White House press secretary Jen Psaki sidestepped a question regarding President Joe Biden’s stance on abortion during Monday’s press briefing.
“Are you asking me if the president supports a woman’s right to choose? He does,” Psaki said in response to a reporter who asked if the president believed “that a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being.”
Q: “Does the president believe that a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being?”@PressSec: “Are you asking me if the president supports a woman’s right to choose? He does.” pic.twitter.com/9gWSYYTwBy
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 21, 2021
US BISHOPS VOTE TO CREATE DOCUMENT THAT COULD DENY BIDEN COMMUNION
The tense exchange on abortion came just days after the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted 168-55 to pursue the creation of a document that could lead to pro-abortion rights politicians being banned from receiving Holy Communion.
“It’s not the bishops who have brought us to this point — it’s some of our public officials. This is a Catholic president doing the most aggressive things we’ve ever seen on life at its most innocent,” Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann said of the effort Thursday.
But not all in attendance were in agreement on the issue, including Washington, D.C., Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who is Biden’s current local bishop and has said he will not deny the president Communion.
“The choice before us at this moment is either we pursue a path of strengthening unity among ourselves or settle for creating a document that will not bring unity but may very well further damage it,” Gregory said during Thursday’s debate.
The effort has also received pushback from the Vatican, which has stated concerns that such a vote will only politicize Communion.
“For Francis, a majority vote by a deeply divided bishops conference is not a sign that one should proceed but the opposite,” said Austen Ivereigh, Pope Francis’s biographer. “Francis has been consistent in his message to the American bishops: ‘Don’t get trapped in culture wars and give a witness of unity.’ I don’t think this vote does that.”
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Just one week before the vote by U.S. bishops, the Vatican sent out a warning urging the group to drop the effort.
“The concern in the Vatican is not to use access to the Eucharist as a political weapon,” said Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit priest and an ally of the pope.
