The Biden agenda and the direct disobedience to Catholic teaching

 

Biden at 100 Days: What Catholics Should Know About His Promises and Priorities

Abortion

On the abortion issue, Biden quickly rescinded Trump’s expanded Mexico City Policy, which barred taxpayer funding for abortion overseas. He also moved to reverse his predecessor’s partial domestic defunding of Planned Parenthood accomplished by barring abortion providers from Title X family-planning funds.

President Biden also acted recently to lift long-standing U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) restrictions on the abortion drug Mifepristone, which will now permit women to take the pill at home without direct medical supervision. The Biden administration also removed the requirement for the National Institutes of Health Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board to review research proposals involving aborted human fetal tissue.

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, told the Register via email that “the Biden administration clearly hopes to use the next four years to reverse all pro-life gains this country has seen in the last 50 years. His very first initiative, COVID relief, allocated only 9% to actual relief, yet opened up billions for his domestic and foreign abortion allies — while ignoring 40 years of pro-life protections provided by the Hyde and Helms Amendments. He followed this with repealing the life-saving Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy and opening up millions of tax dollars for the abortion industry through Title X. To implement these radical policies, he has nominated, and the Senate has confirmed, a who’s who of abortion radicalism — most notable is his unqualified HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. President Biden entered office speaking of unity; however, it is clear his policies are ones of disunity.”

“President Biden’s hostility towards life goes against not only the teachings of his faith but the desires of the American people,” she added. “2021 Marist polling found that 58% of Americans are opposed to taxpayer dollars paying for abortions domestically, and a whopping 77% oppose funding for international abortions, including 64% of those who self-describe as ‘pro-choice.’” 

 

Transgender Agenda

One action that Biden named as a “top legislative priority” in his first 100 days in office was the passage of the Equality Act, legislation that would expand the protected classes in the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” 

The USCCB warned that the legislation would “punish faith-based charities such as shelters and foster-care agencies, and in turn their thousands of beneficiaries, simply because of their beliefs on marriage and sexuality,” and “force both people and organizations in many everyday life and work settings to speak or act in support of ‘gender transitions,’ including health-care workers and licensed counselors, even when it’s against their professional judgment.”

While Biden has been unable to push the Equality Act through Congress due to opposition in the Senate, he has issued a series of executive orders during his first 100 days in office that accomplish some of the Equality Act’s aims.

On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in regards to employment, housing, health care and education, including school sports. Just days later, Biden issued an order reversing the Trump administration’s ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. In March, Biden established a White House Gender Policy Council to “ensure that the federal government is working to advance equal rights and opportunities, regardless of gender or gender identity, in advancing domestic and foreign policy.”

Mary Rice Hasson, a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington and director of the Catholic Women’s Forum, told the Register via email that “advancing the transgender agenda is a top priority for the Biden administration.” She referenced the executive order President Biden signed “effectively redefining ‘sex’ for federal purposes to include sexual orientation and gender identity,” saying, “gender identity is an invented category that completely undercuts the intent of laws and regulations that protect against sex discrimination. Sex is objective, knowable and binary — we are male or female. The administration is effectively erasing the legal and institutional recognition of sex — our identities as male or female — and privileging the invented concept of ‘gender identity’ as the determining factor in a person’s identity. ... It is completely unworkable as a legal category, and there is no basis for giving it privileged status over the rights of faith-based persons or organizations — and females.”

“The Biden administration has prioritized gender identity (and effectively erased sex-based protections for females) throughout the federal government, in policies relating to education, grants, federal benefits, housing, the military, health care and foreign policy,” she continued.  

She added, “It is a sweeping disregard of reality — in practical terms, we have an administration that is governing based on a fiction, detached from reality. Policies are being dictated to appease a powerful political base — the LGBTQ lobby — rather than out of a genuine concern for treating people fairly.”

Read the entire article here:  Biden at 100 Days: What Catholics Should Know About His Promises and Priorities| National Catholic Register (ncregister.com)