Nancy Pelosi Uses Family’s Pro-Life View to Moderate Pro-Abortion Image 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 24, 2006
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Nancy Pelosi is a solid abortion advocate who draws strong ratings from NARAL and poor marks from National Right to Life. As the House Democratic Leader and a potential Speaker, pro-life candidates are using Pelosi as an example of why pr-abortion candidates shouldn’t be elected.
Pelosi is attempting to counter the portrait of her as an itinerant pro-abortion leader of Congress by emphasizing the pro-life views of her Catholic family.
In an interview with Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, Pelosi doesn’t shy away from an assertion that the abortion issue brought her into politics. But she plays up the pro-life views of her family.
"My family is very pro-life. They’re not fanatics and they’re not activists. I think they’d like it if I were not so vocally pro-choice," Pelosi explains.
"To me it isn’t even a question. God has given us a free will. We’re all responsible for our actions," Pelosi says about her pro-abortion views and how they contrast with her family’s views against abortion.
"If you don’t want an abortion, you don’t believe in it, [then] don’t have one. But don’t tell somebody else what they can do in terms of honoring their responsibilities," Pelosi adds.
Despite her attempt to moderate her image — she also encouraged pro-life former Congressman Tim Roemer to run against Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic Party — Pelosi is a staunch abortion advocate.
In the last Congressional session alone, Pelosi compiled a 0 percent pro-life voting record on 10 votes NRLC recorded.
She voted four times against a bill that would help support parental notification laws in over two dozen states, she voted twice to force taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research and voted three times to spend tax money on abortions in the United States and overseas.
Pelosi also refused to support a bipartisan effort to allow Terri Schiavo’s parents to take their case to prevent her former husband from killing her to federal courts for a review.
Her career-long effort to keep abortion legal throughout pregnancy and paid for with tax money led to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, finding its newest president.
Cecile Richards became the abortion advocacy group’s president in January. Before that, she worked as Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff.
That will certainly give the abortion business a foot in the door if Pelosi becomes Speaker next January.
