Mail Bag: Letter to Fr. Landry and Deal Hudson on SCHIP

Dear Fr. Landry and Mr. Hudson,

On October 12th and October 22nd of this year, you individually posted comments regarding SCHIP on your blogs. While we congratulate you on your attempt to educate Catholics on important public policy issues such as SCHIP, we found several erroneous statements in your posts. We would like to offer corrections to your statements as we are sure you would like to correct them and provide the most accurate information you can to Catholics.

Your blogs state: “Among other things, the rewritten SCHIP pays for contraceptives to be distributed to teenagers without parental permission or oven knowledge.”

THE FACTS ARE: The bill vetoed by the President makes no change to current laws regarding parental notification and permission for contraceptives, which vary from state to state.

Your blogs state: “It authorizes the diversion of previously allocated abstinence education funds to condom pushing campaigns.”

THE FACTS ARE: An earlier House version dealt altered abstinence programs, but those provisions were not included in the version vetoed by the President. In other words, the current rules supporting abstinence programs were unaffected by the final bill.

Your blogs state: “It permits tax dollars to be used for sterilizations according to individual state policies.”

THE FACTS ARE: Some current state laws allow this for adults, not children. However, the bill vetoed by the President removes adults from the SCHIP program over the next two years, so this would no longer be an issue if the President had not vetoed it.

Your blogs state: “And worst of all, it promotes and funds abortions.”

THE FACTS ARE: Not true. The bill vetoed by the President retains in full the longstanding “Hyde amendment” provisions of current law that allow abortions in SCHIP and Medicaid only in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is threatened.

If states provide abortion funding, they can do so with their own state funding, but the bill that President Bush vetoed does not change that, and it has been true since the inception of SCHIP. Federal funds under SCHIP or Medicaid cannot be used for abortion since federal funding of abortion is prohibited by the Hyde Amendment.

The euthanasia claim made in your posts may have been in response to the House bill which had proposed cuts in Medicare that would not have led to the kind of denial of services that some claimed would lead seniors to be w/out medical services, and thus “euthanized.” These provisions were in the House bill, but they were removed since the Senate would not consider Medicare provision in a SCHIP package.

States have considerably leeway when it comes to SCHIP. They can design their own programs in effect within certain guidelines. The bill the President vetoed does nothing to promote any particular procedures. Don’t you both think if there were anything affecting abstinence funding, teen access to contraceptives or any of the other inflammatory issues claimed, we all would have heard about it long ago and certainly during the very long debates in both the House and Senate.

Your blogs are both widely read and you have credibility with the constituency that follows your work. We know that you only want to provide the best and most accurate information to these readers.

We therefore respectfully request that you re-examine your posts and your sources and post statements reflecting the true contents of the SCHIP bill so that the Catholics who read your blogs will be accurately informed.

You might also mention that the USCCB supports SCHIP expansion, as noted by a recently letter to NCR from Richard M. Doerflinger, Secretariat for “Pro-Life” Activities USCCB. As you note in your posts the Catholic Health Association and Catholic Charities USA also support the bill. We have found that many Catholic Conferences and many Diocesan offices around the country also support the bill.

We know you only want the best information shared with your readers, and we look forward to the updated posts with the corrections.

Blessings,

Eamon

Hudson Blog

Fr. Landry Blog