Both Shriver and his wife were signatories to a full-page July 1992 New York Times advertisement protesting the Democratic Party’s embrace of legalized abortion. The ad, titled “The New American Compact,” declared the pro-abortion Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade to be “the most momentous act of exclusion in our history” which deprived every unborn human being of the “most fundamental” human right to life.
While many Catholic commentators have focused on Sargent Shriver’s principled pro-life stand and public service, Shriver played a significant role in the controversies over government funding of birth control.
As head the Office of Economic Opportunity, Shriver led the Johnson Administration’s “War on Poverty.” His office was also the first to fund birth control programs at a time when the American political establishment was embracing contraceptives and many influential people were pressing for a change in Catholic teaching.
In a series of speeches in the mid-1960s, published on the website of the Sargent Shriver Peace Institute, Shriver praised the Office of Economic Opportunity for being “the first agency in the history of the federal government to give public money directly to private agencies for family planning purposes.”
His Oct. 1967 speech at Hardin-Simmons University in Abeline, Texas noted Catholic criticism that his office was “doing too much by way of providing money for Planned Parenthood.”
After Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood would go on to become the United States’ largest abortion provider.
The July 7, 1966 Denver Catholic Register reported that Shriver circulated a memorandum saying his office had “absolutely no hesitation” in approving family planning grants.
Bishop Paul F. Tanner, then-general secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference--a predecessor of the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference--criticized the memo for abandoning neutrality on government support for birth control in favor of “outright advocacy.” Catholic bishops at the time voiced concern that the U.S. government would pressure families in economic distress to use it.