Leaders in the faith community want Americans to know that The Family at C-Street and the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops don't have a monopoly on the discussion of abortion in healthcare reform within the religious community.
Earlier this week, faith groups issued a joint statement [pdf] reaffirming support for abortion rights.
Catholics for Choice, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Clergy Network, the Religious Coalition on Reproductive Choice, and the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing represent more than ten thousand religious leaders and tens of thousands of people of faith who believe that abortion must be safe, legal, and accessible. We come together to condemn the passage of the Stupak amendment, which if passed by the Senate will effectively deny coverage for abortion services to women covered by the new federal health care plan. We are appalled that religious leaders intervened to impose their specific religious doctrine into health care reform, not recognizing that women must have the right to apply or reject the principles of their own faith in making the decision as to whether or not abortion is appropriate in their specific circumstances. Further, we decry those who sought to use abortion as a way to scuttle much needed health care reform. We call on the President and the United States Senate to ensure that the final bill that passes does not include any specific prohibition on the use of federal funds for reproductive health care services. We pray for a renewed commitment to relational and reproductive justice for all.
Likewise, Brian McClaren, who posts at Soujourner, is an evangelical who's also not on board with Stupak, because it "went beyond the abortion neutrality called for by all the Christian progressives."
To round this out, Gordon D. Newby, professor of Jewish, Islamic, and Comparative Studies at Emory University write at ReligionDispatches that Stupak discriminates against religious freedom, considering Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist traditions, as well as the broad Christian traditions, concluding
The recently passed House health care bill might be paving the way to enact religious discrimination into law; on the important and fundamental issues of life and health, many religious Americans will be unable to live and act according to their own religious consciences and beliefs....
If the House health care bill is allowed to stand and becomes the basis for new legislation, religious Americans across the spectrum of faiths will be subjected to limitations that will contravene their faith’s most well-considered and cherished views about the major questions of life, reproduction, and freedom of religious conscience; freedoms imagined by our nation’s founders as central to the nature of our country.
Social justice--the longest standing tradition of religious communities worldwide--seems to have been lost for many Christian and Catholic fundamentalists in this debate, with their willingness to blow up the entire healthcare reform process and see millions of Americans remain uninsured.