The Obama Administration is willing to sit down and talk with pro-lifers. But to what end? Even the statement announcing this willingness made one pro-choice decision and looked forward to another (funding UNFPA which aids and abets forced abortions in China). The implication to me is that the dialogue in which they are interested is not for the purpose of input into policy considerations. It looks more to me like they are happy to talk to folks with diverse viewpoints, but not to consider different policies.

And note that all the dialogue is with the outside. During the campaign, Obama talked about an Administration with people with various points of view who would sit down and present their perspectives, and then Obama would make decisions after hearing them. But this was only rhetoric. When he made appointments, he didn't bring in diverse viewpoints. There are a number of extreme pro-choicers in positions relevant to abortion policy, but no pro-lifers. There are a number of hawks in positions relative to military and foreign policy, but no one with a peace orientation. The range of views represented in the Obama Administration is even narrower than is usual.

Jim Wallis seems to have become so enamored with being close to power that it obscures his vision and stills his prophetic voice. I think he is in his heart pro-life and pro-peace, but he won't press these issues prophetically with people in power for fear that he might then be excluded from the circles of power.

I don't think Ron Sider's views differ much from those of Jim Wallis, but they seem very different because Ron gently but clearly still tries to speak prophetically, while Jim keeps trying to make excuses for his friends in power rather than speaking truth to power.

The abortion rate will be reduced when men take responsibility for their sexual behavior. Few women get themselves pregnant. Why is this cause of the unwanted pregnancies never discussed by the prolife movement or anybody else for that matter?

Two things seem to be overlooked in these comments.

1. President Obama made it clear before the election that he would do this, so the disappointment expressed is misplaced.

2. It seems to be overlooked here that these agencies also provide education and contraception, which reduces drastically reducees the number of abortions. No funding, no birth control. I lived in Mexico for 10 years and have seen the tragic consequences first hand.

Excellent comments Kevin. I'm a bit less down on the emergents than you are, but I agree that they are politically naive and need to rethink this whole area before they are subsumed in the general religious auxiliary of the militant left.

LV

Thanks NMRod. for taking the time to explain that . I have been another in
the number of x republicans . But I just see the same tactics in the
democratic party also . I look at government as doing its job in allowing
people not to need it . Ever Increasing numbers of of people that it helps
is less important to me then the number of people that do not need
government's help but yet I do not want us neglecting those in need either
. I don't think I fit into any political party anymore , but at one time was
comfortable in the republican party . Take care .

I haven't seen a single study suggesting that free abortions don't lead to more abortions...which ones were you thinking of? What misinformation have you identified? What sketchy studies?

We know that other funds are also fungible. Much like the shell game done by state legislatures assuring us that gambling dollars will go to education...as they cut general fund revenues to go elsewhere.

Ironically, the goal of abortion reduction includes US taxpayers funding abortions world-wide, primarily in countries where the skin colors are not white. I guess for some babies, brown still won't get to stick around and yellow won't be mellow.

I read the abstract from the link you provided. Are my dates incorrect? Maybe you could cut and paste a quote with a more specific reference since I must have missed the point.
The point in and of itself is not that important, except it shows that this argument is laced with misinformation and unquestioned conclusions backed up by sketchy and outdated "studies" on both sides.

I agree. I too voted for Obama, and this whole thing is very bittersweet. While I wholeheartedly applaud the President's call to reduce abortions further, the repeal of the Mexico City policy is very disheartening. The discussion on this issue is also very frustrating. While abortion and gay marriage are certainly not the only "Christian" issues on the table, abortion they are not ONLY "Christian" issues. Indeed many nations that are more secular than us have more restrictive policies on abortion than we do. The Bible, as well as science, clearly show us that a fetus is not merely a clump of tissue, but a living human life. While I applaud Sojourners, which has been to date the most prophetic Christian-Political voice in America on many of its works, I am disappointed in it's unwillingness to take a firmer stand on abortion. Sojourners speaks very firmly on immigration, health-care, and income inequality, but very vaguely on abortion. Its time to take a firm stand that policy that allows for the senseless destruction of human life is the most morally unconscionable policy to endorse. This holds true whether it be with regards to AIDS, hunger, health-care, immigration, and war. And it certainly also pertains to policy that allows for the deaths of a million babies every year in America alone. I agree with Sojourners on all of it's issues it has taken a stand on in it's "Issues FAQ," but it's stance on abortion does not go far enough. It is not enough to call for a "Dramatic reduction" in the killing of our most vulnerable babies, we MUST work to eliminate it entirely.

NMRod said:
"Don't give your first allegiance to liberalism or conservatism or any party. Give it to what Jesus would have us do, His agenda, not ours."
An enthusiastic AMEN!. Jim talks middle ground but more and more seems just a Christian liberal. One I strive to like, but just another liberal. The Republicans in power have been a disappointment; let's pray Obama governs as he promised on Election night, as "President of all the people" The flap over the selection of Rick Warren shows many of O's supporters DON'T want him to govern as "President of all" but as the bringer of "payback time" to Republicans and especially the Religious Right. But Obama can be better than his supporters, I pray

"It said nothing about funding, although you may be able to infer that by extension"
--I guess you didn't read the abstract. It specifically mentions that public funding is directly tied to abortion rates.

Is this really that controversial a point? Even NARAL and all the abortion rights groups argue that hundreds of thousands of abortions aren't had by poor women because of their cost.

Jeff,
Several studies have shown a relationship between govt-funding of abortions and abortion rates, including the study Sojo touted prior to this past election. But by definition the Mexico City policy would only affect rates abroad, so what does it have to do with rates at home?

Wallis failed to mention that Obama also said, "“For too long, international family planning assistance has been used as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back-and-forth debate that has served only to divide us. I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate.”

Wallis and Obama insult all of us who have not forsaken Biblical admonitions such as "Thou shalt not kill" and "whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do it unto me," and adopted a conscience-less politics of convenience. Abortion is not a "wedge issue" - it is a matter of moral conviction. Nor is it a "stale and fruitless debate." It is a matter of life and death.

Obama, Wallis and all the other Christians who voted for Obama's glibness or voted their pocketbooks will someday give an account. God have mercy on you all.

Some of you may appreciate my pal Jeff Jacoby on this topic:
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/3035/roe-and-doe-36-y...

Is Wallis serious? He commends Obama for waiting a day before rescinding the "Mexico City policy" and claims this showed respect to pro-lifers. What a bunch of nonsense. He rescinded it! Waiting a day really doesn't help anything.

Liberals seem to think finding common ground means that conservatives do whatever they want. If common ground doesn't include being able to agree that our tax dollars shouldn't fund international abortions...then there really isn't much of an effort to find common ground.

And to you conservatives who drank the Wallis cool-aid...give me a break. It has always been blatantly obvious that Wallis is no friend of conservatives, and that his rhetoric about 'middle ground' is nothing more than rhetoric. As with the abortion, middle ground for Wallis is when conservatives lay aside their convictions to agree with him.

Have any of you pro-abortion Christians actually seen an abortion? Have you looked at the pictures? That we allow abortion under the guise of 'choice' is an indictment against us. It is a deplorable act and I'm tired of having to act like people who defend it are reasonable. You're not. It's barbaric.

Whoa, that was me and I'm on your side. I'm a foe of the Christian Re constructionists, who would literally apply everything from OT Law except killing the animals. Of course our culture has been influenced by the Judeo-Christian ethic, just as Egypt has been influence by Mohamed. In the case of public policy, other religions actually support the protection of unborn life in many cases. In the case of traditional marriage, they do so exclusively. I know of no religion outside a tiny group of mostly white elitists in N. Europe and N.America who would redefine marriage and shove the new definition down our throats. These folks might be called secular humanists. They practice a religion opposed to nearly all other religions and yet shout, falsely, their belief in “diversity”

Somebody said that "biblical law should not be the law of the land."

Oh? Is that why stealing, rape and murder is forbidden by our laws? Are we to assume that the Founding Fathers did not have a Judeo-Christian ethic that they based the notion of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness on? Did we not read that Jefferson wrote that we are an endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights?

Why don't we just proclaim our land to be secular humanist and be done with it? From whence do we arrive at our laws, if not from a Creator? Ourselves? Oh, wait. That's exactly what many would want us to do. Like the Atheists, the Buddhists, the Hindus, ....

He has and continues to be so.

False -- he has never been in the forefront of anti-abortion activism; simply saying that you oppose it doesn't make you an activist. I'm talking about people like Joe Schidler and Nellie Gray.

The NRLC frequently references the efforts of that organization,...

Irrelevant -- heck, it can also quote ESA, which certainly isn't conservative, but that doesn't give it much authority either.

I like to look at problems from a variety of viewpoints. Suppose I am a female living inside another female's uterus in January 2009. Whether I end this year wearing a diaper and having my chubby cheeks kissed and nuzzled, or in a landfill having been incinerated as medical waste depends largely on how much money my mother and her family have. These seems a horrible case of injustice, yet most of the Robed Emperors don't allow themselves to look at it that way. It's not a matter of law or courts or legislatures even, it's whether I am “wanted.” If today I am unwanted, I can still end up the year being nuzzled by a family unrelated to my birth mom, bless her heart, through the gift of adoption.

For more about adoption and a particularly egregious [the word used by the baby's court att'y] case of judicial activism, read this from Jeff Jacoby:

In the best interests of Baby Lonnie?


About one thing, Judge Paul Lewis is adamant. Blood
is more important than love.
In the six months that Baby Lonnie has been on this earth, the only parents who have ever loved him are Lisa and Darrell H____. When Lonnie was just eight weeks old, they took him joyfully into their home. They fed him and clothed him, nurtured and sheltered him. They cherished him as their son, and looked forward to the adoption order that would confirm them as his mother and father.
But what is the H____s' claim of love against Julie Clark's claim of blood? Clark is a heroin addict, a prostitute, a criminal with at least 40 convictions on her record. But she is Baby Lonnie's biological parent, and in Judge Lewis' courtroom, bio-parents matter more than love-parents. Every child," the judge declares, "deserves a chance to be with its natural parents." And so he has yanked this baby from its stable and love-filled home and put it in the custody of a stranger too incompetent to manage her own life, let alone supervise a child's.
How often have we heard this story? This time, the setting is Boston. It could be anywhere. It could be Baby Richard in Illinois, taken in tears from the only mom and dad he knew and turned over to a bio-father who had never laid eyes upon him It could be little Jessica DeBoer, screaming as she was torn from her Michigan home because judges decided she "belonged" to the Iowa strangers who happened to be her bio-parents. It could even, God forbid, be Elisa Izquierdo, the Brooklyn first-grader beaten to death by her mother - after a Family Court judge who believes in blood before love refused to rescue her from the mother's custody.
"You have to start with the premise that children should remain with their natural parents," says Judge Lewis. You do? Even when the mother is a dope-addled streetwalker? Even when her three older children - two of whom tested drug-positive at birth - have been taken away from her? Even when the biological father is in jail for assault?
Lewis is dead wrong. Birth parents are not entitled to their children. Baby Lonnie is not the property of the woman who conceived him. He is a vulnerable human being, and a judge called upon to decide his future should weigh only one criterion:
What is in Lonnie's best interest?
The judge disagrees. "It can't just be 'best interest,' he insists. "That is certainly one factor to take into account. - but only after a court has found the mother to be unfit."
Unfit! She's an unmarried, drugged-out hooker. Her resume lists dozens of convictions. She spent most of her pregnancy in prison. Within five weeks of Lonnie's birth, she managed to get arrested three more times. Her own parents - who are raising Clark's older children - have nothing good to say about her. She has been in and out (mostly out) of drug programs for years.
The unfitness of this "mother" is so blisteringly obvious that only a judge could pretend it isn't. How many times does Julie Clark get to fail at motherhood before Lewis decides to concern himself with the baby's welfare?
At least one more, apparently. "The state shouldn't just whip kids out of their home without giving the parents some chance to improve," he says. Incredible. Two kids born with heroin in their blood, and the judge frets about giving her a break. Where is his sense of mercy?
There is no question - none whatever - about the best course for Baby Lonnie. The evidence is overwhelming: babies who are adopted grow up happier and healthier than almost anyone else. A detailed 1994 study by the Search Institute in Minneapolis found that adopted children are more likely than other children to live with two parents, more likely to do well in school, more likely to be optimists, more likely to avoid alcohol abuse and vandalism, more likely to have a better home environment, more likely to be healthy. Adoption--the gift of love--is an unqualified good. No court that made the welfare of a child its top priority would ever delay an adoption while waiting for an abusive or self-destructive bio-parent to get her act together.
But the judge in Baby Lonnie's case has other priorities. At the moment, he's impressed that Clark has managed to stay in a drug program for three whole months. It is the only reason he gives for ordering the H____s to give Lonnie up.
"Don't you believe people can turn their lives around?" he asks. "I do. There are many people in this society who had addiction problems end turned it around. I hope this woman is one of them."
We all hope so. But what does that have to do with a six-month-old baby? Why should Lonnie be ripped from the only people who have earned the right to call themselves his parents- the loving and responsible H____s? By what perverse logic do judges award babies as trophies to irresponsible addicts who manage to stay clean for three months?
At a stroke, Lewis has broken the hearts of Lisa and Darrell H____, put a baby in the hands of a walking disaster and more or less guaranteed Baby Lonnie a bitter and loveless childhood.
This is where the reverence for blood ties over love ties leads. To kidnapping cloaked in law and travesty masquerading as justice.