Obama Staffer Says Abortion Compromise Coming Soon, Pro-Lifers Skeptical

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Aug 3, 2009   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Obama Staffer Says Abortion Compromise Coming Soon, Pro-Lifers Skeptical

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 3
, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — President Barack Obama’s top staffer for faith-based issues says the abortion compromise proposal his office is crafting is coming soon. But one pro-life advocate who was involved in the discussions is very skeptical that the White House will craft a real proposal that legitimately reduces abortions.

Joshua DuBois, head of The White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships gave an interview to David Brody of CBN News.

In it, he talked about what can be expected from the Obama administration in the next three to six months concerning the compromise proposal.

"The good thing is that the President has been extraordinarily clear about this. He knows that there are very clear perspectives on both sides of this difficult issue,’ DuBois said.

"But he thinks there’s a lot of area in the middle that we can potentially find some agreement on whether it’s strengthening the institution of adoption or making sure that pregnant women have the health care and the care and support to bring a pregnancy to term,’ DuBois added.

DuBois talked about the meetings his office has had with both pro-abortion and pro-life groups and said his staff are processing the information for a report for Obama.

"He’s going to think through and talk about where he wants to go forward in that area so we’ve concluded the set of meetings and now we’re just kind of compiling it and getting ready for the President and then he will eventually talk about where he thinks we should be going," he said.

Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women for America, talked about DuBois’ comments with LifeNews.com and essentially called them disingenuous.

Wright participated in the discussions with DuBois that he mentioned to CBN News.

While Obama will likely get credit for attempting to bridge the gap in the abortion debate, she said Obama’s record is clearly pro-abortion because he has promoted abortion funding.

"There is one simple problem with President Obama’s claim that he wants to reduce abortions: The government cannot decrease what it subsidizes and mandates. Obama’s plan on ‘common ground’ cannot be evaluated separately from his many other policies," Wright told LifeNews.com.

She says the coming Obama abortion plan "will likely be used as a diversion from the massive government take-over of health care that mandates abortion."

"The meager ‘common ground’ effort is a spit wad compared to the nuclear bomb of government health care that covers abortion," she said.

On a practical level, Wright explained that the Obama administration’s promotion of adoption makes little sense in terms of how it will be promoted.

"The key audience for promoting and strengthening adoption is pregnant women who are considering their options. Millions of families are on waiting lists to adopt. Few pregnant women are willing to choose adoption," Wright says. "They would benefit from learning what a joyous and life-giving gift adoption can be."

She continues: "But the Obama team would not include in their plan that crucial time when a woman makes her decision. They only looked at policies directed at prior to a woman getting pregnant, and after she’s made the decision to carry her pregnancy to term."

Wright also says Obama must stop the government-run health care plan from covering abortions for his common ground proposal to truly achieve common ground.

"If abortion is covered in the health care plan, it will be cheaper than prenatal care and delivery, especially if the child is diagnosed with a health problem. It isn’t hard to envision that bureaucrats will approve abortion for a patient, but not health care for an ‘expensive’ baby," she said.

Other pro-life advocates have determined that government-funded abortions could lead to as many as 300,000 more abortions, as was the case before the Hyde amendment.

If the proposals like the one Obama may craft based on DuBois’ meetings save any lives from abortion, it will likely be very few in comparison to the thousands who will die thanks to Obama’s abortion funding in health care and other areas of government.

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