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The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U. S. Population Policy (Paperback) The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy:
To a standing ovation during his January 27th State of the Union Address, President Obama said, "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people..."
The general reaction to that position has been agreement. Obama was responding to the Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court [...]
The Court's decision by the 5 conservative Catholic judges is frighteningly familiar to a predication I remembered from a powerful book called "The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy", published in 1996 by Dr. Stephen D. Mumford. Dr. Mumford, who holds a Dr.P.H. degree from the University of Texas, has spent his 30 plus year career forwarding important work in the field of reproductive health.
Just as the now well publicized scandals involving Catholic priests took many years to be fully told (although recent disclosures about the facts in Germany suggest more news is coming) this carefully researched investigative report book received virtually no notice at the time of its publication.
Now it certainly should be reprinted and brought forward again, as its message is pertinent and far more frightening now then when the initial activities of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops first instigated and initiated their high powered machine in 1975. This machine's influence as you can read in this book on US policy has been devastating.
Control of the Supreme Court was one of the cited goals of the Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities (IV. Judicial Activity, point #1; [...] created by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that Mumford predicted would result in United States lawmaking being heavily influenced by a foreign entity.
Because of his extensive research on this powerful Pastoral Plan, I contacted Dr. Mumford about his assessment of Citizens United. He responded, "I believe that the bishops Pastoral Plan is the most important political development of the last half of the 20th Century," and suggested that I cite material from his book [...]
The Pastoral Plan was formulated in 1975 to create a public advocacy political machine to reverse Roe v. Wade. It is a superbly detailed blueprint of the bishops' strategy for infiltrating and manipulating the American democratic process at the national, state and local levels.
The Plan's strategy is elucidated by a February 21, 1993 quote from Stephen Settle, veteran contributor, the National Catholic Register, "...LAW can override consensus and reshape it...history isn't made by majorities, but by minorities with the stamina and smarts to persevere against the establishment while co-opting its institutions."
In Mumford's view, the Pastoral Plan's first co-opting of an American institution was the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. This election was different from previous ones because of targeted corporate giving, directed by implication ("Mobilization of Leadership at National Level", [...] by the bishops in the Pastoral Plan, regardless of existing laws prohibiting such activity.
The 1980 election cost $127.3 million. Trade and corporate political action committees (PACs) spent $61.6 million. New Right PACs raised only one-third that amount, a combined $19 million. Conservative challengers were given disproportionately far more by corporate and right-wing sources. In her book, The Right to Lifers: Who They Are, How They Operate, How They Get Their Money, Connie Paige states, "The most perplexing aspect of [the 1980 election] was the change in nature of corporate giving -- the phenomenon that threw the Democratic candidates off balance even more than did the astonishingly large amounts.
"Never before had oil companies, savings and loan associations, defense contractors, the real-estate and insurance industries, builders, truckers, auto manufacturers and dealers, and the utility, chemical and dairy industries directed their resources in such vast quantities toward so many political unknowns of the same ideological stripe." These `political unknowns' were people who had passed the Bishops' anti-abortion litmus test for public office.
The Pastoral Plan has been called by Timothy Byrnes the most "focused and aggressive political leadership" ever exerted by the American Catholic hierarchy.
In 1973, when the Supreme court decided Roe v. Wade, James McHugh was a monsignor and the staff director of the National Catholic Family Life Bureau who later became a bishop. In a March 4, 1987 interview by Byrnes, Bishop McHugh observed that "within twenty-four hours" of the court's action, the bishops knew they would need to mount a political campaign in favor of a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion. "Indeed," Byrnes observed, "by November 1973 the bishops had explicitly declared that they wished `to make it clear beyond a doubt to our fellow citizens that we consider the passage of a pro life constitutional amendment a priority of the highest order.'"
The Pastoral Plan states: "It is absolutely necessary to encourage the development in each congressional district of an identifiable, tightly knit and well organized pro life unit. This unit can be described as a public interest group or a citizen's lobby."
One of the early great successes of the Pastoral Plan was the passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976. This amendment, offered by Congressman and Catholic activist Henry Hyde of Illinois, restricted the use of Medicaid money for abortion, limiting access to abortion for poor women. Planned Parenthood asked Federal Judge John F. Dooling of the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, to determine whether the law was constitutional.
Dooling, a practicing Catholic, took thirteen months to hear the evidence, which ultimately amounted to dozens of witnesses and thousands of pages of testimony. This included a careful examination of the Bishops' Pastoral Plan.
On February 4, 1980, E. Willis, writing for The Village Voice, summarized the outcome: "[In] Judge John F. Dooling's 328-page decision [on January 15, 1980], striking down the Hyde Amendment...he demonstrates that the purpose of the Hyde Amendment was never to save the taxpayers' money, keep the government neutral on a delicate moral issue, or distinguish between `necessary' and so-called `convenience' abortions.
"`The amendment,' says Dooling bluntly, `was a ploy by anti-abortion congressmen frustrated in their attempt to pass a Constitutional amendment that would override the Supreme Court's 1973 pro-abortion decision; its purpose was quite simply to circumvent the Court's ruling and prevent as many abortions as possible.' He confirms that right-to-life's main source of energy, organization, and direction has been the Catholic Church, and describes in detail how the movement uses one-issue voting to put pressure on legislators, candidates, and the party organizations that nominate them."
"...The Hyde Amendment, he concludes, is religiously motivated legislation that imposes a particular theological viewpoint, violating dissenters' First Amendment rights."
Dooling documented in his decision that the Hyde Amendment became U.S. law only because of the considerable success enjoyed by the bishops in the implementation of their Pastoral Plan.
The Bishops have periodically updated the verbiage of the Plan. The current version can be found on their website [...].
A November 10, 2009 Huffington Post column headline read, "Do Catholic Bishops Run the United States Government?" [...].
This article appeared just days after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (UCCB) stunningly intervened in the development of the new Affordable Health Care Act to successfully demand that government-support for abortion services be eliminated from the House bill.
The column also ends with a question, "Why are the Bishops running the country?" Whether one concurs with the extent of power the Bishops wield, it is clear that their Pastoral Plan has had remarkable success in influencing important political and social decisions since its enactment.
Prior to the Super Bowl which was to be played on Sunday, February 7, 2010, I received an email from NARAL-Pro Choice America, which complained that Focus on the Family, a group whose pro life policies are much akin to those expressed in the Catholic Bishops's Pastoral Plan, would be running an anti abortion commercial during the Super Bowl. The spot, which was run, cost $2.5 million which indicates the kind of money focused on taking away women's right to choose.
How this Plan has permeated the hierarchy is well illustrated by my Catholic friend who was deeply involved in the Proposition 187 campaign in California. You recall 187 sought to better enforce our immigration laws, especially as they relate to illegal migrants. My friend was at her church when a priest there blasted supporters of 187, calling them xenophobic, etc. He said so during the mass.
My friend became angry and stood up and told him that she was an immigrant who used to prepare immigration applications. She asked to be given a chance to present an opposing viewpoint! The priest said he did not have the time for such a presentation.
After the mass was over, his monsignor came to her and she made the same request. He said no. Her reply of course was: "This is not democratic!" His response: "The Catholic Church is not a democracy!" At least after that public confrontation, my friend said that priest "stopped badmouthing our side!"
It has regrettably taken 35 years for the impact of this powerful machine to metastasize into the cancerous growth of bad policies it has engendered. However, it is now more important than ever to make sure the truth about bad policies which were urged by these anti choice mortal men behaving in secular, highly political ways while using the cloak of their religious beliefs to empower their earthly motives. Be sure to read NSSM 200 for confirmation of this ugly situation, which consistently ignores our Constitutional mandate to keep church and state separate.
