Catholic Bishops Join Forces with Planned Parenthood to Kill Pro-Life Bill in North Dakota

Catholic bishops recently formed an unholy alliance with the abortion giant Planned Parenthood to thwart critical pro-life legislation in North Dakota insisting that classifying abortion as murder and recognizing unborn children as “persons” would criminalize women procuring abortions.

The “personhood bill” (1373) introduced by pro-life lawmakers and sponsored by Rep. Lori VanWinkle in the North Dakota Legislative Assembly defined “person” or “human being” to include an “unborn child.” It was defeated on February 12 in a 77-16 vote.

While the abortion giant attacked the bill as “a harmful piece of legislation that would redefine human being and personhood to apply at the moment of conception,” the North Dakota Bishops’ Conference argued that “the U.S. Supreme Court has not held that unborn children are ‘persons’ under the 14th Amendment.”

“This copycat legislation is a widespread tactic of the anti-choice movement and has been used to undermine the rights of pregnant people,” Planned Parenthood warned.

Major pro-life groups, including Students for Life of America and its Catholic president, Kristan Hawkins, opposed the “personhood bill” since it would turn “women into criminals” and ignored “the reality that many women are pressured into abortion.”

Abolitionists v. Pro-Lifers

Other pro-life organizations slammed Hawkins and her allies for teaming up with Planned Parenthood to oppose a law that would “codify equal protection and equal justice for preborn babies,” resulting in a bitter online war between “abolitionists” who support criminalizing women seeking abortions and “pro-lifers” who oppose any form of “personhood” legislation.

Responding to attacks from abolitionists, Hawkins defended her stance by sharing a letter the heads of 18 pro-life outfits sent the North Dakota Republican Party in April 2024 warning against any “resolution that supports charging women as ‘co-conspirators’ in their own abortions.”

The signatories include March for Life Action, Americans United for Life, Life Issues Institute, Faith and Freedom Coalition, Heartbeat International, Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America, LifeNews.com, and Brian Burch of Catholic Vote, whom President Donald Trump recently nominated to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

The letter cited a peer-reviewed study by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, published in the journal Cureus, according to which 60% of women who obtained an abortion reported experiencing coercion or pressure.

Ben Zeisloft, editor of The Sentinel, defended his abolitionist stance on prosecuting women who had received abortions. In response to Hawkins, he tweeted:

When the laws deter evil conduct, less evil is committed, and less evil must be punished. God indeed commands the civil authorities to “prosecute” evil conduct as his ministers. The act of murdering a preborn baby is most certainly evil conduct that should be “prosecuted.”

God also commands Christians to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we codify equal protection and equal justice for preborn babies, we love children by deterring their murder in the womb, and we love women and all other parties involved in an abortion by deterring conduct that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Women as Victims of Abortion

The signatories also quoted a 2022 letter to all pro-life legislators nationwide from 70 state and national pro-life organizations emphasizing that “women are victims of abortion and require our compassion and support as well as ready access to counseling and social services in the days, weeks, months, and years following an abortion.”

“We state unequivocally that we do not support any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women and we stand firmly opposed to include such penalties in legislation,” the letter states, noting that the signatories would “continue to oppose legislative and policy initiatives that criminalize women who seek abortions.”

The North Dakota bishops, who represent the dioceses of Bismarck and Fargo, said they shared “with some of the supporters of this bill the desire to end all abortion,” but “this bill is not acceptable as a means to that end.”

The bishops, who came under fire in 2021 after an 18-month investigation after the state attorney general identified 53 priests as child sex abusers with “substantiated” allegations against them, quoted Jesus’s response to the woman accused of adultery: “Neither do I condemn you.”

The prelates elaborated:

The Catholic Church has consistently held that for pastoral, moral, and prudential reasons, the law should not criminalize the woman. In most cases, if not all, she is an abortion’s second victim. Our experience as counselors, spiritual advisors, and caregivers to women who have had abortions tells us that the decision to have an abortion is often the result of intense pressure, coercion by others, and a fear-driven attempt at self-preservation — all in a culture of lies about the choices before her and a society that too often leaves her alone with her “choice.” Criminalizing her only compounds her victimization and serves no purpose.

The bishops described the bill as “misguided, legally flawed, built upon faulty premises, ultimately pointless, and harmful,” noting that “anyone who is genuinely pro-life can, in good conscience, oppose this bill.”

Excommunicating Women Who Procure Abortions

An April 2024 peer-reviewed article in the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy revealed that several states, including Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, are enforcing “laws that provide personhood status to fetuses.”

“The personhood approach is gaining popularity in other antiabortion states post-Dobbs,” the authors note. “State legislators have introduced bills defining fertilized eggs or unborn children as persons to enable equal protection under the law for the purpose of homicide.

“Going forward, self-managing abortions through medication may be the only way many women in anti-abortion states can access abortion.”

While Catholic canon law cannot criminalize a woman who procures an abortion, Canon 1398 imposes an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication on her. While Catholic teaching has always considered abortion to be a grave sin, Catholic tradition remains divided on the question of the when the fetus attains personhood.

The Declaration on Procured Abortion (1974), issued by Pope John Paul II through the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, declared that it “expressly leaves aside the question of the moment when the spiritual soul is infused.”

“There is not a unanimous tradition on this point and authors are as yet in disagreement,” the declaration noted. “For some it dates from the first instant; for others it could not at least precede nidation.”

St. Thomas Aquinas, who accepted the Aristotelian theory that a human soul was infused into a fetus only after 40 days for a male and 90 days for a female, saw abortion of an un-souled fetus as always unethical, a serious crime, a grave sin, a misdeed, and contrary to nature.

In 2023, the Pew Research Center found that about six in 10 Catholics in the U.S. think abortion should be legal, with 39% saying it should be legal in most cases and 22% saying it should be legal in all cases.

A Guttmacher Institute study published in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health found that most women aborted their baby because a child would interfere with their education, work, or ability to care for dependents (74%); she could not afford a baby right now (73%); and she either did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%).

Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.

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