Action Memorandum
Date: September 1, 2012
To: Pro-life Activists
From: Lila Rose, President, Live Action
Re: Democrat Establishments’ Charlotte Abortion-palooza
As the Democratic Party establishment puts on an abortion-palooza at their convention in Charlotte next week, it is important that the prolife community speaks boldly and unequivocally about how out of step with women and numerous other constituencies the President and the Democratic leadership are when it comes to their taxpayer funding of abortion on demand policies.
The record is quite clear: President Obama is the most pro-abortion, anti-religion president in American history. Using our vast prolife network, from blogging to social media to earned media, I hope we can join our voices together to educate the public and the media about President Obama’s extremist obsession with abortion.
Given the Democratic establishment’s casting of its convention as largely one about abortion and their anti-religious freedom, anti-First Amendment, HHS mandate, the pro-life community has a golden opportunity this coming week to promote life and freedom. The Democratic establishment’s abortion- palooza features speeches by a Who’s Who of Big Abortion – including representatives of abortion profiteers and advocates Planned Parenthood and NARAL.
Additionally, the convention will feature politicians and Hollywood stars hostile to the prolife cause and religious freedom. Not to be featured: Prolife Democrats. Pro-life Democrats are being ostracized and if in attendance are to maybe be seen, but not heard. The message is clear, if you are a pro-life Democrat you are not welcome at this Democrat establishment abortion-palooza. Yes, the Party that spins diversity is telling pro-lifers that they have no business showing up in Charlotte.
This presents a unique opportunity for the pro-life, religious freedom community to come forward and educate the public about how extreme and obsessed the President and the Democratic Party establishment are when it comes to abortion. They are so obsessed on funding abortion, the President and Democratic leaders in Washington are even willing to undercut the founding principle of religious freedom to fund abortion.
The President’s obsession on abortion is well known in pro-life circles, but it’s a story many in the media refuse to report. Catholics, Evangelicals, Hispanics, Jews, African Americans and women need to know that they are mocked and not welcome by the President and the Washington Democratic establishment. We need to communicate that the ultimate act of social justice is the defense and human rights of the preborn.
Pro lifers should aggressively work to expose President Obama’s extremist abortion record:
- Obama arrived in the U.S. Senate just in time to denounce the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the ban on pulling children half way out of the womb, and then killing them–also known as the brutal practice of partial-birth abortion.
- When fully developed babies were being left to die in hospitals after failed abortion attempts, Obama voted against the legislation that would protect them with life-saving care. In the Illinois legislature, Obama voted four times against the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act.” The bill recognized babies born after attempted abortions as persons and required doctors to give them care. The federal version of the bill that Obama opposed in Illinois passed the U.S. Senate unanimously.
- He opposed a partial-birth abortion ban in Illinois, even as the federal version passed the House with 282 votes and the Senate with 64 votes and was signed into law by President Bush in 2003.
- In May, a bi-partisan majority of the House, including 20 Democrats, voted to ban abortions that target baby girls in the womb (sex-selective abortion). A White House spokeswoman expressed the President’s opposition to the baby-saving ban, saying: “The government should not intrude in medical decisions or private family matters in this way.” In other words, gender-based discrimination is OK—so long as it results in an abortion.
- In 2007, Obama announced to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund that his first act as president would be signing the Freedom of Choice Act. The act would enshrine in federal law a right to abortion more far-reaching than in Roe v. Wade and eliminate basically all federal and state-level restrictions on abortion.
- The President, in a down economy, is taxing American families to pay for abortions. Under his Administration government funding of abortion has reached historic levels. Obama has bypassed bans of public funding of abortion funneling more money to the abortion industry, mandated private business and religious institutions to pay for abortion services and aggressively funded international abortion programs.
After all, 50 percent of Americans now identify themselves as pro-life, according to Gallup, while those calling themselves pro-choice are at a historic low at 41 percent.
In another Gallup poll, 86 percent of Americans said abortion should be illegal in the third trimester. Meanwhile, an out-of-touch Democrat Party establishment supports abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy.
Social justice is a winning issue with many youth and religious Americans, and what more fundamental right to protect than the right to life for the most vulnerable?
Overwhelming majorities of Americans want basic restrictions on abortion and protections for pre-born children. They support a ban on the brutal practice of partial-birth abortion, a ban on sex-selective abortion that target baby girls, and a ban on abortion after the unborn child can feel pain. Americans also oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.
The contemporary Democratic Party has positioned itself as extremists on abortion – anywhere, for any reason – paid for by taxpayers. President Obama is in the pocket of Big Abortion and his record shows he is the most pro-abortion president in American history. It’s time for us to do the job the media simply won’t do – tell the American people the truth about Obama’s anti-life record on this fundamental human right.
