We’ve already written a few posts about the upcoming meeting at the White House between Joshua DuBois, head of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and representatives of Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, CareNet, and the Christian Medical Association to discuss reproductive choice and related issues.
Today, we learned a little more about how this meeting was arranged and, judging by the remarks made by Wendy Wright of CWA, it’s pretty clear that those who are participating expect this meeting to focus much more on the former than the latter.
Wright explains that it was through her outreach to the White House that the meeting was arranged and that she choose who would attend it with her, saying that when she learned that the administration was committed reducing the need for abortion, she thought “we can help with that, so I contacted the White House and asked for a meeting with the Faith-Based office and invited the other groups to join with me. We feel that in order for the Obama Administration to be making good policies, to take positions on legislation regarding reducing the need for abortion, they need to have full information, particularly, information on programs and policies that work, that are effective. And we know what works: putting regulations on abortions; states that have done that see their abortion numbers go down.”
Wright goes on to say that she does not believe that President Obama will attend the meeting, but that they will explain to the administration that pregnancy resource centers are an effective means of reducing abortions and to discuss the “threat to doctors’ and health care workers’ freedom on conscience,” saying that it is vital to protect their “freedom to not do what is wrong”:
On a semi-related note, CWA, FRC, CareNet, and the Christian Medical Association are all part of a new effort called Freedom2Care which is committed to protecting “the federal ‘provider conscience’ regulation finalized in December 2008 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services” which was “made necessary by a climate of discrimination and pressures directed at healthcare professionals who follow life-affirming ethical standards such as the Hippocratic Oath and the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.”
While we’re at it, let’s re-post this video CWA put out just before the election called “Operation: Rally The Church” in which Wright explained that if Christians didn’t vote, “liberals who mock Christians, support abortion on demand and same-sex marriage, and would prefer that America be weak in the world community” would ruin this country, warning that if “citizens … who love God don’t vote, then the people who will be ruling over us in government will continue the slaughter of unborn babies, weaken marriage, and silence those who love God,” thus making it imperative for Christians to go to the polls because all those who have died defending this country are putting “their hope in you … to keep this a country worth living and dying for”:
