House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) blamed Catholics who live out their beliefs on the sanctity of unborn human life for politicizing abortion, claiming they use abortion as a “cover” for their wider political agenda.
During an interview Tuesday on left-wing MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Pelosi, who was recently banned from receiving Holy Communion in her archdiocese of San Francisco following her aggressive support for a radical abortion bill, said “this is not just about terminating a pregnancy.”
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“So, these same people are against contraception, family planning, in vitro fertilization – it’s, it’s a, it’s a blanket thing – and they use abortion as the front man for it,” she accused. “While they try to undo so much. That’s what they tried to do in the Affordable Care Act, which didn’t have anything about terminating an abortion, a pregnancy.”
However, both the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) and the Kaiser Family Foundation indicated in 2013-2014 that American taxpayers would be subsidizing elective abortions for women under the ACA (Obamacare) through the affordability subsidies and Medicaid expansion in the states.
“I wonder about the death penalty, which I am opposed to,” Pelosi continued, deflecting from her own views on abortion. “So is the Church. But they take no action against people who may not share their view.”
Pelosi once mentioned Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who on Friday released the notification he sent her instructing her not to present herself for Holy Communion until she renounces her advocacy for abortion.
“[O]ur archbishop has, has been vehemently against LGBTQ rights,” she said. “[I]n fact, he led the way in some initiatives, on an initiative on the ballot in California.”
Pelosi also referenced the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion in the Mississippi abortion law case that could return decisions about abortion to the states.
“So, this decision, taking us to privacy and precedent, is very dangerous in the lives of so many of the American people,” she said. “And again, not consistent with the Gospel of Matthew,” which, Pelosi added, “is sort of the agenda of the Church that is rejected by many who side with them on terminating a pregnancy.”
“I think it’s very insulting to women to have their ability to make their own decision hampered by politics,” she remarked. “This should never have been politicized.”
“So, we just have to be prayerful,” Pelosi said.
When Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski asked if the Senate Democrats’ failed piece of legislation “that looked to expand abortion rights,” was “a productive gesture,” Pelosi denied the bill would have “expanded” abortion.
“Well, I don’t think they expanded abortion rights,” she objected. “What they did was to enshrine Roe v Wade into the law … and that was, that’s what we’ve done, and how we did it right after the horrible decision in Texas that vigilantes follow women around.”
While Pelosi and other Democrat leaders insisted their Women’s Health Protection Act would simply “codify” the right to access abortion anywhere in the nation into federal law, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WVA), who joined with all 50 Republicans in voting against advancing the measure, sharply disagreed with his Democrat colleagues on the provisions in the legislation.
“Make no mistake, it is not Roe v. Wade codification,” Manchin said about the legislation, Fox News noted. “It is an expansion.”
“It wipes 500 [of] 500 state laws off the books,” he asserted. “It expands abortion.”
In addition to nullifying all state pro-life laws, including those banning sex-selection and Down syndrome abortions, the legislation would force doctors to perform abortions, even against their faith beliefs.
“[W]e always are running on kitchen-table issues,” Pelosi continued about the Democrats, framing her party as concerned about Americans’ basic needs.
“And how do people pay for food, for rent, for education for prescription drugs and all of that?” she asked. “I hope we can talk about that. All of us. But we also know that our democracy is at stake; what they’re doing to voter suppression, in voter suppressing, and also in the nullification of elections.”
“But that doesn’t really hit home as much as a kitchen-table, the kitchen-table issues do,” she said. “And a woman’s decision is a kitchen-table issue.”
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Nancy Pelosi” by Nancy Pelosi.
