A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has struck back against criticism from prominent Catholic prelates who accused her of misrepresenting church teachings about abortion.
"While Catholic teaching is clear that life begins at conception, many Catholics do not ascribe to that view," said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly.
Pelosi, a Democrat from California and the nation's highest-ranking Catholic elected official, said on Meet the Press that the question of when life begins is "an issue of controversy" within the church. Her comments drew rebukes from the archbishops of Denver, Washington and New York.
Cardinal Justin F. Rigali and Bishop William E. Lori, both high-ranking officials in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that Pelosi's argument is inaccurate.
"The church's moral teaching never justified or permitted abortion at any stage of development," Rigali and Lori said.
Pelosi, who supports abortion rights, cited the work of St. Augustine, who wrote that life begins three months after conception. Church leaders say that medieval teachings were "uninformed and inadequate" in light of modern science, and that the question of when life begins was firmly answered in the middle of the 19th century.
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