The city council in Portland, Oregon, has adopted changes to its policies so that when a woman has an abortion, she can take “bereavement” time off.
“So does the Portland policy actually recognize the fact that abortion kills a member of the human family?” wrote Judie Brown, chief of American Life League, the nation’s oldest grassroots, Catholic, pro-life organization.
“It certainly would appear so. How ironic, and yet how sad.”
CNBC said the amended bereavement policy “allows city employees to take up to three days of paid leave if they’ve had a miscarriage, stillbirth or any other type of pregnancy loss,” including abortion.
The report explained bereavement leave that covers “miscarriages and stillbirths” is rare and to cover time after an abortion is just “incredibly uncommon.”
It explains that Laura Narefsky, of the National Women’s Law Center, believes Portland is among the first local governments around the world to see the need for paid leave after a pregnancy “loss,” such as abortion.
Brown addressed her comments to: “My dearest Preborn Baby.”
The Portland policies, she explained, now mean “that Mama can now pay to have someone kill you and then take time to recover from your death.”
She explained the practice is similar to one already in use in New Zealand.
“The baby to whom we write this tale of woe represents so many millions of children whose lives have been dismissed under the guise of an expectant mother’s decision to end her pregnancy,” Brown wrote. “But the twist in Oregon is that in a rather macabre way the city council is recognizing the personhood of the child who is killed. Otherwise, bereavement—’the state of being sad because a family member or friend has recently died’—would not be needed!”
Brown noted that even some church leaders are advocating for abortion.
“It seems that words themselves—including those of Christ, our Lord—have become twisted into personal opinions. This is why babies are having such a hard time in our culture today. The truth is distorted, ignored, and ridiculed. And the babies’ defenders often become victims themselves of this tragic war on their individual identity as human persons,” she wrote.
“Into this tangle of deceit come pastors who lead their flocks with love rather than lies. But sometimes they do so without the favor of their bishops. I think of Fr. James Altman, who argued forcefully that no faithful Catholic could in good conscience vote for anti-Life Joe Biden. He said: ‘You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat. Period. Their party platform absolutely is against everything the Catholic Church teaches. So just quit pretending that you’re Catholic [if you] vote Democrat.'”
And Brown noted the words of Father Jerry Pokorsky, of St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls, Virginia, who said, “Unborn babies—every unborn baby regardless of heritage, regardless of physical or mental characteristics—need our protection and love. And we need them to fill the earth according to God’s plan of marriage. We rejoice in science, the study of God’s handiwork. Life is beautiful, and God is great. Denying the humanity of an unborn baby and insisting we can choose our gender identities are anti-scientific superstitions.”
The Supreme Court, in fact, is just days away from reviewing several procedural challenges to a new pro-life law in Texas that bans abortion after a heartbeat can be detected – and allows the entire population of Texas to enforce it, as well as a separate yet significant fight over a Mississippi abortion limit.
Pro-life activists are arguing that the court needs to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that created a right to abortion. Even its author, Harry Blackmun, warned that if the personhood of the unborn is established, which he believed had not happened yet in 1973, the Constitution would protect the unborn, not allow the baby to be killed.
CNBC said Pittsburgh earlier adopted a similar plan and Boston and Waterloo, Iowa, are working on plans.
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