{"id":3218,"date":"2008-03-12T21:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-12T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/03\/spitzers-other-scandal-his-abortion-bill.html"},"modified":"2008-03-12T21:45:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-12T21:45:00","slug":"spitzers-other-scandal-his-abortion-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/03\/spitzers-other-scandal-his-abortion-bill.html","title":{"rendered":"Spitzer’s other scandal: his abortion bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

With all the news<\/a> buzzing today about New York governor Eliot Spitzer, it’s perhaps useful to look at his recently proposed legislation on the issue of abortion. It’s set alarm bells ringing throughout the state. My parish is one of many that set up tables in the church vestibule and organized people to sign petitions to fight this bill. <\/p>\n

What does it entail? <\/p>\n

The Commonweal blog<\/a> has a summary: <\/p>\n

Spitzer\u2019s legislation would declare abortion a \u201cfundamental right.\u201d The New York State Catholic Conference argues that state regulators could use such a \u201cradical\u201d law to coerce Catholic hospitals to provide abortions. Spitzer said that was an exaggeration, according to The Times. (The proposed statute contains language declaring that \u201cthe state shall not discriminate against the exercise of the rights\u201d to abortion and contraception \u201cin the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services or information.\u201d What does that mean?)<\/p>\n

Spitzer is not one to walk away from a fight. New York is 39 percent Catholic, according to the recent Pew survey on the U.S. Religious Landscape. The only way Spitzer really can pass the abortion-rights bill is if the Democrats win long-sought control of the State Senate from Republicans. The Dems are within one seat of doing that, and controlling the Legislature. So Spitzer would make abortion a key issue in the state legislative campaign this fall.<\/p>\n

In nominating Spitzer for governor, New York Democrats had rejected Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, who had gotten national attention for proposing ways to reduce the number of abortions. Will the next governor be more conciliatory on abortion than Spitzer has been?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can read more about the proposed bill on abortion at this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With all the news buzzing today about New York governor Eliot Spitzer, it’s perhaps useful to look at his recently proposed legislation on the issue of abortion. It’s set alarm bells ringing throughout the state. My parish is one of many that set up tables in the church vestibule and organized people to sign petitions…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nSpitzer's other scandal: his abortion bill - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/03\/spitzers-other-scandal-his-abortion-bill.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spitzer's other scandal: his abortion bill - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With all the news buzzing today about New York governor Eliot Spitzer, it’s perhaps useful to look at his recently proposed legislation on the issue of abortion. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}