It's hard to say there isn't an agenda here or that the ACLU is a red herring. First, the report cited was linked directly to the ACLU blogs, written by the deputy legal director for the ACLU. Second, in that blog, it's tagged as "war on women" and "Using religion to discriminate". To say that the source is unbiased would be like linking to the Vatican and claiming to be completely unbiased.
The reality is, abortion is highly discriminatory behavior. It's also auxiliary to the entire lawsuit. First, abortion is discriminating against the child, and in many, many cases against the father of the child. In other cases, it's even discriminating against the parents of the mother, especially if she's a minor. Then, we can take a look at abortion statistics. Where are the Planned Parenthood clinics? Are they even distributed throughout poor/rich, white/minority areas? I don't keep track of all of them, but the three I know of in my normal driving radius all all in neighborhoods with a pretty significant minority populace. Reviewing the statistics, According to the CDC about 23% of pregnancies end in abortion. While the "rape and incest" argument is nearly always brought up, the fact is that represents significantly less than 1% of abortions in the U.S. Medical need represents about 3%. Finances are the number one reasons, and lack of personal responsibility is a close second. All together, that means that 96% of abortions are because the mother decided that a child would be an inconvenience to her lifestyle. CNN claims that 51% of abortions are white or hispanic. I found that statistic odd because those two groups aren't usually combined like that. It seemed obvious that they were trying to buffer the 42% abortion rate in the black community, so I went to Operation Rescue to see if I could get an idea of how their numbers matched. Interestingly enough, they claim only 37% of abortions are from African American women. But, they separate out the white and hispanic communities, leaving 22% hispanics and 8% other. Understanding that there are biases on both sides here, I think we can still make a relatively clear picture that if (at least) 51% are white and hispanic, and (at most) 22% are hispanic, and between 37% and 42% are black, that roughly 70%-75% are minorities, with only about 4% of that number being medically necessary. So the most conservative numbers I could come up with still means that AT LEAST 2/3 of all abortions are given to minorities without a medical need. In my mind, if someone institutes a program that kills 2/3 of minorities before they are even born, they are a very successful racist. Religion isn't waging a war on women, Planned Parenthood is!
All of that is basically a rabbit trail from the central issue in this case. What this is about is some doctors who either acted unethically and are trying to use a hospital policy to protect themselves, or it is about some people trying to attack the Church because they originated the policy. This is something that people should be concerned about. As I've said before, I'm not Catholic. I'm not even a particular fan of the Catholic Church, though I do think the current Pope appears to be one of the most Christlike people I've ever seen. This isn't a Catholic issue. This is a people issue. This should be a concern for Christians. This is a society that is attacking our right to believe what we believe.
