By Hilary White
KANSAS CITY, Missouri, June 15, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a taped message, US President George Bush praised the National Right to Life Committee—currently meeting at their national convention in Kansas City, Missouri—as “fearless shepherds of the innocent and the unborn” and called abortion “one of the greatest moral issues of our time”.
To almost 1000 members and supporters of the Committee, Bush said, “You’ve helped our citizens understand that the mark of a great nation is that it has respect for human life. You have welcomed the unborn in life and protected them in law.”
Bush spoke mainly of his own accomplishments in the life issues, citing the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the partial birth abortion ban; the Unborn Victims of Violence Act; and the Born Alive Infants Protection Act that gives legal protection for children who survive abortions.
“Together we’ve compiled an unprecedented record in the defence of the unborn and our work continues,” Bush said. He encouraged the NRLC to “promote adoption, abstinence and crisis pregnancy centres programs.”
Some pro-life advocates, however, have been frustrated by some of the strategic decisions of NRLC, especially their refusal to support state-level laws outlawing abortion and for their failure comprehensively to oppose abortifacient drugs.
In 2001, Judie Brown of American Life League strongly criticized NRLC, saying that the refusal of pro-life groups to oppose the Morning After Pill was “one of the greatest weapons used by the pro-abortion lobby.”
In 2004 the NRLC refused to endorse proposed legislation that would have outlawed abortion in nearly all cases in South Dakota on the grounds that the political climate was not opportune for such local efforts.
Bush called for NRLC to embrace the issue of stem cell research as a major part of pro-life activism. “Stand with me to promote the promise and potential of stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line,” he urged.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
ALL Challenges NRLC to Decisively Condemn Morning-After Pills
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2001/apr/01041003.html
Law Center Issues Report Exposing Disturbing Details of National Right to Life’s Efforts to Kill South Dakota’s Abortion Ban
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/apr/04040106.html