New Obama Budget Pays For Legal Services Corporation to Litigate for Abortions

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 8, 2009   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

New Obama Budget Pays For Legal Services Corporation to Litigate for Abortions

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 8
, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — As President Barack Obama’s new federal budget is thoroughly examined, pro-life advocates are finding a number of goodies for the abortion industry. Next on the list is a move by the president to allow the Legal Services Corporation to use tax dollars to pay for abortion litigation.

The Obama budget includes a move to overturn the ban on taxpayer-funding of abortions in the nation’s capital and it eliminates all funding for abstinence education.

It also changes the language governing funding for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and loosens it to allow LSC grantees to conduct abortion litigation.

Under Obama’s plan, direct funding of abortion litigation would be prohibited, but LSC grantees could shift other taxpayer funds to a separate account for pro-abortion activities.

As National Right to Life Committee legislative director Douglas Johnson tells LifeNews.com, pro-life advocates have opposed this fungible move for years as, similar arrangements in previous years allowed LSC grantees to file legal challenges against pro-life laws using taxpayer funds.

"Back in the 1980s, some Legal Services Corporation grantees were deeply involved in pro-abortion litigation, until Congress told the LSC to stay out of either side of the abortion fight," Johnson recalls.

"Now, the Obama White House wants to remove the laws that stopped LSC pro-abortion activism, and replace them with bookkeeping requirements that are essentially meaningless," he explains.

Although it is a small move that won’t garner much media attention, Johnson says allowing the LSC to engage in pro-abortion legal activities merely adds to Obama’s growing pro-abortion record.

"This is just one more example of the Obama Administration’s relentless, step-by-step, week-by-week advancing of the pro-abortion agenda, even as it distracts the gullible with chatter about how they are seeking ‘common ground’ and ‘abortion reduction,’" he concluded. "We say, watch what they are doing, not what they are saying."

Related web sites:
National Right to Life – https://www.nrlc.org

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