What Biden Said When Asked About Catholic Bishops and Abortion

President Joe Biden appeared to deny that the Catholic Church is calling for the end of taxpayer-funded abortion in an exchange Monday. 

After Biden exited Marine One, EWTN correspondent Owen Jensen brought up the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ statements on abortion.  

“Catholic bishops are demanding that federal tax dollars not fund abortions,” Jensen said to Biden, referring to the USCCB statement.  

“No, they are not all doing that, and nor is the pope doing that,” Biden, a Catholic, responded. 

Contrary to what Biden said, Catholic bishops are calling for an end of taxpayer-funded abortion. On Jan. 27, Bishop Michael F. Burbidge, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee of Pro-life Activities, sent a letter in support to the sponsors of the House and Senate bills “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act.” 

“Protecting taxpayers from being forced to pay for abortion in violation of their conscience is a principle that has enjoyed historically broad support among Americans, regardless of their otherwise passionately divided views on the topic. It has also been lifesaving,” wrote Burbidge in his letter. 

“Rather than funding abortion, Congress can better serve the common good by prioritizing policies that comprehensively assist women, children, and families in need in ways that will not only encourage childbirth but make it easier to welcome and raise a new child,” Burbidge added. 

Biden’s comments also do not seem to line up with what previous popes have believed about abortion. Both Pope Francis and the late Pope Benedict XVI have called for the end of abortion in the United States.  

“Indeed, how could one claim to bring about peace, the integral development of peoples or even the protection of the environment without defending the life of those who are weakest, beginning with the unborn,” Benedict said in 2013 on the World Day of Peace. “Neither is it just to introduce surreptitiously into legislation false rights or freedoms which, on the basis of a reductive and relativistic view of human beings and the clever use of ambiguous expressions aimed at promoting a supposed right to abortion and euthanasia, pose a threat to the fundamental right to life.” 

Francis went so far as to call having an abortion to be like hiring a hitman. “How can an action that ends an innocent and defenseless life in its blossoming stage be therapeutic, civilized or simply human? I ask you: Is it right to ‘do away with’ a human life in order to solve a problem?” the pope said in 2018, according to Catholic News Agency. “Is it right to hire a hitman in order to solve a problem? One cannot.” 

“It is not right to ‘do away with’ a human being, however small, in order to solve a problem. It is like hiring a hitman,” Francis added.  

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