United Methodist Church Withdraws From Letter Urging Obama to Back Abortion
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 2, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The United Methodist Church has withdrawn from a letter signed by several religious groups and sent to Barack Obama urging him to him to promote abortion as president. UMC officials originally signed on to the letter but withdrew recently after realizing the extent of what the letter promoted.
As profiled by LifeNews.com, the letter asks Obama to okay forcing taxpayers to fund abortions and urges 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. That includes the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society.
In a late December email LifeNews.com obtained, Mark Tooley, director of the pro-life group UM Action, blasted the decision to sign on to the letter.
"Interestingly, GBCS was virtually the only Christian church agency that signed the letter, besides the very liberal United Church of Christ," Tooley said. "Even the liberal Episcopal Church did not sign."
"How horrifying that one of our United Methodist agencies officially urged unrestricted abortion on demand, even overturning very minor restrictions such as parental notification laws," Tooley added.
"Shouldn’t parents of an underage teenager at least have the right to be informed of such things?" he asked.
Apparently UMC officials believe the answer is yes.
As Tooley tells LifeNews.com, former Um Action staffer John Lomperis developed a measure for the United Methodist General Conference supporting parental notification laws for minors seeking abortions and the legislation passed.
"Recently, the GBCS considered the implications of this new United Methodist stance on parental notification and realized it conflicted with the pro-FOCA letter sent to Obama," Tooley said. "GBCS withdrew its signature from the letter and sent its own letter to Obama, clarifying that GBCS could not support FOCA after all."
The move doesn’t mean the United Methodist Church has come around to support the pro-life position and Tooley points out that it remains a member of the radically pro-abortion Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
"GBCS will only grudgingly withdraw from its long-time support for unrestricted abortion rights. But baby steps are important," he said.
Tooley said UMC officials defend the grisly partial-birth abortion procedure ten years ago until the General Conference voted it down.
"Now, our United Methodist stance on parental notification is further restricting GBCS’s ability to defend extreme abortion policies," he said.
ACTION: Contact the UMC by going to https://www.umc.org and clicking on the Contact Us image at the bottom. Tell UMC officials you appreciate their withdrawing from the letter and urge them to adopt a fully pro-life position and withdraw from the RCRC.
Related web sites:
Institute of Religion and Democracy (UM Action) – https://www.TheIRD.org
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