BALTIMORE (RNS) — Ever since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court case struck down the national right to abortion, anti-abortion advocates, including the Unites States’ Catholic bishops, have struggled to gain voters’ support in limiting access to the procedure at the state level.
On Election Day, abortion rights amendments passed in seven of 10 states, extending an unbroken series of losses for abortion foes dating back to Kansas’ amendment battle in 2022. Even as Florida’s amendment failed to pass (along with South Dakota’s and Nebraska’s), Floridians — 57% of whom voted “yes” — only narrowly missed hitting the 60% required for approval.
American Catholic voters have undoubtedly been part of the abortion access amendments’ success. Surveys find that about 6 in 10 Catholics support keeping abortion legal, in defiance of Catholic teaching and despite their bishops’ identifying it in 2019 as their “preeminent priority.”
How the bishops navigate this landscape will depend in part on Toledo, Ohio, Bishop Daniel Thomas, who was elected last fall to lead their Committee on Pro-Life Activities and began his three-year term on Wednesday (Nov. 13).
In electing Thomas by an almost two-thirds majority, the bishops declined to elevate San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who had banned former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving Communion over her backing of abortion rights. Their decisive vote was seen as a rejection of the more militant and strident position on the issue.
But the Toledo bishop, who celebrated his 10th anniversary in his diocese last month, calling h …