Catholic Law Prof Defends Obama’s Abortion Record
blog.cardinalnewmansociety.org/2012/08/10/catholic-law-prof-defends-obamas-abortion-record/
A law professor at Duquesne University took to the pages of the National Catholic Reporter to convince readers that Obama is more “pro-life” than Romney.
Nicholas Cafardi writes:
Obama favors, and included in the Affordable Care Act, $250 million of support for vulnerable pregnant women and alternatives to abortion. This support will make abortions much less likely, since most abortions are economic. Romney, on the other hand, has endorsed Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan’s budget, which will cut hundreds of millions of dollars out of the federal plans that support poor women. The undoubted effect: The number of abortions in the United States will increase. On these facts, Obama is much more pro-life than Romney.
But let’s not stop there. Obama does not financially profit from the abortion industry. Romney does. Bain Capital, in the time Romney was listed as its legal head and even when he was attending Bain board meetings, was an owner of Stericycle, a major disposer of the dead bodies of aborted children in the United States. Bain owned a share of Stericycle until 2004, selling its interest for a profit in the tens of millions of dollars. We can parse what Romney’s 1999 “retroactive retirement” from Bain means, but he still gets an annual payout from the firm. To the extent those dollars are part of Bain’s Stericycle profits, a strong argument exists that Romney is an abortion profiteer. How pro-life is that?
And it has long been known that millions of Bain Capital’s original outside funding, solicited by Romney himself, came from wealthy El Salvadorian clans, some of whom, while they were funding Bain, were “linked to right wing death squads.” Death squads killed tens of thousands of mostly poor people in El Salvador. They also killed priests, nuns and Archbishop Oscar Romero. How pro-life is that? How pro-life is taking the money of these people and doubling or tripling it for them? And did any of their Bain profits fund more death squads? Before we endorse Romney’s “pro-life” claims, isn’t it important for us to know that?
So speaking as a temporary, part-time member of the parallel magisterium, I think that if anyone should be disinvited from the Al Smith Dinner, it is Mitt Romney. Based on the above record, he, and not Obama, is the anti-life, “pro-abortion” candidate.
Cafardi’s arguments clearly don’t take into account many facts including that while Obama may not personally profit from the abortion industry, his campaign has certainly accepts their help. In fact, just today Planned Parenthood’s advocacy arm announced that it’s launching an 11-state bus tour to rally female voters around President Obama starting next week. Planned Parenthood also launched a $1.4 million ad buy blasting Romney earlier this year.
And while Cafardi says that Obamacare doesn’t cover abortions, that might come as a surprise to the House of Representatives that passed a bill explicitly saying that it “expands the role of the Federal Government in funding and facilitating abortion and plans that cover abortion.”
And Bain reportedly negotiated the Stericyle investment deal in November 1999, nine months after Romney said he left.
Looks like he’s jockeying to be the next ambassador to Malta.
Is Obama the real pro-life leader?
Cassy Fiano
www.lifesitenews.com/news/is-obama-the-real-pro-life-leader
August 21, 2012 (LiveActionNews.org) – Nicholas Cafardi, a lawyer and newly named co-chair of Catholics for Obama, has made a rather outrageous claim. In light of the Catholic charities controversy, Cafardi is making the rather dubious claim that it is Obama, and not Mitt Romney, who is the “true” pro-life candidate in this presidential election.
Cafardi claims that while Obama is pro-abortion and Romney is pro-life, Obama is still the more “anti-abortion, pro-life” candidate of the two. Why? Well, Cafardi claims that Obama and the Affordable Care Act will not pay for abortions (wrong – the ACA certainly does, and the Obama administration has also bypassed states’ decisions to defund Planned Parenthood). He claims that, since the Affordable Care Act will give women millions of dollars in support for pregnant women, Obama will actually be lowering the amount of abortions. (You’ll excuse my skepticism.)
Cafardi’s final argument is that Obama does not profit from the abortion industry, and that Mitt Romney does – or did, through Bain Capital. And this, somehow, makes Mitt Romney more pro-abortion than Barack Obama.
That is quite possibly the most ludicrous statement I have ever read, considering that Barack Obama is hands-down the most pro-abortion president this country has ever had.
How pro-abortion is Barack Obama? In addition to funding the largest abortion mill in the country (Planned Parenthood) and ardently opposing any and all restrictions to abortion, Obama claimed that the issue of abortion was “above his pay grade.” That’s quite a far cry from the picture of Obama as some sort of reluctant pro-choicer, who hates abortion and merely wants to give women their rights. In fact, Obama is such an ardent defender of abortion that Planned Parenthood is arranging a bus tour to support him.
And while you could argue the fact that Obama is the most radically pro-abortion president this country has ever had, there’s one fact that proves it – a fact that Cafardi rather conveniently leaves out. Obama voted not once or twice, but three times against an act that would protect infants born alive after an abortion. That’s right. Obama basically voted in favor of letting doctors commit infanticide. Pro-abortion or not, if a baby is born alive, then there’s no excuse for killing it or letting it die. None whatsoever…except of course, in the mind of our president, who believes that you should be able to murder a baby that’s been born.
Tell me, Mr. Cafardi, how does that square with your argument that Barack Obama is somehow the more pro-life candidate? As my co-blogger Calvin Freiburger pointed out, Cafardi’s claims about Mitt Romney to make him look like a less genuine pro-life candidate are a bald-faced lie.
Mr. Cafardi, as a Catholic, I feel that you should be ashamed of yourself. While the pro-life doctrine is not the only doctrine Catholics have to hold to, it is still one of the most important teachings of the Church. And not only have you lied, manipulated the truth, and smeared a pro-life candidate, but you’ve basically sold out the pro-life teachings of the Church that you claim to be defending in order to get a prominent position with the Obama campaign – your forty pieces of silver, as it were. It takes some true mental gymnastics to contort the truth this greatly. What’s truly sad is that you, Mr. Cafardi, are selling out the Church, and exploiting it by running a lie-filled smear piece on behalf of Catholics to make the most pro-abortion president ever look better to the public. That, quite frankly, is in my opinion completely despicable.