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By Kathleen Gilbert

VALLETTA, Malta, September 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an interview with a Maltese newspaper, U.S. ambassador to Malta and Catholic law professor Douglas Kmiec gushes over Obama's social agenda, dubbing it “my catechism come to life.”  The Pepperdine law professor also recalls how Obama defended his pro-abortion stance to Kmiec and ultimately convinced him to become one of Obama's most enthusiastic supporters. 

“When I thought about all these things,” said Kmiec, referring to candidate Obama's domestic priorities, “I thought, 'This is my catechism come to life,' because we are called to each of these things in the social teachings of the Church.”

Pro-life Catholic leaders fiercely anathematized Kmiec last year for promoting Obama as the “Catholic” candidate, despite the fact that the President had repeatedly pledged to defend abortion as a “right” both at home and abroad, a campaign promise that he has delivered on since his election. 

Kmiec told the Times of Malta that he began his campaign to draw Catholics to support the future president after a 2006 speech by Obama “demonstrated to me someone of great discernment, someone who understood that one of the things that had gone wrong in our country was political figures unthinkingly using people's faith as a basis to divide them from one another.”

“Obama says we should understand the significance of faith to every person,” he added.  “Even if we believe that our faith understanding is true, Obama had said, we can't simply expect it to be automatically enacted into law because we believe it.”

At a later event, Kmiec recalled, he asked Obama:  “How can you allow someone to terminate another person's life? What moral authority do you have for that?”

“Well, professor, not everyone sees life beginning in the same way,” Obama replied, according to Kmiec.  “The Methodists see it differently, the Jewish faith in part sees it differently. … If I am elected President, I am President of all these people.”

Prof. Kmiec says Obama considered abortion “a moral tragedy,” and advocated a strategy of reducing the need for abortions, rather than questioning its legality.

White House officials under Obama have followed his tactic of using the “need-reduction” argument while simultaneously aggressively pushing against federal protections for the unborn in proposed health care legislation.  Concerned Women for America President Wendy Wright says her encounter with the White House's Melody Barnes in May revealed that Obama's professed dedication to “reducing the need for abortion” does not mean he actually wishes fewer abortions to occur:

“Melody testily interrupted to state that she had to correct me.  'It is not our goal to reduce the number of abortions,'” Wright recalled.  “The goal, she insisted, is to 'reduce the need for abortions.'”

Kmiec also recalled that Obama once referred to abortion as “taking the life of a child” while advocating the need-reduction approach.

“What would cause a mother to contemplate taking the life of a child? It has to be something awful,” said the future president, according to Kmiec. ”It has to be a woman without shelter, without insurance, without the next meal on the table.”

Kmiec also dismissed conservative criticism against Obama as having “degenerated into a form of name-calling or shouting” that “doesn't advance democracy.”

In a May interview with Cybercast News Service, Kmiec further distanced himself from conservative Catholic teaching by proposing that homosexual “marriage” should be accommodated in society by banishing marriage from secular law altogether.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Commentary: Obama Aide – Not Our Goal to Reduce Abortions
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09052502.html

Exposing the 'Abortion Reduction' Scam
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jan/09012701.html

Archbishop Chaput Calls upon Obama Catholic Kmiec to Lobby against Abortion
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08110612.html

Pro-Obama “Catholic” Jurist Douglas Kmiec Now Abandons Church Teaching on Homosexual Unions
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09052903.html