The Blunt Amendment

James Madison, one of the leading drafters of the Constitution, said, “Conscience is the most sacred of all property.”

On March 5, 2012, Sen. Mary Landrieu spoke to the Press Club at the De La Ronde Hall. In her speech, she was quoted saying, “Every child is created by the Creator.” Mike Bourgeois asked her, “Are you going to continue to vote against such measures as the Blunt Amendment because a Democratic strategist framed the contraception issue as a women’s health issue, and does this mean then that the 54 percent failure rate of contraceptives reported by the Guttmacher Institute, with the 14,000 percent increase in abortions, the 8,666 percent increase in sexually transmitted diseases, and the six times more women dying in legal abortions than when it was illegal are acceptable losses to preserve privacy and improve women’s health?”

Sen. Landrieu replied that the use of birth control pills reduces the number of abortions, totally ignoring the statistical facts reported by Guttmacher Institute which is the statistical reporting arm of the leading provider of abortions, Planned Parenthood.

Richard Mahoney spoke to her after the Press Club and told her that, “Pregnancy is not a disease, and contraception, sterilization, and chemical abortions are not health care.” He gave her the statistical increases in social ills, such as the skyrocketing rate of abortion, STD’s, prostitution and sex trafficking, divorce and the number of single women in poverty, increases in breast cancer, etc.

Most importantly noted is that, until the 1930s, all Christian denominations emphatically condemned contraception as sinful. The Catholic Church now stands alone in condemning artificial contraception. It is heart-breaking that, with the sublime and sacred teachings of the Church, Casti Connubii, Humanae Vitae, and the Theology of the Body we have so many Catholic women and politicians apostasizing from the teaching of the Church.

As Paul Rahe has stated, “It did not cross the minds of these Catholic prelates that the liberty of conscience which they had grown to cherish was part of a larger package … that the paternalistic state (Democratic Party), which recognizes no legitimate limits on its power and scope, that they had embraced, would someday turn on the Church and seek to dictate whom it chose to teach its doctrines and how, more generally, it would conduct its affairs.”

The Catholic bishops’ current response to Obama and Sebelius is, “The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for the HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.”

The bright spot of the day was all the children playing and praying in front of De La Ronde Hall, witnessing for life.