Analysts were quick to frame the result as a setback for the anti-abortion movement, but activists and experts say it also amounts to a rejection of the Catholic Church hierarchy, which had shelled out massive sums of money in support of the amendment’s passage. The vote may hint, too, at a mounting backlash against the church’s involvement in the nation’s abortion debate — not least among Catholics themselves.
In the wake of the vote, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, who publicly supported the amendment’s passage, issued a statement Wednesday lamenting its failure.
“We were not able to overcome the millions spent by the abortion industry to mislead Kansans about the amendment, nor the overwhelming bias of the secular press whose failure to report clearly on the true nature of the amendment served to advance the cause of the abortion industry. ,” Naumann wrote.
Naumann’s archdiocese and other Catholic organizations also spent millions, however, representing the single largest donor base for the pro-amendment umbrella group known as the “Value Them Both” campaign.
According to financial disclosures and media reports, the Kansas City Archdiocese spent roughly $2.45 million on the effort this year, with the Catholic dioceses of Wichita and Salina together spending an additional $600,000 or more. Some individual Catholic parishes across the state chipped in, as did the Kansas Catholic Conference, an advocacy group tied to the state’s bishops, which reportedly spent $100,000. Separately, the conservative advocacy group CatholicVote raised around $500,000 for the pro-amendment Do Right PAC, according to the news outlet Flatland.
It remains to be seen which side raised or spent more money, although opponents of the amendment also enjoyed major donations from liberal groups such as NARAL Pro-Choice America and the American Civil Liberties Union. But these mostly secular groups didn’t shy away from faith: In one advertisement broadcast to Kansans, a woman spoke about her opposition to the amendment from the perspective of a cradle Catholic.
“Growing up Catholic, we didn’t talk about abortion,” the woman says. “But now it’s on the ballot, and we can no longer ignore it.”
According to Natalia Imperatori-Lee, chair of the religious studies department at Manhattan College, the ad probably better represents the average Catholic’s views than the campaigns funded by bishops. The church officially decries abortion, but US Catholics, generally supportive of legal abortion, have grown more liberal on the issue over time: According to a recent PRRI poll, the percentage of White Catholics who believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases jumped from 53 percent in October 2010 to 64 percent by June of this year. The shift among Hispanic Catholics was even more dramatic, from 51 percent in 2010 to 75 percent in June.
“The bishops have been so focused on the idol of abortion legislation that they have failed to step back and see the complication of criminalizing abortion and what that means — especially for vulnerable, non-White, non-wealthy communities,” Imperatori-Lee said . “If this is what the bishops are going to do, if this was their plan for a ‘post-gnaws‘ world, then Catholics are going to be very disappointed.”
Chuck Weber, executive director of the Kansas Catholic Conference, defended his group’s involvement with the Value Them Both campaign.
“I do not apologize one bit for our advocacy,” he said in an interview.
Weber lamented the heightened tensions triggered by the state’s abortion debate — abortion rights demonstrators were threatened with arrest, and a Catholic church in Overland Park was defaced — but pointed out that bishops have lobbied for issues other than abortion in the past. The conference, he said, was among those who pushed state lawmakers this year to expand Medicaid coverage for new moms from two months to 12 months. Weber also suggested that bishops would fund campaigns around similar issues if they were put up for a vote, as in the amendment referendum.
Even so, Weber acknowledged that efforts to convey his group’s broader agenda to everyday Catholics have fallen short.
“I need to do a better job of letting people know that the abortion question is not really the primary point of our advocacy at the state capitol or in Washington, DC,” he said.
One organization that financially skipped the Kansas amendment battle was Catholics for Choice, which advocates for abortion access. The group did not spend money in Kansas in part because, according to leader Jamie Manson, it didn’t need to.
“The vote in Kansas yesterday shows us the power of pro-choice people of faith when up against the power, money, and influence of the Catholic hierarchy,” Manson said in a statement.
She added, “I am looking forward to more David vs. Goliath victories ahead.”
The underdog spirit in the Kansas fight was embodied by two Catholic nuns who penned an anti-amendment letter, published in the lead-up to the vote, that amounted to an act of defiance against local bishops.
“A church sign said, ‘Jesus trusted women. We do too,’” the nuns’ letter read. The sisters went on to bemoan the harm caused by restrictive abortion bans passed in other states and noted that supporters of the amendment primarily focused resources on banning abortion, rather than legislation that would assist mothers who bring children to term, such as “healthcare, parental leave, Medicaid and other support for poor women.”
Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic and former Kansas governor who served as secretary of health and human services in the Obama administration, lauded the nuns’ letter, calling the sisters “courageous.” Whether or not it had a broad impact, Sebelius said, it reminded her of when nuns spoke out in favor of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which countered the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to the bill and is credited with paving the way for its final passage.
With this week’s vote, “I have no doubt at all that the nuns’ statement in Kansas made a difference to women who follow what the church has been saying and what they had been promoting — and listened to the nuns instead,” Sebelius said.
The Kansas vote suggests that the bishops, having won a long-awaited victory at the Supreme Court in the overturning of Roe v. Wademay now be fighting uphill battles in many states, with uneven support from a rank-and-file who would rather see them invest church money in other places.
“That money could do a lot of good — diapers and formula,” Imperatori-Lee said.
— Religion News Service