The Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021, introduced in the US Senate and House June 8 and currently moving through various committees in both chambers, “is nothing short of child sacrifice”, said Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco.
The “misnamed” measure, he said, “shows to what radical extremes the supposedly ‘pro-choice’ advocates in our country will go to protect what they hold most sacred: the right to kill innocent human beings in the womb,” he said in a September 21 statement.
Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila also weighed in with a statement a day later, echoing the San Francisco prelate in urging the bill be defeated.
“Today, the abortion industry and its supporters are pushing one of the most extreme national abortion bills this country has ever seen, and doing it under the lie that abortion is a form of health care that must be protected and promoted,” the Denver prelate said.
If Congress passes the bill and it becomes law, it would invalidate nearly all existing state limitations on abortion. The House and Senate bills – HR 3755 and S 1975 – would codify the US Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in law legalising abortion nationwide.
It would establish the legal right to abortion in all 50 states under federal law.