Jerry Cox – Page 946 – Family Council

Rallies Simply a Distraction from Planned Parenthood Controversy?

Sep 29, 2015Jerry CoxAbortionAbortion, Life, Planned Parenthood, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, September 29, 2015

On Tuesday Planned Parenthood supporters announced a series of rallies and events across the country in support of Planned Parenthood.

Family Council President Jerry Cox released a statement, saying, “This sounds like damage-control, to me. Planned Parenthood’s CEO is set to testify before members of Congress today about her organization’s alleged involvement in selling organs harvested from aborted babies. It sounds like Planned Parenthood wants to draw attention away from her testimony and the controversy surrounding the organization.”

A series of undercover videos released this year shows Planned Parenthood officials talking about compensation clinics receive in exchange for fetal organs and tissue they provide to researchers. “These are Planned Parenthood’s own doctors and officials discussing how researchers pay their clinics for hearts, livers, brains, leg muscles, and other body parts taken from aborted babies,” Cox said. “What Planned Parenthood is doing is barbaric. It may even be illegal. No rally or event can change that.”

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Pope: Conscientious Objection to Same-Sex Marriage “a Human Right”

Sep 28, 2015Jerry CoxReligious FreedomMarriage, Religious Freedom, Religious Liberty, Same-Sex Marriage

Before concluding his first visit to the United States, Pope Francis voiced support on Monday for people who decline to solemnize or otherwise facilitate same-sex marriages.

According to NBC News, Pope Francis was asked, “Do you … support those individuals, including government officials, who say they cannot in good conscience, their own personal conscience, abide by some laws or discharge their duties as government officials, for example when issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples?”

According to NBC, the pontiff responded, saying:

“I can say that conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right. It is a right. . . . Conscientious objection must enter into every juridical structure because it is a right, a human right. Otherwise we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying, ‘this right that has merit, this one does not.’ . . . It is a human right and if a government official is a human person, he has that right. It is a human right.”

Given the Catholic Church’s longstanding history fighting for rights of conscience on issues ranging from military service to abortion, Pope Francis’ remarks really come as no surprise. Bishop Anthony Taylor of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock summed it up very well a few years ago, when he told a crowd gathered outside the Capitol Building, “Government must not require what conscience forbids or forbid what conscience requires.”

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Bruno from New York City, United States [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.