Austin’s new Catholic bishop, Joe Vasquez, sent a letter to Central Health board members urging them to withdraw $450,000 in annual funding for abortions and telling board members they are “morally culpable” for the funding.
The board voted unanimously in December to renew a five-year contract to pay for abortions for needy women from three abortion providers after hearing from people on both sides of the debate. The issue is coming up again because the board is holding a hearing tomorrow on its budget and allocates the money for the contracts from its budget each year.
The public hearing is 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Central Health headquarters, 1111 E. Cesar Chavez St.
“At the heart of our concern is this: Those who assist in the procurement of an abortion are morally culpable for their actions,” the bishop wrote in a letter to the board. “Voting to allocate these funds carries moral weight for the Board of Managers and at the same time has implications for all those who pay taxes. As Catholics and Christians we dutifully pay our taxes, but doing so should not violate our conscience.”
Dr. Tom Coopwood, chairman of the board of Central Health, formerly the Travis County Healthcare District, said he did not think anything had changed since the board approved the contracts in December. The board’s position hasn’t changed, and the views of opponents haven’t changed, he said.
The bishop is “entitled to his opinion, and he states the opinion of the pope,” Coopwood said. “We have to stand behind our moral position — that the women we serve deserve a full array of women’s health services.”
Christian Gonzalez, a spokesman for the Diocese of Austin, said representatives of the diocese, but probably not the bishop, would be at tomorrow’s public hearing.
I sent some questions to Gonzalez seeking a response from the bishop about other moral issues that also are odds with the Catholic Church’s teachings but spend taxpayer money. For example, given the church’s opposition to the death penalty, does Vasquez plan to make a similar pronouncement regarding the death penalty and state spending? What about spending on war? Only under very strict conditions does the Catholic Church assert that armed conflict is valid and never “from a spirit of vengeance,” according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The bishop hasn’t responded yet, but I will post his comments when he does. The diocese is working with the Texas Alliance for Life on the abortion issue, and the alliance also will have representatives at the hearing, alliance Executive Director Joe Pojman said.
But Pojman said most opponents would appear at the second hearing, which will be in a larger room, Sept. 9. at the Travis County Commissioners Courtroom, 314 W. 11th St., at 6:30 p.m. That hearing also is televised on local access cable.
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