Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council found an abortion “debate” only the “open minds” of the Obama administration would love, as he explained on The Cloakroom blog:
What if you were watching a news interview about “reducing the need for abortion” and the only people you invited were pro-abortion? Would you call that fair and balanced reporting? Well that is what MSNBC’s Chris Matthews did on his Hardball program the other night.
The three people speaking on the issue were Mr. Matthews himself, who has become more and more vocal on his support for abortion over the years and Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). Chris Matthews describes Representative Ryan as “a Democrat from Ohio who opposes abortion rights,” however Representative Ryan has been pretty consistent in his support of abortion. In the last year alone, according to the FRCAction Scorecard for the 110th Congress, both Reps. DeLauro and Ryan voted for human cloning, for destructive embryonic stem cell experimentation, for international and national taxpayer funding of abortionists and against abstinence programs and giving health care coverage for unborn children. Representative Ryan’s record has been so poor on the life issue that even Democrats for Life have dissociated themselves from him.
The three were talking about the DeLauro/Ryan bill that they claim will reduce abortions. This bill is a pro-abortion funding bill that would increase funding for Title X family planning and thereby increase the amount of money going to groups like Planned Parenthood.
Matthews not only messed up Ryan’s actual record, he also ended by calling him a Republican. As Matthews discussed the urgent need for artificial birth control, he never pointed out that both Reps. Ryan and DeLaura are Catholics whose public advocacy is dramatically at odds with Catholic teaching.
There was a third guest, the quietest of the group, author James Carroll, who was the only one to discuss Obama’s Notre Dame speech as a Catholic matter — and he really carpet-bombed the Vatican as a global center of illogic, conflating its failure to accept contraception with its failure to accept Galileo:
And that is, in a sense, the crucial Catholic problem. As long as the bishops conflate birth control and abortion as grave moral failings, the Catholic church is not going to be helping to resolve this problem.
The great thing about President Obama‘s appearance yesterday was it was the Catholic church visible in this country as it really is. The people have already moved away from the teaching of the bishops on this question.