Silver State Times

The leader of one of the nation's largest Catholic activist organizations recently said that a Nevada Democratic senator's support of a federal bill that would have banned all state abortion restrictions shows she is "Catholic in name only."

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) voted Feb. 28 in support of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which sought to federally ban partial-birth abortion limits and parental notification laws. The measure would have banned states from passing laws that limit or restrict abortion in any way.

“Cortez Masto professes to be Catholic, but she just voted to legalize killing partially born, vulnerable children," Brian Burch, president and founder of Catholic Vote, said in an email to his supporters. "Next, she wants to legalize secret abortions for teens to allow Planned Parenthood to market to high school students. It’s time Nevada Catholic voters need to know the truth about Cortez Masto. Pay attention to her acts. Cortez Masto is Catholic in name only.”

In the email, Burch said his group polled Spanish-speaking, Mass-attending Catholics in Nevada on the bill. He said 62% of those asked "had no idea their senator was a self-professed Catholic," and that 52% didn't know Cortez Masto backed the abortion bill.

Before the vote, Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the bill would ban state partial-birth abortion laws and parental consent requirements for minors seeking abortions, according to The Heritage Foundation.

"The bill prohibits any legislature anywhere from enacting eleven specific categories of abortion regulation, as well as any that are 'similar' to them," Jipping wrote, according to The Heritage Foundation. "This legislative ban covers anything that is 'reasonably likely' to 'delay ... some patients' from getting an abortion, to 'indirectly' increase the cost of doing so, or even necessitating a trip to the doctor’s office."

In a Newsweek opinion piece before the vote, U.S. Rep. Ron Estes (R-KS) called the Women’s Health Protection Act, which was sponsored in the House of Representatives by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (R-CA), "one of the most radical abortion bills in the entire Western world."

"This would add the United States to a list of only seven countries with such an extreme policy — the others include North Korea and China," Estes said in the op-ed. 

Estes argued the bill would lead to the mass sex-selective abortion of female babies.

After the Senate failed to advance the act, the U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops (USCCB) called the vote a "relief.” 

“The failure to advance this extreme measure today is a tremendous relief," Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore and Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York wrote in a joint statement. "We must respect and support mothers, their unborn children, and the consciences of all Americans."

Lori and Dolan are chair members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities and the Committee for Religious Liberty, respectively.

"Passing (the Women’s Health Protection Act) would have led to the loss of millions of unborn lives and left countless women to suffer from the physical and emotional trauma of abortion," Lori and Dolan said in the statement. "Women deserve better than this. We implore Congress to promote policies that recognize the value and human dignity of both mother and child.”

A July 2021 report by the Virginia-based Charlotte Lozier Institute found that 47 of 50 European countries ban partial-birth abortions after 15 weeks. The only three countries that allow elective abortions after 15 weeks are Iceland (22 weeks), Netherlands (24 weeks) and Sweden (18 weeks).