Abortion Advocates Didn’t Expect Obama Transition Team to Publish Memo
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 10, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Abortion advocates released a 55-page memo that contain’s Barack Obama’s marching order for promoting abortion during his administration. Obama apparently is ready to carry out his commands because he posted the memo on his transition web site without their asking.
However, it appears abortion advocates were caught by surprise when the memo was posted on the transition web site because they expected top Obama official would keep it to themselves.
Emily Douglas a pro-abortion activist who writes at the RH Reality Check blog, talked about apparently internal conversations she had with leading pro-abortion groups and their reaction to Obama’s posting the memo online.
"What advocates were less eager to share with the public is the detailed roadmap included in the document for the changes in policy needed to improve reproductive health for women both here and abroad," Douglas says.
"Several advocates cited concerns that the administration would be criticized as doing the bidding of reproductive health community if it made use of the specific legal reasoning outlined in the document," she said.
Pro-life advocates like Douglas Johnson of National Right to Life know better and understand that the memo just makes public what they already know — that Obama promised Planned Parenthood as early as July 2007 that he would be an obedient lieutenant.
That’s despite the much-ballyhooed transparency policy that Obama and abortion advocates cite as the reason for posting the 55-page abortion memo and others from other lobbying groups expressing their Obama wish list.
"What will soon be transparently obvious is that the Obama Administration is taking its marching orders from the abortion lobby," Johnson told LifeNews.com.
With the document posted the next question is how soon Obama will implement the radical pro-abortion agenda it proposes.
On her blog post, Douglas cites Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress and one of the abortion activists involved in drafting the memo.
Arons says the collection of dozens of pro-abortion groups listed in it haven’t met yet to formulate their strategy.
"Our goal was to come together to present a united front and outline what we hope the new administration will do," says Arons.
"Whether we will develop a collective communications or movement-building strategy around the document remains to be seen. In the meantime, some organizations have put forth their own agendas publicly, and have made efforts to mobilize people around items on those agendas," she said.
Pro-life groups are already working overtime as well to organize and update communications networks with grassroots pro-life advocates to get the word out about each item when the time comes.
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