Columbia, S.C., Aug 2, 2018 / 12:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Planned Parenthood has filed a lawsuit challenging a South Carolina executive order barring Medicaid funds from going toward any health services at abortion clinics.
The executive order, issued last month by Gov. Henry McMaster, has drawn support from pro-life advocates.
“We commend Gov. McMaster for not only keeping his promise to protect innocent human life in South Carolina but also keeping his promise to taxpayers of South Carolina who should not be forced to fund agencies that destroy human life,” said Lisa Van Riper, president of South Carolina Citizens for Life, according to National Right to Life News Today.
McMaster’s July 2018 executive order said the state “should not contract with abortion clinics for family planning services.”
It told the state’s Medicaid agency to use money left over from last year’s budget on the state’s family planning program, but deemed abortion clinics and any affiliated physicians or medical practices enrolled in Medicaid to be unqualified for the funds. The agency must terminate these clinics and deny any future enrollment applications from such providers, the order said.
In early July, McMaster vetoed about $16 million from South Carolina’s budget for fiscal year 2018-19 in order to defund the local affiliates of the United States’ largest performer of abortions, the South Carolina news site The State reports. In the last two years, less than $85,000 in Medicaid reimbursements went to Planned Parenthood, out of a total of $42 million in reimbursements in the state. These funded Planned Parenthood birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and one of its patients filed suit in U.S. district court July 28, saying the executive order would block patients from accessing “preventive health care services” at Planned Parenthood in South Carolina.
Planned Parenthood argued that federal law bars states from interfering with Medicaid patients’ access to “the qualified provider of their choice.” It said the state’s two Planned Parenthood health centers are in areas that have been federally designated as having a provider shortage.
Brian Symmes, a spokesman for the governor, told The State newspaper July 27 that the governor will “fight this lawsuit with everything he has.”
“Like millions of South Carolinians, he believes in the fundamental right to life for unborn children and does not believe tax dollars should go to organizations that perform elective abortions,” Symmes said.
Holly Gatling, executive director of South Carolina Citizens for Life, rejected claims that poor women must rely on Planned Parenthood for health care.
“There are numerous health clinics throughout South Carolina that offer high quality, comprehensive health care to women of childbearing age without peddling abortion as just another means of birth control,” she said.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Battle Creek, Mich., Feb 7, 2019 / 01:47 pm (CNA).- When two Michigan high school students were planning for a community service project, they decided they wanted to help younger children learn to pray. So, they fundraised, designed, and managed the co… […]
Anna Lulis from Moneta, Virginia, (left) who works for the pro-life group Students for Life of America, stands beside an abortion rights demonstrator outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2022, after the court’s decision in the Dobbs abortion case was announced. / Katie Yoder/CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 5, 2022 / 13:31 pm (CNA).
U.S. Catholic voters are split on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, but a majority agrees that abortion should be restricted and that there should be at least some protections for the unborn child in the womb, according to a new EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll.
The court’s June 24 ruling in the Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization upended 49 years of nationwide legalized abortion and freed states to regulate abortion as they see fit.
When asked whether they agreed or disagreed with Roe being overturned, 46.2% agreed, 47.8% disagreed, and 6% said they weren’t sure.
Catholic voters were similarly split on whether they are more or less likely to support a candidate who agrees with Roe’s dismantling: 42% said they were more likely, 41.9% said they were less likely, and 16.1% were unsure.
At the same time, the poll results point to apparent inconsistencies in Catholic voters’ positions on abortion.
While nearly half of Catholic voters in the poll said they disagreed with Roe being overturned, a large majority (86.5%) said they support some kind of limit on abortion, even though Roe and related abortion cases allowed only narrow regulation at the state level. The breakdown is as follows:
26.8% said abortion should be allowed only in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother;
19.8% said abortion should be allowed until 15 weeks when the baby can feel pain;
13.1% said that abortion should be allowed only during the first six months of pregnancy;
9.9% said that abortion should be allowed only until a heartbeat can be detected, and
9.1% said that abortion should be allowed only to save the life of the mother.
Of special note for Catholic pro-life leaders, only a small minority of Catholic voters — 7.8% — were aligned with the clear and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church that abortion should never be allowed.
On the other end of the spectrum of abortion views, 13.4% of Catholic voters said that abortion should be available to a woman at any time during her pregnancy.
The poll, conducted by the Trafalgar Group from Sept. 12–19, surveyed 1,581 Catholic voters and has a margin of error of 2.5%. The questionnaire was administered using a mix of six different methods, including phone calls, text messages, and email.
The poll’s results echo surveys of the general U.S. population on abortion. A Pew Research Center survey from March found that 19% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all cases, while 8% said it should be illegal in all cases. More recent Gallup data from May found that 35% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal under any circumstances while 13% said it should be illegal in all circumstances.
The Pew Research Center data also looked at Catholic adults. Thirteen percent said abortion should be legal in all cases, while 10% said it should be illegal in all cases.
A previous EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll released in July found that 9% of Catholic likely voters said abortion should never be permitted and 18% said that abortion should be available at any time. The poll similarly showed that a majority of Catholic voters (82%) support some kind of restriction on abortion.
Confused about what Roe said?
The poll’s results came as little surprise to Catholic pro-life public policy experts such as Elizabeth R. Kirk.
“This study confirms a phenomenon we have known for some time, i.e., that there is an enormous disconnect between the scope of abortion practices permitted by the Roe regime and what abortion practices Americans actually support,” Kirk, director of the Center for Law and the Human Person at The Catholic University of America, told CNA.
Kirk, who also serves as a faculty fellow for the Institute for Human Ecology and research associate and lecturer at the Columbus School of Law, noted the finding that nearly 42% of Catholic voters said they are less likely to support a candidate who agrees with Roe being overturned.
“At first glance that suggests that many Catholic voters wanted to keep Roe in place,” she said. “Yet, the study also reveals that 86.5% of Catholic voters want some type of restriction on abortion access.”
Why the inconsistency? “Most people do not realize that Roe allowed states to permit unlimited abortion access throughout the entire pregnancy and made it difficult, or even impossible, to enact commonsense restrictions supported by the majority of Americans,” Kirk observed.
“Many people who ‘support Roe’ actually disagree, unknowingly, with what it permitted,” she added. “All Dobbs has done is return abortion policy to the legislative process so that the people may enact laws which reflect the public consensus.”
Mass-goers more strongly pro-life
The new poll, the second of three surveys of Catholic voters tied to the midterm elections on Nov. 8, shows that the opinions of Catholic voters on abortion and other issues vary depending on how often respondents attend Mass.
Only a small portion of those who attend Mass at least once a week said that abortion should be allowed at any time: 0% of those who attend Mass daily, 1% who attend more than once a week, and 8% of those who attend weekly support abortion without restrictions. In contrast, 57.5% of Catholic voters who attend Mass daily, 21.5% of those who attend more than once a week, and 15.6% of those who attend weekly say abortion should never be permitted.
In addition to respondents’ apparent confusion about what Roe stipulated, the poll suggests that many Catholic voters don’t fully understand what their Church teaches about abortion.
Less than one-third of Catholic voters who said they accept all Church teachings (31.1%) said that abortion should never be permitted, and 5% who profess to fully accept the Church’s teachings said abortion should be permitted at any time.
Overall, 32.8% of respondents reported attending Mass at least once a week, with another 30.7% attending once a year or less. Only 15% agreed that they accept all of the Church’s teachings and live their lives accordingly, with another 34.5% saying they generally accept most of the Church’s teachings and try to live accordingly.
Pew Research Center also looked at how Mass attendance factors into Catholics’ views on abortion. Among those who attend Mass at least once a week: 4% said abortion should be legal in all cases, and 24% said it should be illegal in all cases, Pew found.
Strong support for pregnancy centers
The poll asked Catholic voters about a variety of other topics including abortion limits, Holy Communion for pro-abortion politicians, conscience protections for health care workers, and pro-life pregnancy centers.
EWTN
Among the findings:
Catholic voters are prioritizing other issues above abortion. Only 10.1% of Catholic voters identified abortion as the most important issue facing the nation, falling behind inflation (34.2%) and the economy/jobs (19.7%) and tying with immigration. At the same time, a higher percentage of Catholic voters chose abortion than crime (8.7%), climate change (8.1% ), health care (6.8%), K–12 education (1.7%), or religious freedom (0.8%).
About half of Catholic voters (49.3%) disagreed that Catholic political leaders who support abortion publicly and promote policies that increase abortion access should refrain from taking Communion, while 36.7% said they should refrain.
A majority (67.4%) of Catholic voters said they support public funding for pro-life pregnancy centers that offer pregnant women life-affirming alternatives to abortion, while 18.3% said they did not favor using tax dollars for this purpose.
A comparable majority (61.8%) said that political and church leaders should be speaking out against the recent attacks and acts of vandalism on pregnancy resource centers.
When asked about conscience protections for health care workers that would allow them to opt out of providing “services” such as abortion, a majority of Catholic voters (60.7%) said that health care workers should not be obligated to engage in procedures that they object to based on moral or religious grounds. Conversely, 25.3% said that health care workers should be obligated to engage in procedures that they object to based on moral or religious grounds.
Work to be done
What is the takeaway from the latest poll, where abortion is concerned?
“This polling shows that Catholics, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, support commonsense protections for women and the unborn,” Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, told CNA.
“It also affirms other recent polling that found Americans by strong numbers support the work of pregnancy resource centers in providing women facing crisis pregnancies with a real choice and the chance to thrive as mothers despite difficult circumstances,” she noted.
EWTN
At the same time, McGuire added, “This new polling is also a reminder that more work needs to be done in catechizing Catholics on foundational Church teaching in support of vulnerable life in all stages — an effort that is continually undermined by Catholic politicians in the highest echelons of power who use their platforms to advocate for extreme abortion policies in direct violation of Church teaching.”
Nearly all of those surveyed (99.2%) said they plan to vote in the midterm elections on Nov. 8.
The Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration from the Our Lady of Solitude Monastery in Tonopah, Arizona, accompanied by their local priest. / Mother Marie Andre Campbell
Denver, Colo., Aug 11, 2023 / 10:13 am (CNA).
On Aug. 11, the Catholic Church c… […]
1 Comment
I’d like to emphasize South Carolina Citizens for Life’s assertion that quality comprehensive healthcare is available to men and women on medicaid without resorting to Planned Parenthood. For example, in the state capital, this network of privately-run health care clinics serves the families of all incomes both in the inner-city near PP’s offices and out in the rural communities that would otherwise go unserved. http://www.ecchc.org/Services
How good is the care at these clinics? So good I send my kids there. One of the clinic’s physicians recently detected a cardiac tumor just by listening to my daughter’s heart before a booster shot, and referred her for the follow-up care she needed. The specialists at MUSC were impressed at the pediatrician’s attentiveness.
South Carolina doesn’t need Planned Parenthood. We have excellent, affordable, sliding scale care from reputable clinics.
I’d like to emphasize South Carolina Citizens for Life’s assertion that quality comprehensive healthcare is available to men and women on medicaid without resorting to Planned Parenthood. For example, in the state capital, this network of privately-run health care clinics serves the families of all incomes both in the inner-city near PP’s offices and out in the rural communities that would otherwise go unserved. http://www.ecchc.org/Services
How good is the care at these clinics? So good I send my kids there. One of the clinic’s physicians recently detected a cardiac tumor just by listening to my daughter’s heart before a booster shot, and referred her for the follow-up care she needed. The specialists at MUSC were impressed at the pediatrician’s attentiveness.
South Carolina doesn’t need Planned Parenthood. We have excellent, affordable, sliding scale care from reputable clinics.