Catholic Professor Misinforms on Abortion

A professor at a Catholic college may have been spreading misinformation on abortion for at least two years, in various public appearances and blogs. “Bianca Laureano, a professor at College of Mount Saint Vincent is under fire for contributing to a pro-abortion blog and promoting criticism of the pro-life work of the nation’s Catholic bishops,” Steven Ertelt wrote on LifeNews.com on August 5, 2011. “Laureano, who is scheduled to teach core-level sociology courses next semester at the college, has blogged at the RH Reality Check web site — a pro-abortion news blog that frequently criticizes pro-life advocates and aggressively promotes abortion.”

Mount Saint Vincent is located in the Bronx. Additionally, Dr. Laureano might have given students at conferences a misleading overview of abortion law.

“A conversation about Latinas choosing abortion and what the rates are, as well as a focus on Rosie Jimenez was provided,” Dr. Laureano wrote of a presentation that she gave at her alma mater, the University of Maryland, this year. “It’s not often that I get choked up during presentations, but this time I teared up and my voice cracked as I talked about Rosie Jimenez, what her death represents still today, what her daughter has lost, and what we do when we easily forget the legacy she has given us.”

“Discussing Rosie Jimenez’s inability to obtain and afford a legal abortion was a good transition to discussions of the Welfare Queen.”

In that earlier blog which she linked to, Dr. Laureano wrote that “Rosie was the first victim of the Hyde Amendment, which disallowed Medicaid to cover abortion procedures to people needing them and receiving Medicaid. Rosie died of an illegal abortion when she realized she was pregnant again and could not afford to cover the cost of an abortion. Rosie’s death demonstrates the institutional classism, racism and –isms’ in general that still exists today for many people seeking reproductive health care in the US and all over the world.”

“Rosie died on October 3, 1977.” Actually, in a 1982 court case, the state of Massachusetts argued that “the regulations implementing the Hyde Amendment were not published until February, and not in final form until July 1978 (effective August).”

It should be noted that the National Institutes of Health claim that the 1978 fiscal year was “the first year after enforcement of the Hyde Amendment. That fiscal year would have begun in October of 1977 and ended the following September.

I e-mailed Dr. Laureano and asked her about this apparent discrepancy. As of yet, she has not responded.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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