The scorecard was produced by Network, the social justice lobby led by Sister Simone Campbell, who led a prayer at the 2020 Democratic National Convention and endorsed Biden at Thursday night's event.
In a recent interview with CNA, Campbell was asked if her organization opposes legal abortion. "That is not our issue. That is not it. It is above my pay grade," she responded.
The scorecard notes that Trump, and not Biden, is seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade, but adds that Biden, and not Trump, would increase support for pregnant women and fight maternal mortality.
It then covers other issues, claiming that Biden "[s]upports families in the tax code;" opposes racism and xenophobia, the death penalty, and "discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and disabled people;" and would protect housing assistance, health care benefits, the right to organize, and humane treatment of immigrants.
Religious freedom is not mentioned in the voter materials. Biden has said that he would repeal new religious exemptions to the contraceptive mandate, which had granted relief to Catholic organizations including the Little Sisters of the Poor. If the exemptions are repealed, the sisters could once again have to appear in court.
Biden has also supported the Equality Act, which would create broad anti-discrimination protections for sexual orientation and gender identity that the U.S. bishops' conference has warned would threaten religious freedom.
Pope Francis has made forceful denunciations of abortion. He has likened it to "hiring a hitman," and has condemned selective abortion of the disabled as "the same as the Nazis to maintain the purity of the race, but with white gloves."
In his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, Pope Francis wrote that "this defence of unborn life is closely linked to the defence of each and every other human right."
Patrick Carolan, Catholic outreach director of Vote Common Good, a group campaigning for Biden, told CNA that Thursday's event was meant to galvanize Biden's Catholic support and to reach undecided voters.
Carolan told CNA that "there's probably about 20% of the Catholic vote that's still in play," especially in several key states that Trump narrowly won in 2016.
"I think there's a lot of, really, dissatisfaction, a lot of buyers' remorse among Catholics," he said of Trump voters, especially white Catholics, he added.
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"A lot of it is with white Catholic women, and a lot of that is over the feeling of disgust over the separation of children and seeing pictures of children in cages," he said. "And if you're a mother, you can't see that and think that that's okay. And I know a lot of white Catholic women who saw those pictures and saw what was happening there and it just disgusted them, and they couldn't vote for somebody who supported that."
On Thursday, before the "Catholics for Biden" launch, the group "Catholics for Trump" attacked Biden's record on abortion and religious freedom.
The Trump campaign's Catholic voter outreach began with its online launch in April, which emphasized Trump's efforts to appoint federal judges who were not "activist," his administration's pro-life policies and measures to protect religious freedom, and his record on the economy and on the coronavirus pandemic-which has killed more than 180,000 Americans.
Trump targeted pro-life voters this week, sending a letter to pro-life leaders outlining his policy priorities for his second term. The letter contained some of the same promises he made to pro-life voters in 2016.
Trump's 2020 letter promises to build upon "our transformation of the federal judiciary" with judges who will "not legislate an abortion agenda from the bench."
He also promised to "overcome Democratic filibusters in Congress to pass and finally sign into law" a 20-week abortion ban. He pledged to sign legislation protecting infant abortion survivors and blocking all taxpayer funding of abortion providers, and promised to "fully defund the abortion industry" of taxpayer dollars.