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IMAGE: CNS photo/Rick Reinhard
By Nancy O'Brien
WASHINGTON
(CNS) -- Many paths led Richard
Doerflinger into pro-life work.
And
now his path is taking him into retirement as associate director of the U.S.
bishops' Secretariat of
Pro-Life Activities and eventually across the country to Washington
state.
Doerflinger,
a 63-year-old native of the New York borough of Queens, served for 36 years as
legislative assistant, assistant director, associate director for policy
development and, since 2008, as overall associate director of the secretariat.
His retirement was to begin April 29.
Although
he did not know it at the time, his first pro-life influence came when he was
14. His older brother Eugene was involved in a car accident and was left in
what is now called a persistent vegetative state for several months.
Doctors
told Doerflinger's parents that Eugene's "life was over" and urged them to let
him die, the younger Doerflinger said. Instead, they took him home and cared
for him there until Eugene "became fully aware of the people around him."
"From
that I learned never to give up on people and about the unconditional love of a
family," Doerflinger said. But there was another bitter lesson when Eugene and
his family realized how difficult it was for him to learn to stand and walk
again when doctors had failed to treat his dislocated shoulder after the
accident.
His
journey then took him to the University of Chicago, where he met and married
his wife of 38 years, Lee Ann. Starting out as a chemistry major and pre-med
student, he began to find his philosophy courses "much more interesting," so
he switched to religious studies and theology.
Doerflinger
came to Washington as a doctoral student in theology at The Catholic University
of America, where his wife, a French language and literature major, worked as a
legal secretary "to support her poor, starving student husband," he said with a
laugh. She eventually became a natural family planning instructor for the
Archdiocese of Washington.
Wanting
to contribute to the family finances, he heard about a job as a legislative
assistant in the pro-life office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Even though he had no legislative experience, "I walked in and was hired," he
said.
Although
his science background served him well on the technical aspects of pro-life
work, "everything I know about public policy I learned on the job," Doerflinger
said. But the job was a good fit because "I can't remember a time when I did
not find the Catholic Church's position on life compelling," he added.
Over
the next 36 years, there were both highs and lows for the pro-life movement.
"The
high points would involve the passage of the ban on partial-birth abortion and
the Supreme Court decision upholding that ban, the Weldon Amendment on conscience rights in 1994
and the Dickey Amendment
on federal funding of embryo research in 1995," he said.
"One
of the biggest victories happened before my time in 1976 with passage of the
Hyde Amendment," which forbids federal funding for most abortions or
abortion-related care and continues to be included in many federal
appropriations bills, Doerflinger added.
Among
the low points he cited were "the failure of Congress to retain the Stupak Amendment," which
would have prohibited any federal funding of abortion in the Affordable Care
Act. "Sixty-five Democrats supported (the Stupak Amendment) in the House, but
the Senate decided to do their own, more problematic bill," Doerflinger said.
"I
also regret that we never got Congress to do a real ban on human cloning or to
act against the use of federally controlled drugs in assisted suicides," he said.
Asked
about the changes that have taken place in pro-life work during the past three
decades, Doerflinger explained that "the public policy debate has moved, at
least for now, from efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade outright to ways of
reducing abortion and testing the envelope on what the (Supreme) court has set
out."
"There
is more state legislation passed than ever before and a lot of it is pressing
that envelope," he added. "But even those modest laws do have an effect on reducing
the abortion rate."
Doerflinger
said he was "delighted" to turn over the reins to his successor, Greg Schleppenbach, executive
director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference, who was to begin work at
the USCCB May 16.
"He
really knows these issues and he's a better coalition builder than I am, so now
he can do this on the national scene," he said.
Doerflinger
will continue as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, to which he has belonged since 2011,
and as a public policy fellow at the University of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture and at the
National Catholic Bioethics Center.
At
the Vatican, he and his colleagues at the academy have been discussing issues such
as the challenges to presenting the Catholic vision in a secularized society
and the relationship between faith and science.
"Throughout
the whole stem-cell debate, we were constantly being told that religion was
getting in the way of science," Doerflinger said. "But now the research that is
moving most rapidly to cure a disease is the research we have been urging
people to explore instead -- adult stem-cell research."
Richard
and Lee Ann Doerflinger have raised four children, including Army Spc. Thomas Doerflinger,
who died in combat in Iraq in 2004 at the age of 20.
Although
his parents continue to grieve the loss of their oldest son, "Thomas was a
smart young man who knew what he was getting into. He wanted to do something
meaningful, something important ... and he was very matter-of-fact about the
possibility of dying."
But,
he added, "I have a great deal of sympathy for those who do not have their
faith to support them" in such a tragedy.
Now
that daughters Anna and Maria and son Matthew are out on their own, Doerflinger
promised his wife, a native of Washington state, to "give her side of the
country a chance." They plan to move north of Seattle after they sell their
home in Maryland.
"There
are all kinds of articles I have not had a chance to write because of the
day-to-day crises of the job," he said. "I am certainly going to stay involved
in these matters, just at a slower pace."
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