Religious Groups Want Obama to OK Tax-Funded Abortion, Zap Pro-Life Laws
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 18, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A coalition of pro-abortion religious groups and denominations has sent incoming president Barack Obama a letter asking him to promote abortion. The groups want Obama to okay forcing taxpayers to fund abortions and urge him to sign a bill overturning pro-life laws nationwide.
The letter is signed by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and several Jewish and mainline Protestant bodies.
They include the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, and Jewish groups such as Hadassah, Jewish Women International, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the Union for Reform Judaism.
The letter urges Obama to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, the Congressional measure that would make unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy a national law and overturn hundreds of abortion reduction laws in all 50 states.
The letter also urges Obama to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the direct funding of almost all abortions and is credited with stopping hundreds of thousands of abortions since the 1970s.
In the letter, the religious groups also call on Obama to fund the UNFPA, the United Nations family planning agency that has been involved in the population control program in China that includes forced abortions and sterilizations.
They also ask Obama to repeal the Mexico City Policy, which protects taxpayers from funding groups that promote or perform abortions in other countries.
Mark Tooley, the director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s UM Action section told LifeNews.com he’s disappointed the religious groups would force their pro-abortion agenda on other Americans.
"Many churchgoers in RCRC member denominations would be horrified to learn how RCRC is exploiting their church’s name to promote unlimited abortion on demand," he said. Yet, "RCRC has long lobbied for unrestricted abortion on demand, with its member denominations acting as a religious veneer for its extreme abortion rights ideology."
"Especially abhorrent is RCRC’s advocacy of government funding for unrestricted abortions," Tooley told Lifenews.com. "This mindset illustrates how RCRC and its member denominational agencies are morally vapid and divorced from traditional Christian and Jewish teachings."
Tooley says the letter proves that liberal Christians who promised Obama would reduce abortions and voted for him because of it were deceived or deceiving voters.
"Many on the Evangelical and Catholic Left promoted Obama’s candidacy, promising his administration would work to reduce the number of abortions in America," he said. "Such advocates should now work to counteract RCRC’s squalid campaign."
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