When budgets are not pro-life

Among vital programs on the chopping block are community health centers, which provide primary care to 20 million Americans in underserved rural and urban areas. In many places, these health centers are the only source of quality medical treatment for patients who lack insurance and can’t afford to visit a doctor. Nutrition programs for women, infants and children (WIC) also face steep cuts.

In addition, funding reductions for maternal and child health block grants will put yet another obstacle between families and the health care they need. National Institutes of Health programs that support life-saving medical research would also be slashed by $1 billon. These budget choices are not pro-life, reflect skewed priorities for our nation and are not effective ways to reduce the federal deficit.

House Speaker John Boehner describes himself as a pro-life Catholic. We know he listens to the Tea Party. He should also pay attention to pro-life Catholic leaders – including Cardinal Peter Turkson of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace – who gathered in Washington recently to encourage lawmakers not to forget the poor in efforts to balance the budget. Eviscerating effective programs that help mothers, children and families is both cruel and misguided.

As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a recent letter to congressional leaders, the moral measure of a just society and any budget is how “the least of these” are protected “at all stages of life from conception until natural death.” Shredding our nation’s safety net at a time when millions are struggling to find work and put food on the table is a callous ideological assault with devastating real-life consequences. 

Along with draconian domestic cuts, House leaders would also cut international food-aid programs by up to 50 percent. Development officials predict these cuts could reduce or eliminate food for approximately 15 million people in Ethiopia, Haiti and Sudan at a time when food prices are soaring. While international aid makes up less than 1 percent of the president’s proposed 2011 budget and these cuts would do almost nothing to trim our growing debt, the reductions will “result in the loss of innocent lives,” Catholic Relief Services starkly warns in a letter to Congress.

Denying basic food to starving people is not a pro-life stance.

If lawmakers are really serious about building a culture of life, rhetoric is not enough. In fact, these proposed budget cuts will only encourage abortions and undermine human dignity. Low-income women are less likely to have abortions when they have access to quality health care and strong social safety nets.

Numerous industrial nations have lower abortion rates than the U.S., despite having less restrictive abortion laws. In part this is true because these nations offer comprehensive health care that includes robust pre-natal and post-natal care. British Cardinal Basil Hume once told a reporter: “If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it’s needed she’s more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn’t it obvious?”

I will be blunt. The Republican budget proposals are not pro-life. A pro-life stance supports women, children and essential programs that improve their well being. We can be prudent stewards of resources and address growing deficits without violating our principles and demanding that those who already have the least sacrifice the most.

Let’s honor the highest ideals of our nation by protecting the most vulnerable and building a future where fiscal responsibility and a commitment to the common good are not competing values.

Sister Simone Campbell is executive director of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby.