This Goes Under the Heading: It's About Time!

What has the Roman Catholic Church been waiting for? ABC has just released "breaking" news that in a letter just released, three Catholic bishops leading the Church’s efforts on health care warned Congress that “we will have no choice but to oppose the bill” unless current bills are amended: among other concerns, central is their credo that no one should be forced to pay for or participate in abortion. The letter was signed by Bishop William Murphy, Cardinal Justin Rigali and Bishop John Wester.

The bishops simply don’t buy the argument that House Democrats found a way to block public funding for abortions with the Capps amendment, and they insist that the Hyde amendment doesn’t apply to the bills because they are not appropriations measures. A sizable bloc of House Democrats, led by Bart Stupak of Michigan, agree and are pressuring for a clear prohibition on public funding.

I was a Labor & Delivery nurse for 20 years. I spent a lot of my time during those years working as part of a team with other medical professionals to save premature babies. The idea that a nurse or other medical professional might be "forced" into helping to perform abortions is my tipping point--the point in the issue that officially tips me into crazyville. If someone wants an abortion, I won't stop them. On the other hand, I do not want to pay for anyone's abortion. If a person believes in abortion, then they ought to start their own fund in anticipation of paying for it. Maybe call it the "If I Need to Kill My Own Baby Fund." In 20 years of nursing, I never saw ONE INSTANCE--not one--of a mother who needed a late term abortion because of her own compromised physical status. The issue is looked at as "better out than in," and a baby is delivered early if it's in the best interests of either the mother or the baby, and then the baby is taken care of in the neonatal ICU--at taxpayer expense, if necessary.

If I live to be 100, I will never understand those who feel our country has gone down a dark road and become a bad, bad place because we sanctioned waterboarding of a few terrorists, while those are very often the same people who have no problem with 40 million U.S. abortions since Roe vs. Wade.