In 1976, Gerety sent a letter to the Democratic National Convention to protest the party's platform on abortion, which he described as "the bloody horror of the callous elimination of hundreds of thousands of God's most defenseless little ones, our own flesh and blood." That same year, he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on "U.S. Foreign Policy: A Critique from Catholic Tradition," and in 1977 he represented the United States Catholic Conference before the House Ways and Means Committee to offer his view on President Jimmy Carter's "Better Jobs and Income" proposal.