“Our agenda is the economic justice issues,” she told CNA at the time. “As the issues of economic justice mean, as Pope Francis talks about so often, the capacity for families to be able to support themselves, to be able to have a roof on their head.”
“We don’t focus on reproductive rights, we focus on trying to ensure life for everyone. As Pope Francis says ‘equally sacred is the care for the born’,” Campbell said.
Campbell was referring to Pope Francis’ 2018 apostolic exhortation Gaudete et exsultate, in which the pope stated: “Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development.”
The pope added that the lives of the poor, the destitute, the abandoned, the infirm, the elderly, and others are “equally sacred.”
According to CNA’s review of foundation grants to Network Lobby, a review which had not accounted for a majority of the group’s funds, the organization had taken grants from major funders who also focus on abortion rights.
Campbell told CNA in 2020 that it is not Network Lobby’s mission to be “in the fight for Roe v. Wade,” the Supreme Court decision that mandated legal abortion nationwide. While she agreed that the dignity of life is inviolable from conception, she added, “I’m so tired. How long have we fought over Roe v. Wade?”
Roe was overturned last week by a 6-3 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Campbell told CNA in August 2020, “Our economic agenda is to ensure that everyone can flourish, that all life can flourish, and that we can care for our earth. Our niche is economic justice.”
Campbell rejected any suggestion her approach might undermine efforts to secure legal protections for the unborn.
“We work for the Pregnant Women Support Act, funding for prenatal care, women’s infants and children funding, making sure pregnant women get the care that they need,” she said. She said there is crossover in ensuring health care for pregnant women, adequate nutrition, and adequate housing capacity “to carry the fetus to term.”
She said Network Lobby cannot expand its work on abortion “because it doesn’t fit in economic justice, which is our mission.”
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“The thing that’s so painful for me is the view that only one issue, as important as it is, defines all of Catholicity,” she said.
During a 2016 interview with Democracy Now, Campbell had said that “From my perspective, I don’t think it’s a good policy to outlaw abortion.”
Among the the recipients next week of the Presidential Medal of Honor are also Father Alexander Karloutsos, a former vicar general of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America; Khzir Khan, a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from August 2021 until May 2022; Megan Rapinoe, a soccer player and LGBTQI+ rights advocate; Alan Simpson, a former U.S. Senator from Wyoming and an advocate for same-sex marriage and abortion rights; Simone Biles; Gabrielle Giffords; Steve Jobs; John McCain; and Denzel Washington.
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