President Obama’s Faith-Based Office Meets, Agenda to Attempt to Reduce Abortions
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 8, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — President Barack Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships held a conference call meeting last week and outlined several components of its agenda. One of the seven was to attempt to find common ground on reducing teen pregnancies and abortions.
However, pro-life advocates are skeptical given that a top Obama official has already admitted that the Obama administration isn’t truly interested in reducing abortions.
During the hour-long telephone call, the 25-member advisory council outlined its mission, according to a Washington Post report.
The council said it wanted to find common ground on abortion and to propose a dozen or so initiatives that it can pursue even if both sides of the abortion debate don’t agree on them.
The council indicates it will follow up with monthly telephone conference calls and an in-person meeting of the council in July where members of the public can offer input. The council will then meet again in October to present a rough draft of the proposals and it will then meet in February 2010 to finalize them.
Leading pro-life advocates are skeptical following a meeting Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women for America, had with members of the Obama administration on abortion.
There, Melody Barnes, the Director of Domestic Policy Council and a former board member of Emily’s List, led the meeting and insisted that the president’s goal was not to reduce abortions.
The goal, she insisted, is to “reduce the need for abortions.”
"If you reduce the need, doesn’t it follow that the number would be reduced? How do you quantify if you’ve reduced the ‘need’?" Wright said at the time. "Does Obama want to reduce the ‘need’ but not the number of abortions? In that case, is he okay with ‘unneeded’ abortions?"
Wright said she wasn’t surprised by Barnes’ comment because "abortion advocates object to the phrase ‘reducing abortions.’"
"It connotes that there is something bad or immoral about abortion. Melody’s background as a board member of one of the most hard-core abortion groups in the country (Emily’s List even opposes bans on partial-birth abortion) sheds light on why she was irritated when that was stated as her boss’ goal," she explained.
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