Aug. 14, 2019
Having co-authored a bill that would require Catholic priests to violate the seal of the confessional, Rep. Chris Taylor distorts the Catholic League's opposition to this bill as a stand against protecting abused children. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We have always supported laws that require all professionals who work with minors—be they clergy, teachers, scout leaders, health care workers, or abortion providers like Planned Parenthood—to report instances of child sexual abuse. Wisconsin's current law, which we support, already includes clergy as mandatory reporters. What we oppose is this bill's direct attack on a sacrament of the Church—an attack that will do nothing to further the protection of minors.
We challenge Rep. Taylor to cite even one case of sexual abuse of a minor that would have been reported but for the seal of the confessional. No priest will subject himself to excommunication by violating this most sacred of vows.
Taylor is also dishonest in claiming that this bill does not single out the Catholic Church. As the local Journal Times newspaper points out, the Catholic Church is singled out, in a full paragraph of last week's news release announcing the new bill.
Moreover, if the sponsors do not mean to target the Catholic sacrament of Confession, where is the provision overriding attorney-client privilege? Or that between psychologists and psychiatrists and their patients? Surely these professionals also at times learn of sexual abuse of minors during confidential sessions. Why are they not also required to break their confidentiality with clients or patients?
In fact, if anyone is guilty of protecting those who sexually abuse minors, it is Rep. Chris Taylor, through her ongoing affiliation with Planned Parenthood.
Last year, 56 members of Congress wrote to the Department of Health and Human Services calling for a federal investigation into what one congressman termed Planned Parenthood's "unconscionable, inhumane cover-up of child sexual abuse." The letter included testimony from former Planned Parenthood workers about girls as young as 12 or 13 being brought to Planned Parenthood for abortions, then returned to the family members, sex traffickers or other adults who had sexually abused and impregnated them.
"More than once I was told , 'No, that is not reportable. You don't need to call it in,'" one former Planned Parenthood clinic manager stated. The nation's leading abortion provider "didn't want to have the trouble—the angry parent, the angry boyfriend, whatever it was," she said.
Planned Parenthood has gone so far as to oppose laws that would require its counselors to report cases of statutory rape. Instead, through their silence, they act as accomplices with rapists.
What has Rep. Taylor done to address this scandal? Nothing. And for good reason. Prior to her election to the state legislature, Taylor was public policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. And according to her biography, she remains affiliated with the abortion giant, serving as a member of the Planned Parenthood Federation and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin.
As a Planned Parenthood activist, if Taylor were serious about protecting minors from sexual abuse, she would demand that her own organization end its cover-up of such abuse.
Instead, by her silence she is complicit in that cover-up—meaning, apparently, that her enthusiasm for abortion outweighs her desire to protect children from sexual abuse.
Either that, or she is simply driven by an animus against the Catholic Church.
Contact Rep. Chris Taylor: Rep.Taylor@legis.wisconsin.gov
