During the legislative debate over ObamaCare, observant Catholics were stunned at the spectacle of Sister Carol Keehan, CEO of Catholic Health Association opposing the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the issue. The Catholic bishops accurately predicted that ObamaCare would ultimately require religious organizations to violate their own teachings in order to be in compliance.

But nooooooo, said Keehan. The bishops were being irrational and engaging in fearmongering.

Then came another “devout” Catholic, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius who ruled that health insurance provided by Catholic organizations had to provide “reproductive health services” and suddenly Keehan found that not only was she wrong, she was clueless.

Today, the Obama Administration announced that it was pressing ahead with its plan to require contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients to be included in all medical plans by the mechanism of having the insurance carrier provide those services for “free” regardless if the policy held by an employer covered those items. Who was first in line to affix herself to Obama’s fourth point of contact: none other than the egregiously stupid Carol Keehan.

Really one shouldn’t be surprised at this. In the interview linked above, Keehan basically endorses abortion:

Why did the U.S. bishops and other pro-life leaders oppose the final legislation’s approach to abortion?

Many people are uncomfortable with it because it will allow more people to be in plans that cover abortion, even though no federal dollars are used. That is not a happy thought.

On the other hand, it is also not a happy thought that women who are at 300 percent of the poverty level and below have abortions at four times the rate of women in any other socioeconomic group. We haven’t found ways to reach out to those women.

Lest you think I am unfair to Keehan, you need only to read her objection to HHS allowing minors to buy the abortifacient “Plan B.”

Back in December 2010, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix withdrew Catholic standing from St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix and formally excommunicated Sister Margaret McBride for conducting at least one abortion at the hospital. Naturally, Keehan weighed in against the Bishop and the opinion of the actual doctor who advised the diocese on the matter.

Again and again we are seeing this behavior by a disturbing number of Catholics who really should know better. Their romance with Obama has become their lodestar and if endorsing abortion and inviting someone who declared that killing a child who had survived an abortion was just dandy to give a commencement address at Notre Dame was what it took to get that leg tingling then so be it.

These people may not yet be as vile as the kapos who led fellow prisoners to the gas chambers but they are certainly the philosophical fellow travelers of Pierre Laval and Vidkun Quisling.