Catholic Group: Biden Failure on One-Child Policy No Shock

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Aug 24, 2011   |   11:16AM   |   Washington, DC

A pro-life Catholic advocacy group says it is not surprised that pro-abortion Vice President Joe Biden failed to sufficiently condemn the one-child, forced abortion policy in China given his frequent opposition to Catholic pro-life teachings.

Biden has come under heavy criticism for saying he would “not second guess” the China policy, which has resulted in forced abortions, coercive sterilizations and other human rights abuses against women and their families when the one-child policy is violated. He said the policy has resulted in demographic concerns for China but said he “fully understood” while it was implemented.

Late yesterday, Biden’s spokeswoman attempted to walk back the comments, saying he was actually criticizing the controversial family planning policy.

Matt Smith, the vice-president of Catholic Advocate, says he’s not surprised Biden couldn’t bring himself to robustly condemn the one-child rule because he is a Catholic who has fallen away from the pro-life teachings of the Catholic Church.

“This week, Joe Biden endorsed China’s one-child policy, knowing full well that each year millions of Chinese women are forced, by the government, to have an abortion,” he said in an email to LifeNews. “Unfortunately, this isn’t the first blatantly anti-life statement by the Vice President.”

“In September 2010, Biden mischaracterized the teachings of the Church on the sanctity of life drawing a rebuke from Cardinal Justin F. Rigali, then chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop William E. Lori, then chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine,” Smith explained. “In September 2008, while campaigning to be Vice President, he said the same thing during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press that was addressed by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput and Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley along with Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson.”

“Clearly, this “life-long” Catholic has trouble with the teachings of the Church,” Smiths said.

“When Joe Biden came to the U.S. Senate in 1973 as a 29-year-old freshman, he was a self-described pro-life Democrat…well that quickly changed,” Smith said. He noted that Biden has voted for federal funding for abortions in health care programs, to overturn the prohibition of tax-payer funded abortions overseas, for a Senate resolution supporting the Roe v. Wade decision, against the ban on human cloning, against the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act and against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (Laci and Conner’s Law).

“These are the very reasons why we formed Catholic Advocate…to hold elected leaders accountable for failing to defend the most important teaching of the Church—the sanctity of life,” Smith concluded. He said pro-life Catholics need to “hold our “Catholic” leaders like Vice President Biden accountable for abandoning the teachings of the Catholic Church.”