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From the
Wall Street Journal:
Even Ted Kennedy, who gets a 100% pro-choice rating from the
abortion-rights group Naral, was at one time pro-life. In fact, in 1971,
a full year after New York had legalized abortion, the Massachusetts
senator was still championing the rights of the unborn. In a letter to a
constituent dated Aug. 3, 1971, he wrote: "When history looks back to
this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about
human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent
living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its
children from the very moment of conception."
But that all
changed in the early '70s, when Democratic politicians first figured out
that the powerful abortion lobby could fill their campaign coffers (and
attract new liberal voters). Politicians also began to realize that,
despite the Catholic Church's teachings to the contrary, its bishops and
priests had ended their public role of responding negatively to those
who promoted a pro-choice agenda.
In some cases, church leaders
actually started providing "cover" for Catholic pro-choice politicians
who wanted to vote in favor of abortion rights. At a meeting at the
Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., on a hot summer day in 1964, the
Kennedy family and its advisers and allies were coached by leading
theologians and Catholic college professors on how to accept and promote
abortion with a "clear conscience."
The former Jesuit priest
Albert Jonsen, emeritus professor of ethics at the University of
Washington, recalls the meeting in his book "The Birth of Bioethics"
(Oxford, 2003). He writes about how he joined with the Rev. Joseph
Fuchs, a Catholic moral theologian; the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of
Boston College Law School; and three academic theologians, the Revs.
Giles Milhaven, Richard McCormick and Charles Curran, to enable the
Kennedy family to redefine support for abortion. (Read more.)
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