(CNSNews.com) -- Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who supports abortion, was heckled and called a “murderer” by a pro-life activist as she gave a speech to graduating students on Friday at Georgetown University, the nation’s oldest Catholic academic institution.
“I got a message for you Kathleen Sebelius: You’re a murderer, abortion is murder!” yelled the heckler as he was being escorted out of the room by campus police. The young activist told CNSNews.com that he goes by the name of David Lewis.
Alluding to Biblical scripture, Lewis also yelled across the room towards Sebelius, “We can better have millstones hung around your neck murderer.”
Luke 17:2 states, “It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones [children] to sin.”
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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
During the speech, Sebelius quoted John. F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech about his Catholic religion and views on the separation of church and state.
CNSNews.com spoke with Lewis outside the university’s gate. He said he is not a Georgetown student but is a member of a pro-life group called “The Society of Truth and Justice,” led by pro-life activist Randall Terry, who is running in the Democratic primary against Obama.
Lewis said he was escorted off campus and asked by university authorities to sign a paper saying he could not come back to the institution for a year. Violating that agreement would get him arrested, he said.
CNSNews.com asked Lewis why he interrupted Sebelius’ speech.
“Georgetown University claims to be a Catholic school and it’s an outrage that somebody that supports the murder of unborn babies would be invited, and somebody has to stand up for the babies and if it’s not this Catholic University then it’s got to be Christians,” said Lewis.
Georgetown University President John DeGioia. (AP Photo)
“Babies are being killed in womb up to nine months and Sebelius supports that and this school invites her here, so I hope this is a teaching moment,” said Lewis.
The office of the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., criticized Georgetown for inviting Sebelius to speak given her department’s implementation of a mandate requiring that nearly all health insurance policies pay for sterilizations and contraceptives, including those that induce abortions. Georgetown, a Catholic school, is run by Jesuits.
Randall Terry’s group was expected to protest Sebelius’ speech. They were provided a space outside the university gates to do so.
In a May 7 statement by the group announcing their protest at Georgetown, Terry said, "This is an outrage. The correct response is rage. People saw what we did at Notre Dame; we are coming to Georgetown University … and perhaps we will not be so moderate."
Cardinal Raymond Burke, archbishop emeritus of St. Louis, MO, and prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura at the Vatican.
Sebelius “is well known for her support of the right to procured abortion and for her public association with some of the more notorious agents of the culture of death,” said Burke.
“As a Roman Catholic, her appointment is the source of the greatest embarrassment because she has publicly and repeatedly betrayed her Catholic faith, in the most fundamental tenet of the moral law, that is, the law to safeguard and foster human life from the moment of its inception to the moment of natural death,” Burke said.
“What is more, she has obstinately remained in her moral error after being admonished by, at least, three of her bishops …” he added.
In a May 14 statement defending the decision to invite Sebelius to speak at Georgetown, the school’s president, John DeGioia, said, “The Secretary’s presence on our campus should not be viewed as an endorsement of her views. As a Catholic and Jesuit University, Georgetown disassociates itself from any positions that are in conflict with traditional church teachings.”