CNS: Ads distort Catholic teaching on sanctity of life, says state conference

Posted by Minnesota Catholic Conference on September 13, 2016

The Minnesota Catholic Conference declared that a national advertising campaign to restore federal tax funds for abortions “woefully misrepresents the noble Catholic social justice tradition.”

The campaign, by Catholics for Choice, “disregards the need to defend vulnerable human life in all its stages — a principle at the core of authentic social justice,” said the Sept. 12 statement by the conference, the public policy arm of Minnesota’s bishops.

Years ago, the U.S. bishops said the group, formerly called Catholics for a Free Choice, had “no affiliation, formal or otherwise, with the Catholic Church.”

The Minnesota Catholic Conference responded to an ad placed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the state’s largest daily newspaper. In the ad, a Cottage Grove woman, Heather Hirsch — described as a Catholic, mother and a cancer researcher said: “I believe in my Catholic faith and I have faith in others to make the right choices for themselves.”