Collier County Planned Parenthood workshop with Catholics for Choice draws fire

Collier County’s Planned Parenthood is scheduled to hold a workshop April 28 with Catholics for Choice — a pro-choice Catholic organization that “supports a woman’s moral and legal right to follow her conscience in matters of sexuality and reproductive health.” Since the workshop was announced, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League and the Diocese of Venice in Florida have both publicly stated their disapproval, with the former accusing Catholics for Choice of working to “champion child abuse in the womb.”

Donohue released a press release yesterday saying that Catholics for Choice’s central message that “‘you can be prochoice and Catholic’–carries as much credibility as saying you can be pro-genocide and Catholic”:

Catholics for Choice has twice been condemned by the bishops’ conference as a fraud–there is nothing Catholic about it. Indeed, it has never raised as much as a dime from practicing Catholics, relying almost exclusively on donations from the Ford Foundation and other establishment groups. Its agenda–to champion child abuse in the womb–is anything but Catholic. But it is fitting that Planned Parenthood, the captain of the abortion industry, is hosting this workshop.

To say, as they are advertising, that “abortion can be a moral choice,” is to say that the intentional killing of innocent human life can be morally justified. It cannot be, notwithstanding the positions of Catholics for Choice and Planned Parenthood, both of which have a track record that is as deceitful as it is bloody.

The Diocese of Venice in Florida also condemned the workshop:

In our diocese, it is sad to say, there is an attempt to distort Catholic teaching to advance a particular agenda that is offensive to Catholics and likeminded people of good will. So-called “Catholics for Choice” seeks to mislead the public by displaying advertisements about an upcoming workshop.

The workshop, which is scheduled to be held in Collier County, purports to do the impossible to bridge the gap between the Catholic teaching that all human life is sacred and worthy of protection, and the notion that abortion, the deliberate killing of unwanted human life, “can be a moral choice,” as the group states.

Collier County’s Planned Parenthood website describes the event as an “interactive workshop with staff from Catholics for Choice to learn the truth about Catholic teaching and abortion and how the vast majority of Catholics support comprehensive reproductive healthcare services.”

The workshop includes a discussion of birth control, as well as abortion access. Recent reports show that an overwhelming majority of sexually active Catholic women use a form of birth control.