religious left see their churches as platforms to launch their politics. After all, the "peace and justice" crowd can't conceive of the notion that the Church isn't exactly there for their purposes. The mantra they invoke that "this isn't left or right, this is the freedom under the Gospel" has grown tiresome as obviously untrue.
One challenge has remained unanswered: OK. Let's put aside the descriptive words. Say for the sake of argument you are outside the normal American political process. Name which concrete issues you separate yourself from the left’s agenda. Put another way, if we stripped away your public Christian identity and put you next to a group of liberals, in what way(s) would you be different?
Mark30339| 12.1.09 @ 6:13PM
Agreed Michael. It's as if our role as Christians is to support and fund government policies that give equal access to abortion care to all citizens. Great, but why stop there. Shouldn't access to gambling, prostitution, drug use, sex trafficking, burqa repressions and cult worship be equalized as well, in the name of Christian love for our fellow man? Perhaps our Lord is shocked at how these vices remain inaccessible for so many in the world today. Should traditional religious values be allowed to deter these church leaders from manifesting their social and political objectives? Clearly we are expected to make our Christianity conform to these political agendas.
Margie| 11.30.09 @ 12:11PM
"Measures like this [Stupak-Pitts] effectively limit access and delivery of reproductive health care based on one, narrow religious doctrine," Todd complained"
To Ms. Todd: "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."
~Ms. Todd, you choose the wide gate that leads to destruction. Not only do you choose it for yourself, but you drag innocent babies along with you on your murderous path. You preach death. Have you no shame? (Need I ask?)
If you were a real Christian who knew God you wouldn't be doing this. Do you read the Bible? Don't you know that you are going to be held accountable for promoting the deaths of untold numbers of babies?
Repent! For the Kingdom of God is at hand!
Margie| 11.30.09 @ 12:13PM
*above ref. Mt. 7:13&14;.
Pingback| 11.30.09 @ 12:34PM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Wesleyan Abortions? [spectator.org] links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Gabrielle| 11.30.09 @ 1:15PM
This is like the UCC's who say there is no Triune God or the head of the depopulated Episcopal Divinity School, who says abortion can be a "blessing." Then there's good old James Carroll, the supposed "Catholic intellectual," who hates Catholicism, like so many others, the Kennedys among them.
I wish Graham Greene or Evelyn Waugh would rise from the dead--just to see how nutty our culture has become and write about it.
Tony in Central PA| 11.30.09 @ 3:30PM
Gabrielle, there's a guy being advertised on the margins of this webpage by the name of G.K. Chesterton. Like Greene and Waugh, he is also deceased. Writing mainly in the first third of the last century, Chesterton saw where everything was heading and wrote insightful and often prophetic commentary. There's even a society with a website. Give him a look.
Gabrielle| 11.30.09 @ 6:35PM
Thanks Tony...I have read Chesterton, although not closely enough. Want to read Orthodoxy, for one thing. Thanks again!
J Boehner| 11.30.09 @ 1:34PM
I have noticed that abortion rights is always advocated by people that are already born! Ronald Reagan
Margie| 11.30.09 @ 3:12PM
One more reason we loved him!
Kenneth E. MacAlister Jr.| 11.30.09 @ 1:54PM
This makes me sick & ashamed to be part of the UMC. Looks like it's time to find a new church. I am on the administrative council at my church & the UMC is bleeding badly. Now I know why. My wallet is now closed to the UMC.
Ampleforth| 11.30.09 @ 3:05PM
After struggling with the decision for several years, my wife and I left the Methodist Church this summer. It was a tough decision. We had been raised Methodist and were part of a tight-knit church family. We could no longer tithe to our church in good conscience because of what the leadership and the governing body of the UMC stands.
The Methodist Church is duplicitous, saying that it keeps an open mind about so many issues, and they seem to ride the fence. However, when a person studies the church's actions, he finds that the UMC has a definite agenda. It's actions are totally against what my wife and I stand for, so we left it. I encourage other conservative Methodists to do the same.
I've often prayed for a schism in the Methodist Church that will leave it split either along geographical lines (north-south) or ideology (liberal-conservative). I did not want to leave my church, but I was left with no choice.
My new church takes a stand on these issues and is crystal clear about them.
JBobs| 11.30.09 @ 3:26PM
I am a Methodist and am sick to read this. Guess it's time to research the denomination's bona fides.
Lynn| 11.30.09 @ 4:40PM
In addition to my personal belief that abortion is wrong; I oppose tax monies be spent for elective surgeries. To name a few: gastric bypass, lap-band, LASIK, abortion and cosmetic, except for those with congenital abnormalities, disfiguring diseases or traumatic injuries.
Pete | 11.30.09 @ 5:05PM
Doesn't the term "family planning" connote some sort of thoughtful consideration of the consequences of sexual activity in a family setting PRIOR TO impreganation. Also, I do not understand the relevancy of the term "reproductive health" with regards to sucking a human fetus down the sink.
Jennifer| 11.30.09 @ 5:35PM
This is one of the reasons I no longer attend church. On the one hand, you've got fundamentalists who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. On the other, you've got liberals who apparently haven't even read the Bible. Where do reasonable people have to worship?
Margie| 11.30.09 @ 8:42PM
Hi Jennifer,
Try non-denominational churches. You can then seek out others who want Christian fellowship. Then you can meet with them in each others homes to continue, have Bible studies, pray, get to know each other. It's a good start.
Red Phillips | 11.30.09 @ 10:27PM
Any Christian Church worthy of the name should "believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible" as a matter of doctrine.
Red Phillips | 11.30.09 @ 5:51PM
"Our Christian faith and our Wesleyan heritage compels us to stand..."
First, the Christian faith part? Are they really suggesting that Christ thinks killing babies is OK and should be legal and paid for at public expense? How dare they?!
Second, Wesleyan heritage? Poor John Wesley, who was a righteous man of God, is rolling over in his grave at all the things being done in his name. If these liberal charlatans were intellectually honest they would admit that if John Wesley were alive today he would be vilified by the UMC as a Bible thumping fundamentalist.
Pingback| 11.30.09 @ 6:07PM
The American Spectator : Wesleyan Abortions? | crypts links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 11.30.09 @ 6:07PM
The American Spectator : Wesleyan Abortions? | crypts links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Clintidote| 11.30.09 @ 6:44PM
So Methodists are babykillers, eh?
Interesting; I'll keep that in mind.
Jack Neidlinger| 11.30.09 @ 7:12PM
This from a cradle Methodist. You can't fight the culture and the church. To my Anglican brothers and sisters who have seen the light and left the TEC, keep the door unlocked...I'm on my way to join you in serving our Lord!!!
victor| 11.30.09 @ 9:22PM
There are many non-affiliated non-denominational churches out there.
Bible oriented.
Christ centered.
Matt 18:20
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them"
Yosemeti Sam| 12.1.09 @ 11:20AM
" ... "Our Christian faith and our Wesleyan heritage compels us to stand with those who struggle for wholeness and peace in their lives and believe that all people should have equal access to comprehensive medical care," i.e. government-funded abortion, insisted a recent "action alert" from the United Methodist Board of Church and Society...."
How grotesque!
Their message - never one mind the barbaric methodology employed to facilitate such peace of mind for a 'carrier' of innocent human kind.
What " wholeness" ? . Nay, what emptiness!
jasmine1987 | 12.8.09 @ 1:00PM
Great topic, they are more attractive than others, thank you for share.
Pastormelanie | 12.14.09 @ 8:28PM
I left the Methodist church and now have a home church because of this and other serious issues. We will all stand before God one day. I've just started a blog dedicated to awakening the public and Christian conscious to abortion - it's baby killing plain and simple. Jesus did not advocate killing! "But Jesus said, Suffer (let) little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 19:14
michigander_sandusky| 12.20.09 @ 6:16PM
The UMC and their ilk were described over 2,700 years ago: "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet , and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight!" (Isa 5:20-21)
norris hall| 1.9.10 @ 12:05PM
Conservatives like to say that government intervention in our private lives needs to be curbed.
Their anti-choice position is a liberal viewpoint.
I believe that government has no right to interfere when people make personal choices for themselves.
Our government waste too much time and resources on trying to control gambling, prostitution, pot, homosexuality, alcholism, pornography, suicide etc.
Trying to tell a 13 year old mentally retarded girl who is pregnant from a gang rape that she has to become a mother when she can't even take care of herself shows how far conservatives will go to inject the federal government's power into our private lives.
norris hall| 1.9.10 @ 12:05PM
Conservatives like to say that government intervention in our private lives needs to be curbed.
Their anti-choice position is a liberal viewpoint.
I believe that government has no right to interfere when people make personal choices for themselves.
Our government waste too much time and resources on trying to control gambling, prostitution, pot, homosexuality, alcholism, pornography, suicide etc.
Trying to tell a 13 year old mentally retarded girl who is pregnant from a gang rape that she has to become a mother when she can't even take care of herself shows how far conservatives will go to inject the federal government's power into our private lives.
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