FIC Blog

It was nice of the Courant to run a few positive items about faith on Easter Sunday. But it would have had more meaning if the paper had not editorialized in favor of the destruction of religious freedom in Connecticut the next day. 

On Feb. 23, the Courant’s editors had this to say about legislative efforts to force Catholic hospitals to provide chemical abortions:

It is neither necessary nor fair to force these church-based institutions to go against their fundamental beliefs. In 80 percent of Connecticut hospitals, a woman will be offered emergency contraception, according to rape crisis experts. The Catholic hospitals say it is their policy to inform rape victims where they can receive emergency contraception.

But here is what they say today:

We had hoped Roman Catholic hospitals would find a way to provide emergency contraception known as Plan B to rape victims without being forced to do so by the legislature.

Really? Since when? What happened to “it is neither necessary nor fair” to force Catholic hospitals “to go against their fundamental beliefs”?

Now, all of the sudden, the Courant is saying that because Catholic hospitals get public funds they must provide rape victims the full “emergency care.” But on Feb. 23 the Courant thought the Catholic hospitals were doing that by informing the victims where among those 80 percent of other Connecticut hospitals they can go to get “emergency contraception.” Why is a policy that was good enough for the Courant’s editors on Feb. 23 suddenly not good enough for them on April 17?

The Courant is now claiming that the “Plan B” issue “was provoked by the church itself” for updating its policy to require a determination that the woman is not ovulating before being given the potentially abortifacient drug. The Church “provoked” the issue by requiring fidelity to its teachings? What happened to the Courant’s Feb. 23 concern that the Church not be coerced into violating its “fundamental beliefs”? Do the Courant editors think that giving an abortifacient to a pregnant woman violates the Church’s “fundamental beliefs” but providing it where there is only the chance of a fertilized human egg being destroyed somehow does not? When did the paper get into the business of distinguishing Catholicism’s fundamental beliefs from its non-fundamental beliefs?

The last paragraph in the editorial notes “horror stories from…rape victims” and says “medical treatment should be the decision of a woman and her doctor.” But the pro-abortion activists pushing this issue never produced a single victim who said she had been denied the drug at a Catholic hospital. As late as last week, at a meeting of the Victim Advocate’s advisory council, they said they were still collecting data regarding the hospitals. Even legislators in favor of the original bill were pushing the activists to produce data they apparently never had. As James Papillo noted in his testimony, this was a solution in search of a problem, an exploitation of rape victims for the purpose of attacking religious freedom.

And why did the Courant go from saying on Feb. 23 that “[i]t is neither necessary nor fair to force these church-based institutions to go against their fundamental beliefs” to simply asserting on Apr. 17 that “medical treatment should be the decision of a woman and her doctor”? Why did the editors think that religious freedom deserved some respect within the woman/doctor relationship on Feb. 23 but not on Apr. 17?

On Feb. 23 in this space I blogged:

Whatever our other differences with the Courant’s editors, the paper has consistently opposed efforts to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.

That is apparently no longer the case, making Apr. 17 yet another dark day for religious freedom in Connecticut.