Individual Catholic Bishops Speak Out Against Pro-Abortion Health Care Bills

The nation's Catholic bishops have spoken collectively against the pro-abortion health care bills pending in Congress. Now, individual bishops are beginning to speak out and to urge elected officials to focus on promoting health care not rationing and abortion funding.

Bishop Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa issued a message on Tuesday that has pro-life Catholics cheering.

The upshot? No health care "reform" is better than a restructuring that forces abortion funding or mandates.

"First and most important, the Church will not accept any legislation that mandates coverage, public or private, for abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem-cell research," Nickless writes. "We refuse to allow our own parish, school, and diocesan health insurance plans to be forced to include these evils."

The bishop is also concerned about the effect a government-run health care system would have on the thousands of Americans who are pro-life medical workers.

"As a corollary of this, we insist equally on adequate protection of individual rights of conscience for patients and health care providers not to be made complicit in these evils. A so-called reform that imposes these evils on us would be far worse than keeping the health care system we now have," Nickless added.

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