Pro-Abortion NEA to Spend $60 Million Re-Electing Obama

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jun 10, 2011   |   11:32AM   |   Washington, DC

The nation’s biggest educational lobby, which has advanced a pro-abortion agenda, will advance it further now that it has committed to spending $60 million to support the re-election campaign of pro-abortion President Barack Obama.

National Education Association executive director John Wilson says he is prepared to pull out all the stops to ensure the pro-abortion president has another four years in office to promote taxpayer funding of abortions and pack the Supreme Court and other federal courts with abortion activists.

“We’ve got a lot of selling to do. Our members are very unhappy,” Wilson told Politico. “We’ve got to explain to them the stakes. We cannot wait until a few months before the election.”

The executive board of the NEA voted to endorse Obama’s re-election bid last month after waiting until the last minute to support his presidential campaign in 2008 and Wilson said the NEA would need more time to pressure its members to stick with Obama once again. He said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel recognized some NEA members are not happy with the way Obama has performed in the White House but, at the end of June, its members are expected to ratify the decision at their annual convention.

Wilson talked with Politico about the massive amount of money the NEA will pour into the race to re-elect Obama, who supports erasing another generation of students via abortion. He explained that part of the $60 million it plans to commit will go towards convincing the estimated 1 million NEA members who are Republicans to vote for Obama.

“Quite frankly, we don’t have the money the Koch brothers have, but one thing we do have is, we have boots on the ground,” Wilson said. “We are going to invest a lot of our resources and people power to convince our voters, which are reflective of our members.”

Karen Cross, the National Right to Life political director, told LifeNews.com in 2008 after the NEA endorsed Obama that the educational lobby doesn’t understand the irony of what its endorsement means.

“The tragic irony of the NEA’s endorsement of Barack Obama is not lost on millions of pro-lifers across the country,” Cross said. “The NEA has chosen to back a presidential candidate who wants to continue a policy of abortion on demand, which has resulted in nearly 50 million missing students in classrooms from coast to coast since 1973.”

“Barack Obama’s extremist pro-abortion agenda is a poison pill for our nation’s classrooms,” Cross added. “It borders on the incomprehensible that our nation’s educators would get behind a candidate whose agenda will result in more and more missing children.”

In 2009, the NEA defeated a measure that would have had it take a neutral stance on abortion. The bylaws amendment would have invalidated NEA Resolution I-16 which says the NEA “supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom,” which is a code word for abortion.

The defeated proposal would have had the NEA take “no position” and would have prohibited the group from filing a Supreme Court brief supporting Roe v. Wade if the Supreme Court ever considers a case that would overturn the decision allowing virtually unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy. It would have also prohibited the NEA from “lobbying for or against legislation regarding the dissemination of birth control information, the funding of birth control procedures, or the sale of birth control products.”

In 2008, pro-life advocates protested at the national NEA convention at the Washington Convention Center. The protest pointed out how the union has upset pro-life advocates many times over the years.

Most recently, the NEA received criticism from pro-life advocates when it hosted a forum featuring a late-term abortion practitioner. The National Education Association came under fire for allowing a radical pro-abortion group to use its building to host a forum featuring controversial late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller.

LifeNews.com reported on the NEA-hosted pro-abortion forum and the criticism of it. Later, NEA Assistant General Counsel Michael Simpson slammed the criticism as “untrue and unfair.”

The NEA has also come under fire for attacking abstinence education programs.

ACTION: Send your complaints about the Obama endorsement to the National Education Association. Go to https://www.nea.org/aboutnea/contact.html for contact information.