An Oklahoma Catholic bishop withdrew his diocese from an ecumenical religious organization this month after it refused to acknowledge that unborn babies are discriminated against by society.
The AP reports Bishop David Konderla, who leads the Diocese of Tulsa, announced his decision to leave the Oklahoma Conference of Churches on Nov. 6.
“(The OCC) will not commit itself to defending the right to life of babies in the womb, the most marginalized, mistreated, abused and discriminated against group in the country,” Konderla said in a statement. “(OCC’s) statement, with its glaring exclusion of the most vulnerable group of persons in our midst, is rendered at best inconsistent or even politically motivated.”
The impetus for Konderla’s decision was a statement that the conference released in October on racism and discrimination, according to the report. The bishop said the conference refused to include unborn babies – more than 800,000 of whom are aborted every year in the U.S. – in its statement.
The Oklahoma Conference of Churches statement read, in part, “no person should experience discrimination regardless of their sex, religion, race, immigration status, sexual orientation, political affiliation, age, gender identity/gender expression, ability, or socio-economic status.”
The Rev. Shannon Fleck, the executive director of the conference, said she stands by the statement, according to the report. Fleck said the conference has never taken a stance on abortion because it’s a contentious issue even among churches.
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“Since the beginning of the organization, the conference has not taken a stance on either side of this issue because our denominations are not all in agreement and they’ve known that. That’s not new,” she said.
Too few Christian leaders stand up for the rights of unborn babies. Some do, including Konderla and other Catholic leaders and evangelical Protestants like the Rev. Franklin Graham. Earlier this month, the Kentucky Baptist Convention approved a pro-life resolution calling for prayers to end “the scourge of legalized abortion in our state and nation.”
However, research indicates that many church-goers never hear the life issue being preached from the pulpit. A 2016 Barna Group survey of pastors and priests found that just 1 in 10 mainline Protestant pastors has preached on pro-life issues in the last six months. That same year, a Pew Research Center poll found that 29 percent of church-goers said their clergy member spoke about abortion during a service. Most said their clergy spoke out against abortion (22 percent), while a few (3 percent) said their clergy spoke in support of abortion.
Meanwhile, unborn babies continue to be slaughtered by the millions across the globe. According to new Worldometer abortion statistics, there were an average of 3.5 million abortions per month in the world so far in 2020. That means that approximately 37,709,161 unborn babies were aborted so far this year.
Many of these unborn babies are discriminated against not just because they are in the womb but also because they are the children of poor and minority women or because they have a disability. Two of the largest abortion chains in the world, Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International, were founded by women who believed strongly in eugenics, the discriminatory notion that some human beings are less valuable than others.
