Pro-Life Advocates Continue Criticism of President Obama Over Abstinence Cuts
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 11, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — President Barack Obama is coming under further criticism from pro-life advocates for his decision to eliminate funding for abstinence education. The Obama budget proposal calls for at least $164 million in funding for contraceptive-only education to replace the $138 million for abstinence-only education he cuts.
As LifeNews.com previously reported, the Obama budget eliminates funding for CBAE (Community Based Abstinence Education) and Title V Abstinence Education Program.
Leaders of pro-life family groups joined the top abstinence proponents who told LifeNews.com last week they were chagrined by Obama’s decision.
David Christensen, senior director of legislative affairs at the Family Research Council, told CNS News that Obama is going down the wrong road if he truly desires to reduce teen pregnancies.
“Unfortunately the president’s budget adjustment would completely eliminate abstinence-education grants for programs that are clearly working for students across the country,” Christensen said.
Robert Rector, of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group that supports the pro-life perspective, also chimed in on the cuts and said they were politically motivated and designed to placate the nation’s top abortion business.
“Planned Parenthood and its ideological allies have opposed abstinence-only sex education from the very first day that the federal abstinence programs were created – not because of issues of effectiveness, but because they are ideologically opposed to teaching abstinence,” he told CNS News.
“The federal abstinence programs are effective in reducing sexual activity, and they are, in fact, one of the few last remaining voices in our society that gives young people a message of self-restraint, rather than a message of sexual indulgence,” Rector said.
The abstinence funding included $110 million per year in discretionary spending and $50 million per year in mandatory spending often referred to as Title V funding.
This is the second time Obama has called for less abstinence funding. In the omnibus spending bill Obama signed earlier this year, abstinence programs received $95 million, a substantial reduction from the $151 million they previously received.
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