Top NARAL Activist Promises to Keep Democratic Party Platform Pro-Abortion
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 5, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Every four years Americans elect a president and both political parties hold conventions to coronate their nominee and build up excitement in advance of the November elections. They also review and approve party platforms and one top pro-abortion is ready to get involved.
NARAL president Nancy Keenan informed her supporters on Tuesday that she is headed to Pittsburgh this Thursday to participate in the Democratic Party’s platform committee meetings.
When she’s there, she promises to keep the party’s position in support of unlimited abortions paid for at taxpayer expense in place.
"On Thursday, I have the privilege of traveling to Pittsburgh to sit on the Democratic Party Platform Committee to discuss, amend, and ratify the party platform," she told NARAL members in an email.
She urged the pro-abortion activists to send emails to members of the platform committee to keep the language as pro-abortion as possible.
"Send a message to the Democratic Party Platform Committee by Thursday so that I can hand-deliver your petition to the Secretary of the Democratic National Committee,’ she pleaded.
Keenan promised to deliver the signed email petitions to Alice Germond, the Secretary of the Democratic National Committee.
"We cannot take the Democratic Party’s longtime pro-choice position for granted—we need to demonstrate our strength," Keenan said.
Keenan will likely vote along with other platform committee members on a proposal from pro-life Democrats that some sarcastically consider throwing a bone to the pro-life community to get pro-life voters to back pro-abortion candidate Barack Obama.
In an idea that is more symbolism over substance, a leading Democratic Party activist says he wants to add language to the Democratic Party platform calling for the "reduction" of abortions. Yet the proposal wouldn’t call for any actual bills or efforts to limit abortions.
Rev. Jim Wallis, who hosted a Democratic candidates forum for CNN last year, is behind the effort.
"Abortion reduction should be a central Democratic Party plank in this election," Wallis told ABC News in June. "I’ll just say that flat out."
"This is going to be a big Denver conversation," Wallis told the television station. "You don’t have to call for criminalizing anyone. You don’t have to take a different stance about a woman’s right to choose. But you begin with the need for reducing abortion dramatically."
The only problem is Wallis’ idea includes no actual ways to reduce abortions.
His proposed language includes no mention of the kinds of initiatives Obama has opposed — limiting taxpayer funding of abortions, allowing parental involvement, or banning late-term abortions.
There’s no mention of giving women information about abortion’s risks or alternatives, funding pregnancy centers, or limiting the dangerous abortion drug that is responsible for killing seven women in the U.S. and 14 worldwide.
Instead, Wallis wants language that promotes birth control and contraception efforts that Congress have pro-abortion groups have already spend billions on that don’t necessarily reduce the number of abortions.
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