Massachusetts state Representative Claire Cronin (R-Easton) spoke against the born-alive amendment on Wednesday, December 16, 2020.
Calling Claire Cronin “an abortion extremist,” the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts says her nomination to become the next U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Ireland demonstrates the failure of U.S. Catholic bishops to hold Catholic politicians who support abortion accountable to their faith.
Cronin, a Democratic state representative from Easton, spearheaded the abortion-expansion ROE Act bill through the Massachusetts Legislature in 2020.
She also campaigned for Joe Biden during the Democratic presidential primary in Massachusetts.
Her reward is the much-coveted ambassadorship to Ireland, which usually goes to a well-connected Irish-American tied to the winning side in the most recent presidential contest.
Cronin is a 1982 graduate of Stonehill College, which is run by the Congregation of the Holy Cross, which is the same religious order that runs Notre Dame.
“Like so many other proponents of abortion in American public life, Claire Cronin is a baptized Catholic who received an undergraduate degree — in political science — from a Catholic college run by a Catholic religious order. She is one of nearly 7,400 state legislators in the U.S. If you add county and local elected officials, along with 535 members of Congress, you now have, probably, thousands of Catholic office holders in this country who support abortion,” said C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, in a written statement on Saturday, June 26.
Planned Parenthood has called Cronin an “ally” for her work expanding legal abortion in Massachusetts.
The ROE Act bill lowered the age when girls can get an abortion without the permission of a parent or a judge – 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds now qualify. It also removed a previous provision in state law that required that doctors try to save the life of a baby born alive after an attempted abortion.
The new statute, which Democratic state legislators (and one Republican) enacted in late December 2020 over the veto of Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, also explicitly allows abortions after 24 weeks in cases where a fetus has been diagnosed with a fatal condition. Late-term abortions continue to be allowed in Massachusetts, as the statute says, “to preserve the patient’s physical or mental health.”
President Joe Biden, who is also a Catholic, also supports legal abortion, including federal funding for abortion. The Republic of Ireland legalized abortion through a national referendum in May 2018.
“The Claire Cronin appointment reflects, accurately, the Culture of Death values which define the Biden administration, and which have guided Joe Biden’s fifty-year political career. Cronin’s choice will likely prove popular in what is now a thoroughly de-Christianized, post-Catholic Ireland,” Doyle said in the written statement.
U.S. Catholic bishops are divided over an attempt by some to link receiving communion – which the Catholic Church teaches is the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ – with support for abortion by Catholic politicians. Some say Catholic politicians who support legal abortion should be denied communion. Others say the Church shouldn’t do that because it would politicize communion for the sake of a single issue.
Doyle said the bishops should act.
“It will take decades to recover from this debacle, yet the bishops still dither about enforcing canon law regarding the reception of Holy Communion,” Doyle said. “One thing is certain. We need a new generation of Catholic prelates who have the lucidity, the fortitude and the Supernatural Faith to recognize and confront the dire reality that is the state of the Catholic Church in America today.”
Cronin could not immediately be reached for comment on Saturday.
Massachusetts state Representative Claire Cronin (R-Easton) spoke against the born-alive amendment on Wednesday, December 16, 2020. 
