DURHAM, New Hampshire, June 26, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – President Obama touted his support for funding Planned Parenthood, forcing religious employers to pay for birth control and abortifacient drugs, and ending the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy on homosexuality at a campaign event before high school seniors in New Hampshire on Monday.
Obama told the students that, by voting for him over GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney, “You can decide that instead of restricting access to birth control or defunding Planned Parenthood, we should make sure that in this country, women control their own health care choices,” CNSNews.com reported.
Obama was referencing his showdown with GOP House leaders over funding to the abortion giant last year, and his high-profile war with Catholic Church leaders over the birth control insurance mandate, the target of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) ongoing “Fortnight for Freedom” national prayer campaign this month.
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The president also said voters will decide “whether or not we go back to the days when you could be kicked out of the United States military just because of who you are and who you love.”
He also appeared to hint at his recent support for gay “marriage,” saying: “If you’re willing to meet your responsibilities, you should be able to take care of your family, and own a home, maybe start a business, give your kids a better chance than you had -– no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter what you look like, no matter who you love. That’s what America is about.”
Obama also included a phrase referencing his past work involving “Catholic churches” on social justice issues: “As a young man, I worked with a group of Catholic churches who taught me that no poverty program can make as much of a difference as the kindness and commitment and involvement of caring neighbors and friends and fellow parishioners.”
The sentence is a relatively new talking point that has been repeated in several speeches nearly verbatim since Obama’s campaign kicked off this spring.
The Daily Caller’s Neil Munro wrote last month that Obama’s “new emphasis on his ties to the Catholic Church is a change from Obama’s previous speeches and fundraisers, where he did not mention that, early in his career, he was funded and supported by liberal Catholic officials in Chicago.”
The Obama campaign’s most vocal Catholic supporter in Chicago was Fr. Michael Pfleger, a left-wing priest sanctioned by Cardinal Francis George for praising the candidate in 2007 as “the best thing to come across the political scene since Bobby Kennedy.” After he was reassigned to a Catholic high school last year, Pfleger balked, saying he was determined to continue preaching the Gospel “in or out of the [Catholic] church.”