In October 2023, the Biden administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services, under the direction of Xavier Becerra, continued its unrelenting attack on pro-life family centers. After a failed attempt to deny financial aid to pro-life centers in Oklahoma, the administration now seeks new limits in a proposed regulation, titled “Strengthening Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) as a Safety Net and Work Program” and created by a federal statute.
According to the statute, the TANF Program was created to (1) provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes or in the homes of relatives; (2) end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage; (3) prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and establish annual numerical goals for preventing and reducing the incidence of these pregnancies; and (4) encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.
The Biden administration seeks to deny much needed financial support for pregnancy resource centers that help women after they conceive rather than focusing on pregnancy prevention—that is, on abortion.
programs that only or primarily provide pregnancy counseling to women only after they become pregnant likely do not meet the reasonable person standard… [for] preventing and reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancies…. If pregnancy prevention programming is a part of an ongoing program, such as year round after-school programming, only those costs associated with delivery of pregnancy prevention should be cost allocated and non-TANF funds used to fund other activities.
This proposed rule would harm the approximate 3,000 not-for-profit pro-life pregnancy resource centers that freely offer a “full range of services, helping women obtain housing, maternity and baby clothes, baby equipment, pre- and post-natal medical care, legal assistance and financial support, information about adoption, and even advice on how a woman in school can continue her education” by denying them financial assistance.
President Biden, of course, abandoned his previous pro-life position, including support for the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal support for abortion, many years ago. This proposed regulation highlights Biden’s and his administration’s hypocrisy by ignoring inconvenient truths, especially about the unborn.
The administration claims to rely on science, for example, in supporting the pseudo-religious ideology of its radical extreme green agenda regarding climate warming, crisis, or change, despite the dubious or debatable evidence for such a controversial stance. Conversely, and hypocritically, Biden and pro-abortion advocates ignore medical evidence proving that unborn children are human at conception, persons who feel pain when being killed while living in what should be the safety of their natural environments, their mothers’ wombs.
Biden, however, has claimed that Pope Francis supposedly told him that he is a good Catholic who should continue to receive the Eucharist. And, at the start of 2024, Biden’s deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said, in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “The president has been adamant that we need to restore Roe. It is unfathomable that women today wake up in a country with less rights than their ancestors had years ago…”
It is true that American politicians must often walk a fine line in keeping their faiths from dominating their official duties. But, just as politicians must follow the law, bishops and other leaders are conscience-bound to ensure compliance with Church teachings. This duty is especially crucial when career politicians such as Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi openly flout Church teachings while professing to be faithful Catholics.
The late Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, eloquently addressed the duty of politicians facing moral questions in his doctrinal note “Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life”. Ratzinger wrote:
When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility. In the face of fundamental and inalienable ethical demands, Christians must recognize that what is at stake is the essence of the moral law, which concerns the integral good of the human person. This is the case with laws concerning abortion and euthanasia.
Bishops and other Catholics must continue to provide witness to Catholic teachings on the importance of respect for the unborn. They must remind politicians of their obligations to follow Magisterial pronouncements if they wish to present themselves as good and faithful Catholics. When bishops and other leaders fail to admonish politicians who blatantly misrepresent their faiths, they risk sowing confusion among the faithful, possibly causing scandal for believers, let alone less observant Catholics by not “speaking the truth to power.”
Those who correct politicians who ignore Catholic teachings on the fundamental issue of the right to life will be following advice in Pope Leo XIII’s 1890 Encyclical, Sapientiae Christianae, “On Christians as Citizens”. Pope Leo reminded politicians to live consistently, “professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine,” not ignoring Church teachings at their convenience in their official duties by becoming what today are called “Cafeteria Catholics.”
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The Biden administration is diabolically possessed. I’ll remain silent on any pope or bishop who actively supports or defends that administration other than to assert that there is no obligation of obedience to them.
I don’t know what line needs to be crossed before this man is excommunicated. Does he need to open a feticide clinic in the White House basement? What further scandal is required?
The deeper scandal is that his shepherds have allowed this to continue. I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes on Judgment Day .
Where in God’s Holy Name is President Biden’s Bishops or Cardinal of his area. Biden touts that he is/was Catholic. Dear God, talk about someone sleeping on the job. Why hasn’t he been denied Holy Communion! Fr. Pat Welsh
I think that all Democrats who hold positions in which they hold the power to make or rescind laws should be excommunicated from Holy Mother Church when they speak out in favor of abortion and/or support/vote for laws that legalize abortion. Mercy towards these people is resulting in the murders of tens of thousands of human beings!
That’s a lot like how mercy towards creepy, judgmental women like you only serves to expand your undeserving sense of entitlement and bizarre control issues. Perhaps you should be excommunicated as well. Just a thought.
Canon 915 says that those who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be given Holy Communion, although Cardinals and Bishops refuse to obey that Canon regarding Biden and other pro-abortion politicians.
Canon 1329 says, I believe, that those who assist in an abortion, and whose assistance is necessary, also receive an automatic excommunication. Biden has ordered that military women assigned to a non-abortion state are to be given free leave and travel expenses to an abortion state if they wish.
Would this policy of his cause him to incur excommunication, since without it these abortions may not occur.
Just wondering.
We read: “It is true that American politicians must often walk a fine line in keeping their faiths from dominating their official duties.”
But, this…such a stupid, stupid man, or whatever. There are no “lines” in DC, only bridges. Everywhere, everywhere, or ecclesially “everyone, everyone!” As yet, in Cardinal Gregory’s fiefdom, puppet Biden still shambles up the communion line (a line!) with a photo-op rosary in his pocket, and himself in the pocket of whatever coven has made its way into is mis-Administration. It’s not even about one’s “faith” so much as it’s about the inborn and universal natural law.
The Aztecs are in charge.
There are lots of problems with the Biden administration, but the issue here is the underlying statute, not the Administration. Not every outcome that disfavors pro-life efforts is a result of animus.
The proposed regulation seems to be based on the most straightforward reading of the authorizing statute (TANF). An organization that “only or primarily” provides counseling to a woman that is already pregnant does not advance the statutory goal of reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancies. If anything, it would increase such pregnancies. Of course, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy is better than an abortion. But the statute doesn’t draw that comparison.
I would think, though, that organizations that primarily provide resources that support needy pregnant women–such as diapers, baby clothes, etc–as many pregnancy centers and diaper banks do, should qualify under the first statutory goal, providing assistance to needing families. The key distinguishing feature would be whether the pregnancy center “only or primarily” provides counseling rather than material assistance.
Everyone knows that this administration is hell-bent on crushing the pro-life movement, including any services that do not promote – yes, promote abortion. Let’s not play these statute games. You “would think” is not the way this administration thinks. And we all know that. Covering for Biden doesn’t blind anyone to the facts. Biden has made no secret of his animus, and he is proud of it.
A man so cajoled by death, in the name of autonomy. The child is innocent. He appears to be so seriously selfish.
His prayerful pose should qualify for Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
Is there anything more this fiend needs to do to prompt a censure from Cardinal(ish) Gregory?
Organize a Latin Mass?
🙂
Thanks to all who commented.
Here is an earlier piece I wrote about some of the issues that are raised in teh discussion.
God bless.
Charlie
https://canopyforum.org/2022/06/20/reflections-on-abortion-president-biden-catholic-politicians-and-church-teachings-redux-the-truth-will-set-you-free/
Oops, my apologies for the typo it my autofill; I had not noticed it until my wife told me, should be Russo, not Russ. My bad!
This is THE most anti-life administration in US history. Not only have they allowed for abortion up until the time of birth, but if the infant survives, no medical care is to be given to it. It is to be placed in basically a death chamber where is can die on it’s own. Disgusting, despicable, and demonic.
Anyone who votes for a DEMONcrat, is not a true Catholic. And shame on ANY person of the cloth who offers the Sacrament of the Eucharist to any of them, from priest to Pope. That member of the clergy is being hypocritical and encouraging them to even greater depths of sin.