Yesterday, Dan Gilgoff reported that the"White House will kick off its much-discussed plan to reduce abortions tomorrow morning with a conference call to religious leaders and abortion-rights advocates that will feature key White House aides. The call reflects the White House plan to bring faith-based groups, including conservative ones, together with pro-abortion rights organizations to reduce demand for abortion."
The call took place this morning and Gilgoff offers this follow-up of what it entailed:
Led by President Obama's chief domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes, the White House announced that it would sponsor a series of meetings in coming months in search of common ground on abortion reduction. The meetings would include both supporters and opponents of abortion rights.
"Barnes said that the White House was not going to try to change anybody's mind on abortion and that she knew people had long-held convictions on various sides of the debate," one participant on the call, an abortion-rights foe, tells me. "But she said her assignment from the president was to seek common ground to prevent unintended pregnancies, including teen pregnancy; to reduce the need for abortions; and to support families for whom economic concerns were an issue. They also talked about promoting adoption."
Lifenews talked to Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, who participated in the call and once again reiterated the point that we have been making all along - namely, that it is rather difficult to find ways to "reduce the need for abortion” by seeking common ground with groups that refuse to recognize that any such need exists:.
The Obama staffers want future meetings with people on both sides of the abortion debate and for them to bring concrete ideas on reducing abortions and that they will assimilate the information into a plan that the administration will present in two to three months, Wright explained.
"They are looking for ideas for legislation, and policies for the 2011 budget. They're interested in what has worked on a community level. They want to find common areas," Wright told LifeNews.com.
The goals of the plan will be to "support families through maternal and child health, and adoption" and "reducing unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion."
Wright says the qualifiers "need" and "unintended" are "completely subjective."
Whether the Obama administration plan will feature realistic ways to cut abortions or merely mirror the Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion agenda is a real question, Wright says.
“They have their work cut out for them in gaining trust from all the stakeholders since the primary people in charge come from the most hard-core abortion groups in the U.S. and the stated goals come straight from those abortion groups’ handbooks," she said after the call.
"To be diverse it’s imperative that they include pro-life leaders in the black community, a group that has been hardest hit by the abortion holocaust," Wright concludes.
