Catholic League: Obama Nominees Catholic Problem

As past staff counsel for the ACLU and legal director of NARAL Dawn Johnsen has actively sought to undermine the Catholic Church.

NEW YORK, NY (Catholic League) - In a few weeks, the Senate will vote on the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to be assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel. Catholic League president Bill Donohue says the Catholic community should be given a heads up:

"As past staff counsel for the ACLU and legal director of NARAL (the most extreme pro-abortion group in the nation), Dawn Johnsen has done more than consort with the enemies of Catholicism--she has actively sought to undermine the Catholic Church.

"In the late 1980s, Johnsen worked on a lawsuit, United States Catholic Conference v. Abortion Rights Mobilization, that sought to strip the Catholic Church of its tax exempt status; she helped to prepare briefs securing standing for the plaintiffs. Thus, she is not simply a critic of the Catholic Church's pro-life position--she wants to cripple the institution.

"Most Americans are repelled at the thought of a doctor jamming a scissors into the head of a baby who is 80 percent born. But not everyone. For example, Johnsen calls the term partial-birth abortion 'intentionally provocative,' but there is no evidence that she has ever described this hideous procedure that way.

"As soon as President Clinton took office in 1993, he took the occasion to sign five executive orders overturning abortion restrictions. Dawn Johnsen wrote every one of them. But it is more than abortion rights that motivates her--she wants to punish the Catholic Church.

"U.S. bishops strongly oppose the Freedom of Choice Act, a law so draconian that if it were enacted (Obama has said he will sign it) it could force Catholic hospitals to start performing abortions or have their funding pulled. Who helped to write this bill? Dawn Johnsen.

"To say that Johnsen has a Catholic problem is a monumental understatement."

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The Catholic League is the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization. Founded in 1973 by the late Father Virgil C. Blum, S.J., the Catholic League defends the right of Catholics – lay and clergy alike – to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination. It is led by its' President, William A. Donohue, Ph.D.