Archbishop Chaput to Kmiec: You Wanted Obama, Now Lobby Him on Abortion
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 5, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Catholic apologists for Barack Obama pulled the wool over voters’ eyes with their protests that he would have a pro-life administration and would seek to reduce abortions. Now that Obama has been elected, a top Catholic official is urging the Obama backers to make him make good on his word.
During the election, the dueling between Catholic backers and Catholic opponents of Obama reached a fever pitch.
Groups like Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good put up web sites, wrote editorials and sent out millions of mailings to voters to make them think pro-abortion candidate Obama would be pro-life president Obama.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver led the charge on the pro-life side against Pepperdine University professor Douglas Kmiec.
In a letter to the editor to the web site Public Discourse, Chaput issued told Kmiec he would have to make good on his promises that Obama would reduce abortions and, in a more polite manner, told him to put up or shut up.
"I’m disappointed that in the course of his advocacy, [Kmiec] has apparently never faced up to the facts of Sen. Obama’s longstanding and extensive efforts to deprive an entire class of human beings–unborn children–of basic legal protections against homicide, or Sen. Obama’s pledge to use taxpayer dollars to subsidize abortion, thus coercively implicating Catholics and other pro-life citizens in the killing," Chaput writes.
"Nor does Prof. Kmiec acknowledge that the foundational principle of the entire social Gospel is the right of every member of the human family to protection against unjust violent attack," Chaput adds.
"Having spent months urging Catholics to vote for Candidate Obama despite the senator’s promises to remove all meaningful restrictions on abortion and to make abortion more widely available, Prof. Kmiec has a unique opportunity to press a newly elected President Obama to reconsider his most extreme positions," Chaput wrote in the letter.
Chaput pointed out the numerous positions of Obama’s that are at odds with Catholic pro-life teaching — his opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortions, his desire to sign a bill to overturn abortion reduction laws nationwide, and his votes against the anti-infanticide bills in Illinois.
"Maybe all of these commitments are an elegant charade. Maybe I’ve missed a ‘pro-life’ theme in here somewhere," Chaput concludes.
"But no matter. Along with many, many other Catholics and pro-life citizens, I look forward eagerly to Prof. Kmiec’s vocal advocacy against these profoundly unjust policies."
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