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Less Abstinence, more abortion
COMMENT: We keep hearing that this administration wants to reduce the need for abortion. Someone please explain to me how that happens if the funds for abstinence-based education are reduced or eliminated????? Do you suppose there is an agenda here???
1. Obama White House Urges Tax-Funded Abortion-on-Demand in D.C.
2. Conservatives Angered Over Obama's Plan to Eliminate Abstinence-based Sex Education
3. Obama budget cuts funds for abstinence-only sex education
1. Obama White House Urges Tax-Funded Abortion-on-Demand in D.C.
By Kathleen Gilbert
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 8, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - President Obama's budget recommendations unveiled yesterday are being criticized by the National Right to Life Committee for recommending the re-introduction of taxpayer-funded abortion in Washington, D.C.
The White House submission urges the House and Senate to repeal a law known as the Dornan Amendment that prevents tax-funded abortion, except for cases of rape, incest, or threat to the mother's life, in the District of Columbia for several years.
Because Congress holds legislative authority over the District of Columbia, the district's budget must be appropriated by Congress through an annual appropriations bill. The White House called for the ban to be replaced with a requirement that would apply only to funds specifically contributed for federal program purposes.
"If Congress goes along with the Obama proposal, the predictable result will be tax funding of several thousand elective abortions annually, including roughly 1,000 abortions annually that would not otherwise occur," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC).
"Any member of Congress who votes for a bill that contains the White House proposal is, in reality, voting for tax-funded abortion on demand with congressionally appropriated funds."
>From 1988 until 1993, Congress annually included the ban until it was lost for three years, then restored in 1996. While the ban was not in effect, congressional debates cited evidence that indicated the city's abortion-funding policy was among the most permissive in the nation. Elizabeth Reveal, D.C. budget director at the time, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that "the District's government has a policy of funding abortion on demand and does not attempt to determine the circumstances of the pregnancy."
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2. Conservatives Angered Over Obama's Plan to Eliminate Abstinence-based Sex Education
Monday, May 11, 2009
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
(CNSNews.com) - Conservatives say a battle may be looming over the demise of abstinence-education funding.
President Barack Obama’s budget adjustment request last week proposed eliminating $138 million in spending on abstinence-only education, and re-directing the money to a new teen pregnancy “reduction” program that is expected to utilize the ‘abstinence-plus” or “comprehensive” sex-ed approach – one that teaches teens how to use condoms and birth control.
David Christensen, senior director of legislative affairs at the Family Research Council, says that the Obama administration is taking the wrong path if it wants to reduce teen pregnancy.
“Unfortunately the president’s budget adjustment would completely eliminate abstinence-education grants for programs that are clearly working for students across the country,” Christensen told CNSNews.com.
Obama specifically proposes eliminating a $38 million program that makes grants to states, and $100 million in funding o be spent for abstinence education administered by the Health and Human Services Department (HHS).
Robert Rector, a senior analyst at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, said the president’s move came at the request of abortion-rights groups, including Planned Parenthood.
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3. Obama budget cuts funds for abstinence-only sex education
President Obama's new budget would eliminate most money for abstinence-only sex education and shift it to teen pregnancy prevention — a U-turn in what has been more than a decade of sex education policy in the USA.
The proposed budget, sent to Congress last Thursday, "reflects the research," says Melody Barnes, director of the team that coordinates White House
domestic policy.
"In any area where Americans want to confront a problem, they want solutions they know will work, as opposed to programming they know hasn't proven to be successful. Given where we've been in recent years, I think this is a very important moment," she says.
Abstinence-only sex education programs, which emphasize a no-sex-until-marriage message, received almost $1.3 billion in federal dollars from fiscal years 2001-2009, according to the Office of Management and Budget. At the same time, studies of abstinence-only programs have shown little success; the most often-cited study, released in 2007, was congressionally mandated and federally funded and found that abstinence-only programs don't prevent or delay teen sex.
Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association says that 2007 study was "an early study about early programs. Things have changed."
Two weeks ago, she says her organization briefed congressional aides about an analysis of studies that she says refutes arguments that abstinence education doesn't affect sexual behavior.
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