Michigan Governor Granholm Speaks at Pro-Abortion Event, Seeks Unity
Email this article
Printer friendly page
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 26, 2006
Lansing, MI (LifeNews.com) — Pro-abortion Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm gave the keynote address at a pro-abortion rally at the state capital on Tuesday. Granholm employed what is becoming a frequent approach abortion advocates are using, by saying they favor common ground in the abortion debate and want to reduce the number of abortions.
Despite the governor’s speech and key statewide elections coming up in November, just 250 people turned out at the pro-abortion event and some of them were pro-life. Some 18 groups co-sponsored the abortion rally.
Granholm said she would prefer to see no abortions performed in the state and claimed birth control and more sexual education are the key components to get to achieve the goal.
"We want to be the state where the battle is won to reduce unintended pregnancies," Granholm said, according to a Lansing State Journal report. "We want to be the state where the battle is won for policies that make abortion safe, legal and rare."
"Education is the best way to address abortion," she said. "Rather than changing laws to ban abortion, let’s reduce the number of abortions by making it less necessary to have abortions."
According to the Lansing newspaper, as many as 50 of the 250 people who attended were pro-life, including members of a college pro-life group.
"Unborn children are people just like everyone else. They don’t have a voice like everyone else," Katie Wilcox, a senior at Michigan State University, told the newspaper. "I have to be that voice so they don’t have to undergo the torture and end-of-life abortion."
"Every human life should be respected and protected," Wilcox said. "Roe v. Wade needs to be overturned."
Should Roe be reversed, Michigan is one of the states where it would be illegal, as an abortion ban is on the books and could be enforced post-Roe.
The speech was Granholm’s first at a pro-abortion event, although she has attended other events in the past.
Meanwhile, Right to Life of Michigan held a legislative day on Wednesday to teach pro-life advocates about the state legislative process and how to lobby on pro-life bills. David Prentice, a former college professor now with the Family Research Council, spoke to those attending about bioethics issues like human cloning and stem cell research.
RLM legislative director Ed Rivet said he expected dozens of pro-life lawmakers to stop by the even to meet with pro-life voters.
In march, Granholm signed a bill that will allow women to see an ultrasound of their unborn child prior to having an abortion, though the legislation was changed in order to gain her signature.
The bill originally mandated that abortion practitioners should take an ultrasound image of the baby and provide it to women, but the bill was later changed to only require them to provide it if they have determined it’s necessary.
According to Rivet, the change did not weaken the bill since abortion practitioners cannot quit performing ultrasounds because they need to identify the age of the unborn child prior to the abortion. As a result, he told LifeNews.com, "we expect that every woman seeking an abortion will be receiving an ultrasound and must be given the opportunity to see the screen."
Related web sites:
Michigan Legislature – https://www.legislature.mi.gov
Right to Life of Michigan – https://www.rtl.org
