{"id":275304,"date":"2022-09-03T13:30:04","date_gmt":"2022-09-03T18:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=275304"},"modified":"2022-09-07T23:49:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T04:49:02","slug":"nancy-pelosi-ucsf-panel-pro-life-sinful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/nancy-pelosi-ucsf-panel-pro-life-sinful\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Pelosi leads UCSF panel on promoting abortion: Being pro-life is ‘sinful’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The University of California San Francisco (UCSF), one of the nation’s premier abortion training sites, recently held a panel featuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Held on Women’s Equality Day, the panel’s focus was promoting abortion, while denigrating pro-life activists as “sinful” for opposing abortion.<\/p>\n

Being pro-life is a sin?<\/h3>\n

Pelosi has frequently touted her Catholic faith as a reason for supporting abortion \u2014 so much so that Salvatore Cardileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, barred her from receiving communion<\/a>. In a transcript<\/a> of her remarks at UCSF, she repeatedly invoked the issue of “sin” in relation to protecting preborn children from abortion.<\/p>\n

“The fact that this is such an assault on women of color and women \u2013 lower income families \u2014 is just sinful,” she said. “It\u2019s sinful. It’s wrong that they would be able to say to women what they think women should be doing with their lives and their bodies. But it’s sinful, the injustice of it all.”<\/p>\n

Pelosi repeatedly has called herself a “devout Catholic<\/a>,” even though the Catholic Church considers abortion a grave evil. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law: You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish. God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the ut\u00admost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes. Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. <\/em><\/p>\n

… The inalienable right to life of every innocent human indi\u00advidual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation… The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are under\u00admined.<\/em><\/p>\n

The notion that being pro-life is a sin directly contradicts Catholic teaching, as Cordileone pointed out himself in a previous interview<\/a>. “No one can claim to be a devout Catholic and condone the killing of innocent human life, let alone have the government pay for it,\u201d he said. \u201cTo use the smokescreen of abortion as an issue of health and fairness to poor women is the epitome of hypocrisy: what about the health of the baby being killed? What about giving poor women real choice, so they are supported in choosing life? This would give them fairness and equality to women of means, who can afford to bring a child into the world. It is people of faith who run pro-life crisis pregnancy clinics; they are the only ones who provide poor women life-giving alternatives to having their babies killed in their wombs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The “freedom” to take lives<\/h3>\n

Pelosi also spoke of how the fall of Roe v. Wade<\/em> is harming women, because abortion \u2014 the intentional taking of a preborn life \u2014 is, according to her,\u00a0what gives women freedom.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnimaginable pain is being inflicted on women around the country,\u201d she said. \u201cAmerican women today are not as free as their mothers… It\u2019s an injustice that we will not tolerate and cannot stand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ushma Upadhyay, a professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences for UCSF who helped lead the thoroughly debunked<\/a> Turnaway Study, echoed those sentiments, though she offered little more than rhetoric to back up her claims. \u201cUCSF is nationally recognized for its research on abortion,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd what the research shows is that the Supreme Court ruling… goes directly against science. Research shows that overturning Roe will be devastating for people and their families for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, abortion doesn’t make anyone free; on the contrary, it helps the oppression of women<\/a>\u00a0to continue. There is no incentive for educational and economic systems to accommodate women with families when abortion is the preferred and expected ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of pregnancy. It’s faster, easier, and cheaper to coerce a woman into an abortion than to put systems in place ensuring she can continue her education or thrive in her career while<\/em> pregnant or parenting.<\/p>\n

This has been seen most starkly since<\/em> the fall of Roe<\/em>, with major corporations increasing their funding of abortion for pregnant employees, while cutting back<\/a> their maternity and parental leave benefits.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Turnaway Study purports to “prove” that women don’t regret their abortions \u2014 and the researchers behind it claim that a lack of abortion will literally threaten women’s lives<\/a>. Yet Upadhay, who worked with Diana Greene Foster on the study, ignores that the research was inherently flawed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The sample size was small to begin with, and even then, only 27% agreed to participate… out of the thousands of women asked. In the final year, participation dropped even further to 17%. On top of that, the participants were selected by the abortion industry itself. Under these circumstances, it is impossible to know how many women actually did regret their abortions years later, or to legitimately claim that women who kept their children fared worse.<\/p>\n

A biased panel<\/h3>\n

UCSF has a vested interest in abortion. It is one of the nation’s foremost abortion training facilities, funding and operating<\/a> over 100 programs across the country. It is also involved in fetal tissue harvesting<\/a> and experimentation<\/a>.<\/p>\n