One year ago, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, unleashing hell on the healthcare system and reducing pregnant people in a dozen states to nothing more than incubators. At a Tuesday fundraiser, the ostensibly pro-abortion rights President Joe Biden observed this anniversary by telling 100 donors, “I’m a practicing Catholic. I’m not big on abortion. But guess what? Roe v. Wade got it right.”
Of course, Roe didn’t fully get it right—even with the ruling in place, women and pregnant people were left scrambling to access care for five decades. Hundreds of people still faced criminalization and incarceration for having abortions or losing their pregnancies.
But the worst part of Biden’s comments is his insistence that he’s “not big on abortion.” It’s not a huge surprise—Biden publicly supported the Hyde Amendment, a discriminatory law prohibiting federal abortion coverage, until a few years ago. He rarely says “abortion” out loud.
Jamie Manson, president of Catholics for Choice, told Jezebel that the “narrative that Catholicism is somehow antithetical to abortion rights is a right-wing narrative,” and Biden’s invocation of his Catholicism to justify “not being big on same-sex marriage” would “never happen.”
In 2020, 68% of Catholic Americans said they opposed the overturning of Roe and a 2014 survey showed 24% of people who had abortions identified as Catholic. Many people who have abortions identify as people of faith.
Biden’s choice to distance himself from abortion rights—which are more popular among Democratic voters than nearly any other issue and helped drive key electoral victories for Democrats in 2022—is a bit puzzling, considering recent reports that he’s centering his entire 2024 reelection campaign around it. He seems to be trying to have it both ways on the issue—be seen an abortion as an abortion rights hero while also being “morally” palatable to the other side.
“It’s interesting how and when he chooses to qualify his positions with his Catholicism and not,” Manson said. “Most Catholics support abortion rights not in spite of their faith, but because their faith taught them the principles of social justice and individual conscience.”
As religious groups across the country sue to challenge abortion bans as a violation of their religious freedom, religion—including Catholicism—shouldn’t be used as a cudgel against abortion rights. “Faithful Catholics, women who participate richly in the life of the Church, are having abortions,” Manson said. “And every time someone says, ‘Well, you can’t be Catholic and support abortion,’ you’re doing spiritual violence to those women.”