Pro-Life Advocates Plan to Protest Abortion at NEA Summer Conference

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 6, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Pro-Life Advocates Plan to Protest Abortion at NEA Summer Conference

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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 6
, 2008

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Pro-life advocates plan to protest abortion at the upcoming National Education Association convention at the Washington Convention Center on July 2nd. The NEA has upset pro-life advocates many times over the years and, most recently, when it hosted a forum featuring a late-term abortion practitioner.

Bob Pawson of Pro-Life Educators and Students tells LifeNews.com he hopes pro-life teachers and students will join him at the protest.

"Pro-Life activists, teachers, school employees, students, parents, and clergy are invited to come pray and peacefully picket" the event, he said. "Activate your groups. Bring your families, friends and pro-life signs and banners."

Pawson, an NEA-NJEA teacher in Trenton, says the NEA should be one of the leading advocates against abortion because the practice is killing the next generation of students.

"A pro-abortion position isn’t just morally outrageous; it’s stupid; economic suicide. Twenty-five abortions equal one lost classroom, lost teaching careers, and catastrophic losses to America’s future," he said.

Pawson said he expects one of the pro-abortion Democratic presidential candidates, either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, to address the convention as they did last year.

At the conference, Pawson also expects the NEA’s political action committee to make a presidential endorsement — likely for one of the pro-abortion candidates instead of John McCain, who opposes abortion.

The National Education Association came under fire in march for allowing a radical pro-abortion group to use its building to host a forum featuring controversial late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller.

Tiller is embroiled in a legal battle over charges filed by the state attorney general in Kansas that he repeatedly did illegal late-term abortions. He’s also been criticized for escaping charges in connection with the legal abortion death of a mentally disabled teenager.

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."

That wasn’t the first time the NEA has opened its doors for abortion advocates.

The teacher’s union allowed its headquarters to become a hospitality center for participants at the pro-abortion march in 2004 in Washington. NEA state affiliates, including its New Jersey group, sponsored buses to bring pro-abortion activists to the march.

Pawson said that and other abortion advocacy doesn’t represent America’s teachers.

"We teachers love children. Most are pro-life. It’s unacceptable for union representatives to condone or promote killing babies, future students, in their mothers’ wombs," he said.

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