Monday April 19, 2010
LifeSiteNews Clarification Re: NETWORK on Abortion
April 19, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Current and former members of NETWORK, a lobby group of Catholic religious sisters and some lay members, recently contacted LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) to request that we correct references in our articles to the group as pro-abortion, which were deemed “highly offensive.”
When LSN asked for the group’s official position on legalized abortion, NETWORK Communications Coordinator Stephanie Niedringhaus responded only that “we don’t lobby on abortion just as we don’t lobby on other important issues, including the death penalty and human trafficking.”
The references to NETWORK as “pro-abortion” arose after NETWORK recently made headlines for lending crucial support to the federal health care bill, despite its vast expansion of abortion through government funding. Several U.S. bishops have specifically condemned the group for supporting the measure, including Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, who said NETWORK’s support was not “newsworthy” from a group that “has rarely shown much enthusiasm for a definition of ‘social justice’ that includes the rights of the unborn child.”
In addition, last July, while debate over abortion funding in the bill was raging, NETWORK executive director Sr. Simone Campbell complained that health care reform was getting “caught in the details” and should be passed immediately. Later, Campbell backed a measure expanding Title X family planning funding that Planned Parenthood supported and the U.S. Bishops’ pro-life office denounced as a “Planned Parenthood Economic Stimulus Plan.”
However, in the absence of an explicitly pro-abortion policy or explicitly pro-abortion lobbying efforts on the part of NETWORK, LSN has removed references to the group as “pro-abortion” in the following articles: Bishop Tells Pro-Life Democrat: Nuns Can’t Absolve ObamaCare Vote; Planned Parenthood Cheers ‘Brave’ Nuns for Supporting Pro-Abortion Health Bill; Pelosi Invokes ‘St. Joseph the Worker’ to Pass Pro-Abortion Health Bill; Cincinnati Archbishop Condemns ‘Catholic’ Groups’ Support for Health Bill.