By Catholic News Agency on Feb 02, 2023 02:45 pm
Bishop
Robert Barron spoke out against Minnesota's new abortion law after it
passed Jan. 31, 2023. / Credit: Bishop Robert Barron/YouTube
Boston, Mass., Feb 2, 2023 / 12:45 pm (CNA).
Winona-Rochester
Bishop Robert Barron called a newly passed Minnesota abortion bill that
enshrines abortion rights into law “the worst kind of barbarism.”
“I
want to share with you my anger, my frustration over this terrible law
that was just signed by the governor in Minnesota — the most really
extreme abortion law that’s on the books in the wake of the Roe v. Wade
reversal,” Barron said in a Jan. 31 video on social media following
Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s signing of the bill on Tuesday.
The bill,
titled the Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act, enshrines a
constitutional right to “reproductive freedom,” ensuring the right to
abortion in Minnesota up to birth for any reason, as well as the right
to contraception and sterilization.
“Basically,
it eliminates any kind of parental notifications so a 12-year-old child
can get an abortion without even telling her parents about it,” Barron
said.
“But
the worst thing,” he added, “is it basically permits abortion all the
way through pregnancy up to the very end. And indeed, indeed if a child
somehow survives a botched abortion, the law now prohibits an attempt to
save that child’s life.”
Protection for abortion in the state had preexisted the new law because the state’s Supreme Court ruled in the 1995 decision Doe v. Gomez that
a woman had a constitutional right to abortion. Several restrictions to
abortion in the state have also been ruled unconstitutional in the
courts in prior years, the AP reported. Sponsors of the bill supported
it because they wanted abortion protections in law, despite the
political leaning of future appointed justices, the AP reported.
Pro-life advocates fiercely opposed the bill, as it gained national attention and underwent several hours of debate in the state Senate. The pro-life advocacy organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America called the legislation “the most extreme bill in the country.”
Barron
said that “I don’t know why this is really debated anymore in our
country, but this strikes me as just the worst kind of barbarism. And in
the name of, I don’t know, subjectivity, and freedom, and choice and
all this, we’re accepting this kind of brutality.”
Barron’s condemnation of the law echoes that of the Minnesota bishops who raised their voices against it before its passage.
The states’ bishops wrote in a Jan. 26 statement:
“To assert such unlimited autonomy is to usurp a prerogative that
belongs to God alone. Authorizing a general license to make and take
life at our whim will unleash a host of social and spiritual
consequences with which we as a community will have to reckon.”
In
his video, Barron added: “What strikes me is this: If a child is born
and now a day old, or two days old and resting peacefully in his
bassinet and someone broke into the house and with a knife killed the
child and dismembered him, well, the whole country would rise up in
righteous indignation.”
Friends, there is a morally outrageous bill that has now been signed into law by @GovTimWalz.
This bill is the most radical abortion law in the country. We must
continue to stand against this barbarism. Pray for the conversion of
hearts and minds. pic.twitter.com/9A2CI3Xq5w
— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) February 1, 2023
“But
yet, that same thing can happen with complete impunity as the child is
in his mother’s womb about to be born. Again, I just think this is so
beyond the pale and that we’ve so lost our way on this issue,” he said.
He
acknowledged that there was no possibility of blocking the now-enacted
legislation, but said that “we can certainly keep raising our voices in
protest.”
“We can keep praying for an end to this barbaric regime in our country,” he said.
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