White House: Pope Francis ‘has spoken differently’ than Biden on abortion

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ pro-life committee / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Washington D.C., Sep 17, 2021 / 15:02 pm (CNA).

The U.S. bishops’ conference on Friday warned against abortion funding in a massive spending bill being considered by Congress.

“Congress can, and must, turn back from including taxpayer funding of abortion, in the Build Back Better Act,” said Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, the chair of the U.S. bishops’ pro-life committee, and Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, chair of the bishops’ domestic justice and human development committee.

“We urge all members of Congress and the Administration to work in good faith to advance important and life-saving healthcare provisions without forcing Americans to pay for the deliberate destruction of unborn human life,” they stated.

This week, House committees advanced portions of a federal spending package that could ultimately total $3.5 trillion. The package would include various policy priorities of the Biden administration and congressional Democrats, such as funding of universal pre-K, free tuition for two-year community college, investments in “green” energy, and a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants.

Included in the health care portions of the package are some proposals supported by the U.S. bishops’ conference. These include expansion of Medicaid coverage, postpartum coverage for mothers, and funding of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

“Catholic bishops have been strong advocates for proposals at both the federal and state level that ensure all people will have access to affordable healthcare,” both Naumann and Coakley said on Friday.

“However, the legislative text advanced by the two House committees also funds abortion, the deliberate destruction of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters – those in the womb. This cannot be included,” they said.

Pro-life leaders have warned that health care spending in the bill could fund abortions, unless specific pro-life language is added to the legislation to block such funding. Federal dollars could fund abortion coverage through Affordable Care Act health subsidies and through the creation of a parallel Medicaid structure for states that refused to expand Medicaid.

Some members, such as Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), tried to insert amendments to the reconciliation bill prohibiting abortion funding; those attempts were blocked this week, in hearings of the House Ways and Means Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The budget package would need to pass through the process of “reconciliation,” the process by which budget-related items can pass the Senate with only a simple majority vote. It is being considered in addition to the normal government funding “appropriations” bills for the 2022 fiscal year.

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Denver, Colo., May 30, 2019 / 06:30 pm (CNA).- The maker of a popular fertility awareness app says it is built on peer-reviewed research and a scientific approach to women’s health, after a recent report criticized the app’s developers and funders  as “anti-abortion, anti-gay Catholic campaigners.”

A May 30 report in the Guardian said the FEMM app “sows doubt about birth control” and “features claims from medical advisers who are not licensed to practice in the U.S.”

The app, sold by the FEMM Foundation, markets itself as a period and ovulation tracker with three options for users – to achieve pregnancy, avoid pregnancy, or track their health.

Anna Halpine, CEO of the FEMM foundation, told CNA that “FEMM is a science and evidence based program for women’s health, and our app allows us to provide personalized health care information to women directly.”

“We think that this knowledge is basic women’s health literacy, and we think every women has the right to know how her body works, in order to make an informed choice about how she wants to manage her fertility,” Halpine added.

The app primarily serves as a tracker for various markers of fertility and health for women, with options to track periods, cervical mucus, medications, hormone levels, basal body temperature, and a host of physical and emotional symptoms.

The app has been downloaded more than 400,000 times in the past 4 years, according to the Guardian. It has 4.8 out of 5 stars in more than 1,000 reviews in the Apple store. The FEMM Foundation also offers classes on ovulation and fertility charting, as well as “medical management” training in “protocols for the management of ovarian dysfunction, menopause and infertility.”

The Guardian’s report said that FEMM appears to be biased against hormonal birth control.

“The FEMM app’s literature sows doubt about the safety and efficacy of hormonal birth control, asserting that it may be deleterious to a woman’s health and that a safer, ‘natural’ way for women to avoid pregnancy is to learn their cycles,” The Guardian reported.

Halpine told CNA that FEMM aims to help women understand their own bodies.

“FEMM sees reproductive endocrinology (hormones) as the unifying element in women’s health. Our approach is to empower women to understand their hormones and fluctuations, and to use our, or other charting systems, to monitor their own personal hormone patterns. The critical element is their pattern; based on the observations that they make of changing biomarkers in their body (temperature, or cervical fluid or dryness) women can ‘see’ their own changes of estrogen and progesterone cycle to cycle.”

“Ovulation is the sign that these hormones, plus many others, are at the right level at the right time. This is why we say that ovulation is a sign of health,” Halpine said.

Dr. Nathaniel DeNicola, an OB-GYN with the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, told The Guardian that: “The birth control pill is one of the greatest health achievements of the 20th century” and is “standard” in women’s health care.

The Guardian did not, however, mention risks of artificial contraception identified by scientific research.

According to a study posted on the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, “hormonal contraceptives and hormone replacement therapies are classified as carcinogenic to humans (group 1) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.”

According to the National Cancer Institute, the use of oral contraceptives is associated with increased risk for breast cancer, endometrial cancer and cervical cancer, while it is also associated with a decreased risk for cervical cancer.

The Guardian also reported an outdated claim on the efficacy of fertility-awareness based methods (FBAMs) of birth control, also called Natural Family Planning methods, which FEMM facilitates. The Guardian reported that the efficacy rate of FBAMs is about 75%.

In fact there are a variety of FBAMs available, each with varying levels of efficacy, depending on the method and the real-life use. For example, the Marquette Method, an FBAM, has been reported to be 89% effective with typical use, compared with an 87% efficacy rate for real-life use of condoms as a birth control method.  

The Guardian reported that implants and IUDs are among the most effective of birth control methods. However, IUDs can also cause some of the most severe side effects, including migration of the device and the perforation of organs.

The Guardian’s report noted that a financial supporter of the FEMM app is the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a non-profit whose chairman is Sean Fieler, a wealthy philanthropist and businessman who lives in Princeton, New Jersey, and who has previously backed pro-life politicians and causes in the past.

The mission of the Chiaroscuro Foundation is “to renew in our culture a deep awareness of the composite unity of our shared human nature.” According to The Guardian, the foundation donated between $350,000 and $1 million to FEMM each year between 2015-2017, or the majority of its operating budget.

Halpine told The Guardian that FEMM does not comment on abortion, or advocate on political issues.

“FEMM has never commented on the abortion issue. And doesn’t work in that area. FEMM is an organization committed to expanding information research and knowledge about women’s reproductive health around the world,” Halpine told The Guardian.

The Guardian noted that some of FEMM’s medical advisors are based in Chile, and are not licensed to practice in the United States.

“The Reproductive Health Research Institute (RHRI) provides FEMM’s medical assertions, research and training. The two physicians leading RHRI are listed on its website as Pilar Vigil and Patricio Contreras. Vigil is listed as the medical director of RHRI, which has two addresses, one in New York City and another in Santiago, Chile,” the Guardian reported.

“Vigil is listed as an OB-GYN and Contreras as a ‘medical doctor’, but neither is licensed to practice medicine in the United States,” The Guardian noted.

Halpine explained that “FEMM works with medical researchers and providers around the world. Our growing network of health educators and providers in the United States and other countries serves our users worldwide. Our global network is inclusive, and FEMM benefits from the diversity of experience and ideas that our health educators and providers bring to us around the world.“

On its website, FEMM provides health center locators and doctor referrals, and lists licensed health centers and doctors located in the United States.

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Springfield, Ill., Oct 24, 2019 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- The role of president in a bishops’ conference is not as powerful as one may assume, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield in Illinois told CNA Wednesday.

“It’s important to understand that the bishops’ conference is not some kind of a regulatory body or a supervisory body,” Paprocki told CNA Oct. 23.

The conference, in fact, “doesn’t have any authority over bishops in their own diocese.”

While it would be easy to draw comparisons between the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops  and the United States Congress, Paprocki said that this was not at all the proper analogy for a bishops’ conference.

It is not normally the role of the USCCB to create or pass legislation, the bishop said.

“The meetings of bishops are not normally legislators–I say normally because there are some exceptions to that, and the exceptions are very narrowly defined in Canon 455,” he explained.

These exceptions include setting certain transactional thresholds or the age of confirmation, as well as voting on a specific issue with the permission of the Holy See.

“An example of (the latter) would be the Essential Norms that the bishops adopted in Dallas in 2002, for the protection of minors that was in conjunction with the Charter for the the Protection of Children and Young People,” he said.

“So the Charter is an example of a voluntary document that the bishops adopted.”

A conference of bishops, Paprocki said, is a “grouping of bishops in a region or in a country that comes together for joint pastoral activities.”

These joint pastoral activities mostly involve “advocacy type efforts,” he said.

“That’s, that’s basically what the conference tries to do–the bishops working together as equals.”

The president of a bishops’ conference has more of an advisory role than anything else, said Paprocki.

While the president would author statements from the conference, as well as keep the general assemblies running in an orderly fashion, he does not have supervisory authority over other bishops in their dioceses, nor does the president alone set the agenda for the general assemblies.

“It’s not really an authoritarian position,” said Paprocki. “That position is not like a supervisor of the other bishops and in that sense of mission.” Bishops are only accountable to the pope, Paprocki said, who is represented in the United States by an apostolic nuncio.

Paprocki is one of 10 bishops who have been listed as candidates for the upcoming presidential and vice-presidential elections at the United States Conference of Cathoilc Bishops. Candidates are nominated by their brother bishops, and Paprocki told CNA he was “quite surprised” to see his name put forward.

The current USCCB president, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, will conclude his term at next month’s general assembly in Baltimore. Typically, the vice president of the USCCB is voted in to lead the conference for the next term. Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles is the conference’s vice president.

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