Bishop Martino quoted the Family Research Council’s Tom McClusky, who said that, because President Obama’s rescindment of the Mexico City Policy, millions of dollars will be taken away from family planning groups that do not promote abortions and will instead be directed to “organizations that are the most militant in promoting abortion as a population-control method—especially in countries that find abortion objectionable on moral grounds.”
“Contrary to the claims of your staff,” he wrote, the end of the Mexico City Policy ensures that money is taken away from family planning, that abortion is promoted as a method of family planning, and that countries that have moral and cultural objections to abortion are encouraged to abandon their anti-abortion policies.
“Finally, it is never permissible to use immoral means such as artificial contraception to achieve a good end, namely, the reduction of unplanned pregnancies,” Bishop Martino said, saying the use of contraception advances the attitude that having and raising children is “a burden to be avoided.”
“This attitude has contributed mightily to the acceptability of abortion as a means of contraception both at home and abroad.”
The bishop wrote that it is “imperative” to have “utter clarity” on Church teaching relevant to the taking of innocent life and to the special responsibilities that fall to Sen. Casey to oppose abortion and “other clear evils.”
Bishop Martino closed by quoting U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops President Cardinal Francis George’s letter to President Obama urging that the Mexico City Policy be upheld.
“Once the clear line between family planning and abortion is erased, the idea of using family planning to reduce abortions becomes meaningless, and abortion tends to replace contraception as the means for reducing family size,” Cardinal George wrote in a Jan. 23 letter. “A shift toward promoting abortion in developing nations would also increase distrust of the United States in these nations, whose values and culture often reject abortion, at a time when we need their trust and respect.”