The university recently defended its yearlong campaign to raise $300,000 for United Way, a non-profit organization which sponsors initiatives that focus on education, income, and health. Though United Way has garnered criticism from pro-life activists for its ties to Planned Parenthood, University Spokesman Dennis Brown said that the charity’s St. Joseph County chapter meets the university’s standards.
Lifesitenews.com, a prominent pro-life news service, has featured several articles critical of United Way’s support for Planned Parenthood.
According to the REGISTER-GUARD of Eugene, Oregon, the Catholic Community Services Board in the area severed ties with the local United Way of Lane County due to their contributions to Planned Parenthood after a 20-year partnership of assisting the poor. Other chapters explicitly list Planned Parenthood as a United Way member agency.
Abortion is not the only issue for which the relationship between Planned Parenthood and the United Way has been attacked.
According to the United Way website, funded programs through Planned Parenthood include “community health maintenance, e.g. communicable disease prevention; medical care service; family planning; health education; public awareness services; and family preservation and strengthening services, e.g. counseling and family life education.”
Pro-Life Wisconsin has also criticized United Way for referring rape victims to Planned Parenthood in a Milwaukee campaign against statutory rape. Planned Parenthood currently faces criminal charges in Kansas, as well as an investigations by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Investigations, for allegedly performing abortions on minors and failing to report instances of statutory rape and sexual abuse.
“Pro-choice and pro-life advocates in all parts of the country have tried to make abortion a United Way issue,” United Way’s policy states. “United Ways have taken a position of neutrality on this divisive issue because we do not want any single topic to overshadow our mission to improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities…No United Way funds are currently used, or have ever been used to support abortion services.”
Although local chapters pay dues to the national organization, each branch determines its own organizational affiliations and contributions. According to United Way’s website, the national office “does not dictate funding decisions to local United Ways…all funding decisions are made by volunteers of each independent local United Way organization.”
“Notre Dame has adopted a set of principles for charitable activity, and the United Way of St. Joseph County conforms to them,” wrote Brown in an email to THE ROVER. “The local United Way funds a wide array of valuable programs that provide educational, financial and health services to families throughout our community. The St. Joseph County United Way’s national dues are one percent of campaign dollars raised in the previous year.”
The principles Brown referred to, entitled “University of Notre Dame Principles for Institutional Charitable Activity,” were established in April 2010. Focusing on “the principle of cooperation,” they outline standards to guide the university’s decision about which charitable organizations the university should support or collaborate with.
“Occasions may, however, arise when one does not intend an evil act or practice but is in some way involved in it…called Material Cooperation,” the document states.
While the policy distinguishes between immediate and mediate material cooperation, it also states that, even if this criterion is not upheld, a contribution can be morally justifiable in instances in which “pursuing a good would otherwise be difficult or impossible to attain and the likelihood of performing a prophetic or educational role that contains or ends wrongdoing.”
Contact Bob at rburkett@nd.edu. He is fond of bacon grease and his two favorite films are FERN GULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST and THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER.
