BATON ROUGE, Louisiana, December 3, 2002 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Yesterday, the National Right to Life Committee charged Senator Mary Landrieu engaged in “breathtakingly brazen deception” in her responses to a questionnaire just published in two Louisiana Catholic newspapers. “Senator Landrieu has consistently voted for federal funding of abortion on demand for both teenagers and adults, but she now tells Catholic voters that she will support the Hyde Amendment, the main law that prohibits funding of abortions,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). “This is breathtakingly brazen deception.” The results of the candidate questionnaire were published in The Catholic Commentator, the newspaper of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, and in the Bayou Catholic, the newspaper of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, in the editions that subscribers are receiving this week.
The published questionnaire begins with this explanation: “Candidates Mary Landrieu and Suzanne Haik Terrell responded to the following questions as shown below on November 21, 2002.” The survey covers multiple subjects, but the first three questions are on abortion policy. Landrieu’s responses to two of the abortion-related questions flatly contradict her past public statements and her voting record. Challenger Suzanne Terrell opposes legalized abortion and federal funding of abortion, and those positions were accurately represented in Terrell’s pro-life responses to the questionnaire. During her six-year term, Senator Landrieu has in fact consistently voted against restrictions on federal funding of abortion. Landrieu boasted of her record in a 2001 fund-raising letter she sent to supporters, in which she wrote: “I’m proud that both the National Abortion Rights Action League and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America have acknowledged my support of reproductive choice with current ‘scorecard’ ratings of 80% and 90% respectively.”