“Joe Biden is perhaps on par with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as one of the most pro-abortion presidents in U.S. history,” writes LifeNews. Biden’s radical abortion agenda apparently met with approval from Planned Parenthood, as America’s largest abortion organization presented Biden with an award at a luxury gala in Delaware. The abortion industry killed a record number of babies in abortions last year (see here), thanks to Biden’s support in the form of public funding and pro-abortion presidential executive orders.

Planned Parenthood honored Biden on September 24 with an Award of Merit (see here) during the pro-abortion organization’s fundraising gala, where Biden urged the crowd not to give up the fight on abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Biden received the 2026 Sonia Schorr Sloan Service Award from the abortion industry and called Sloan a “dear friend and longtime supporter.” His wife, pro-abortion activist Jill Biden, presented the award to the former president.

The Sonia Schorr Sloan Service Award is presented by Planned Parenthood of Delaware as a recognition of service, advocacy, and “fearless leadership,” meaning leadership defined by the organization as “fearless” or determined. In Biden’s case, the award announcement linked the recognition both to his decades-long relationship with Sonia “Sonny” Sloan and to his subsequent work advocating for what Planned Parenthood calls “reproductive rights” and access to “reproductive health,” euphemisms for abortion.

Sonia Schorr Sloan, known as “Sonny” Sloan (1928–2019), was an important figure for Planned Parenthood of Delaware but should not be confused with a national executive of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Her relationship with the organization was very close and long-lasting: She served as president of the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Delaware from 1980 to 1984 and continued to serve on the board thereafter. According to a University of Delaware reconstruction, she returned to the board even in her later years, focusing on development and fundraising. Overall, Sonia Schorr Sloan raised over $100 million (see profile here).

Sonia “Sonny” Schorr Sloan also played a significant and active role in raising funds for Joe Biden’s first Senate campaign in 1972, which helps explain why their relationship has remained so close for nearly 50 years. The most interesting testimony comes from Sloan herself. In 2008, she said she had already worked on Biden’s campaign for New Castle County Council in 1970 and subsequently spent about nine months with him on the Delaware Democratic Renewal Commission. The relationship didn’t end in 1972. Records from the Delaware Women’s Hall of Fame state that Sloan was active in all of Biden’s campaigns, from his first Senate run to the 2020 presidential campaign. When Sloan died in 2019, Biden recalled having her by his side “since the very beginning,” as a 29-year-old Senate candidate.

This makes the statement Biden made when he received the Sonia Schorr Sloan Service Award from Planned Parenthood of Delaware much more understandable: He said he probably would not have become either senator or president “if it weren’t for Sonny Sloan.” It wasn’t just a ceremonial formula, then. Sloan had actually participated in building his political career from the beginning, helping him as early as 1970 and, above all, contributing to providing him with one of his first significant financial and political supports in 1972. So the first meaning that Biden attributed to the award was personal even before it was political.

As Breitbart reports, “In a largely confused and rambling speech, Biden attacked the Supreme Court for overturning the constitutional right to abortion, created by the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, and said that Sloan was one of the first people he thought of when the ruling was handed down. “She would have felt devastated,” he said, also feeling “anger and shock.” He then added that she “wasn’t afraid” and wouldn’t have “despaired even for a moment.” He continued, “Following the Dobbs ruling, as president, I sought to do what I knew Sonny would do. We took action. We signed executive orders to protect access to reproductive health care, including emergency medical care.” Biden concluded by telling the cheering crowd of abortion supporters that women still hold political power. “You have no idea how powerful women are in this country,” he said. “You’ll soon find out.”

Biden has strikingly represented a contradiction that has swept across the American Catholic world: the scandal of a Catholic president who, on the political level, fought to protect legal access to abortion.

Although Biden had taken significantly more restrictive positions on abortion earlier in his political career than he has in recent years, the fact remains that, especially during his presidency, he has become a staunch supporter of it. In the past he had supported, among other things, the restrictions on federal funding provided by the Hyde Amendment; in 2019, he changed his position and, as president, after the Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, adopted measures aimed at protecting access to “reproductive health services,” including abortion.

For part of the Catholic world, his figure thus became emblematic of a profound contradiction. On one side, Biden is one of the political figures most committed to the defense of so-called reproductive rights, meaning abortion; on the other, his public stance on abortion is in open conflict with the teaching of the Catholic Church. The Catechism, in fact, states that direct abortion is “gravely contrary to the moral law” and that this teaching “has not changed” and “remains invariable.”

In this regard, it’s worth recalling that on October 27, 2019, at St. Anthony Church in Florence, South Carolina, parish priest Father Robert Morey denied Communion to Biden, then a presidential candidate, citing his public support for legal abortion. The move was consistent with a church directive already in force in the Diocese of Charleston, according to which Catholic politicians who publicly supported pro-abortion legislation were not to be admitted to Communion.

Interviewed a few days later by Judy Woodruff for PBS NewsHour, Biden called the incident “a private matter” and criticized the priest for discussing it with the press. He then added: “It’s not a position I’ve encountered anywhere else, not even with the Holy Father, who gives me Communion.” This is an essentially literal translation of his words; the reference to Pope Francis was therefore indeed made by Biden.

Two years later, the relationship between Biden and Francis returned to the forefront. On October 29, 2021, at the end of a long private meeting in the Vatican, Biden told reporters that the Pope had told him he was a “good Catholic ” (see also here ) and that he should continue receiving Communion. The Vatican, as is customary for the Pontiff’s private conversations, did not confirm the content of those words, and the official statement did not mention the issue.

The next day, Biden, along with his wife Jill, attended Mass at St. Patrick’s Church in Rome, near the U.S. Embassy, ​​and received Communion. This did not take place in the Vatican but in a church in Rome, in the diocese of which the Pope is bishop. There is no documented specific consent from Francis to distribute Communion to Biden during that particular Mass; however, it is documented that, the day before, Biden had stated that Francis had told him to continue receiving it.

It is in this context that the award given to Biden by Planned Parenthood of Delaware takes on particular significance for those who read the story in light of Catholic teaching on abortion. In the eyes of his Catholic critics, this episode thus reiterates the contradiction that has characterized Biden’s public image for years: his strongly asserted Catholic identity and, at the same time, his political support for a view of abortion incompatible with the Church’s moral teaching.