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‘Henry Hyde was one of my heroes,” House Republican leader John Boehner told a crowd on a rooftop in Washington, D.C., over a month after the historic vote in the House of Representatives on the health-care legislation, to which he defiantly said, “Hell, no.”
Receiving from Americans United for Life a Defender of Life award named after the late Illinois Republican congressman, a pro-life leader, Boehner joked, “I know it wasn’t convenient for my mother to have twelve of us” — he has eleven brothers and sisters. “Thank God I was number two.”
About the moment he started talking about his big Catholic family, his mother and father, and the bar his family owned back home in Ohio, Boehner, known to show more emotion than you might expect from his Dean Martin persona, was overflowing with emotion about his friend Henry Hyde and the stakes in the fight for human life.
His comments, and the event, echoed his remarks a few years ago at Henry Hyde’s memorial. There, Boehner remembered his colleague of 16 years: “Treating everyone with dignity and respect came naturally to Henry. Not just because he was kind and full of decency, but because he truly believed all human life is precious. Henry was at peace in the presence of others — even those who disagreed with him most — because of his unshakeable faith in the sanctity of every human life. In a vocation often marked by senseless, noisy debate, Henry Hyde was a clear, calm, and commanding voice for justice, for the defenseless, for the innocent. Always.”
The health-care bill that passed this year, of course, was opposed by the nation’s Catholic bishops, who opposed it despite their stated desires for “universal” health care. It was opposed because on life there can be no compromise. John Boehner knows it. And the culture of death’s victory that March Sunday (of all days) clearly had an impact on him, one that has deepened his resolve. “We may have lost the battle,” he said, “but we will not lose the war.”
He wasn’t alone.
Joining him at the ceremony was another Republican congressman, Chris Smith of New Jersey. Smith is a great defender of human life, both here and abroad. He doesn’t always vote along party lines on some other issues, but he has garnered a great deal of respect nonetheless, thanks to his uncompromising commitment to life. Also in attendance was Rep. Daniel Lipinski, a true pro-life Democrat from Illinois, who stood firm against the health-care legislation in March.
The AUL event could very easily have been a continuation of another celebration I attended earlier in the week: an ecumenical, bipartisan gathering at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City in honor of the late John Cardinal O’Connor, whose moral voice from that Fifth Avenue pulpit frequently had something to offer by way of guidance and rebuke to the politics of his day. But it was never confused for partisanship. And it always made clear what the Church believed when it came to innocent human life. His lasting voice continues to be a challenge to all parties.
Perhaps O’Connor’s most palpable legacy was the establishment of the Sisters of Life, an order of women religious who protect and defend human life through prayer and service. They take in women and their children, they minister to post-abortive women and men, and they have served some 10,000 children and counting. Pregnant women frequently come to the Sisters after referrals by pregnancy-care centers, priests, or women who have previously been served by the Sisters. The Sisters of Life help form the backbone of the pro-life movement.
“His” Sisters were part of a coalition of Catholic religious sisters (the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious) who issued a statement in March in opposition to the House’s final health-care legislation. Their statement didn’t get as much press coverage as another statement from a different group of Catholic women religious, because it wasn’t convenient to the agenda of the ruling party and most media outlets. But they stood with the Catholic bishops in opposing the health-care legislation on the grounds that it was a human-rights violation, writing, “Protection of life and freedom of conscience are central to morally responsible judgment. We join the bishops in seeking ethically sound legislation.”
After the vote, Lipinski told a hometown columnist, “I could not vote for a bill that would change the status quo on funding for abortion.” His honesty and clarity on the details and principle helped him be honest about other problems with the legislation, too. “There were aspects of the president’s package that I liked. Helping people get insurance, that sort of thing. But we weren’t really voting for health reform. We were voting for a bill that is financially unsustainable. And I couldn’t support that bill.”
At the O’Connor celebration, Helen Alvare, who was the pro-life face of the U.S. Catholic bishops during many of O’Connor’s years in New York, credited the late cardinal with “enabl[ing] the pro-life movement to survive and to thrive” through his leadership and encouragement at a time “when we felt outspent and overpowered.”
In the wake of the passage of that health-care legislation, it’s a familiar feeling. But the “strictly non-partisan,” as Alvare described it, message of Cardinal O’Connor, along with his living legacy — the work and the prayers of the women of the Sisters of Life — should serve as inspiration to Boehner, Lipinski, and every Catholic and other legislator, activist, and voter who looks at much coming from our political, judicial, and cultural fronts and sees the fruits of a culture of death. In fact, some of Alvare’s words about O’Connor could apply to those legislators, too. A movement is kept viable in no small part through leadership.
– Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. She can be reached at klopez@nationalreview.com.