Catholics protest award to Breyer

October 28, 2008|Mark Sherman, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Fordham University's plan to give an award to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has drawn criticism from alumni and the leader of the Catholic Church in New York over Breyer's support for abortion rights.

Cardinal Edward Egan has spoken to the Catholic university's leaders to ensure "that a mistake of this sort will not happen again," said New York Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling.

More than 1,100 Fordham alumni and others have signed a petition calling for the award to be revoked, according to the Cardinal Newman Society, a conservative Catholic group based in Manassas, Va., that is leading the protest.

Breyer is scheduled to accept the Fordham-Stein Ethics Prize tomorrow at a dinner in New York. He will be the seventh justice to receive the award from Fordham's law school. Of the six other justices, five voted in support of abortion rights while on the court, and their awards drew no apparent protest.

But the Cardinal Newman Society has been actively opposing Catholic colleges' efforts to honor people who do not share the church's antiabortion views.

It also has highlighted campus appearances by Catholic academics who back Democratic candidate Barack Obama, who favors abortion rights.

The argument against Breyer, who is not Catholic, is that he wrote the majority opinion in a 2000 case that struck down a Nebraska law banning a procedure that abortion opponents call partial-birth abortion. He also dissented in a 2007 case that upheld a federal law banning the same procedure.

Fordham and Breyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment yesterday. Egan has previously criticized Catholic elected officials and candidates who support abortion rights.