For immediate
release:
For more information:
Tuesday, March 23,
2009
Derrick Jones, (202) 626-8825
<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]
NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE CALLS ON
NOTRE DAME TO RESCIND OBAMA INVITATION
http://www.nrlc.org/press_releases_new/Release032309.html
WASHINGTON – Today the National Right to Life
Committee, the nation's largest pro-life
organization, called upon University of Notre
Dame president Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., to
rescind the University's invitation to Barack
Obama to speak at Notre Dame's commencement May 17.
"Notre Dame's invitation to the most pro-abortion
president in U.S. history is a betrayal of the
University's mission and an affront to all who
believe in the sanctity and dignity of human
life," said Anthony J. Lauinger, National Right
to Life Vice-President (and father of seven Notre
Dame alumni and one current student.) "We call
upon Father Jenkins to rescind the invitation and
stand up for the millions of unborn children who
face death under Obama Administration policies."
In a letter to Father Jenkins, Mr. Lauinger
pointed out that, through words and actions,
Barack Obama has launched a comprehensive
anti-life agenda that targets decades of
life-saving policies while treating the views of
pro-life Americans with complete contempt. The
full text of Mr. Lauinger's letter is printed below.
"As a Notre Dame parent and supporter, I am
outraged by this invitation to Barack Obama. I
have apologized to my eight children for the poor
guidance I provided them when I encouraged them
to enroll at Notre Dame," Lauinger said.
The National Right to Life Committee is the
nation's largest pro-life group with affiliates
in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters
nationwide. National Right to Life works through
legislation and education to protect those
threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.
The text of Mr. Lauinger's letter to Father Jenkins:
Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
President
University of Notre Dame
Dear Father Jenkins,
In your January 27 letter to my wife
Phyllis and me, you thanked us for support "for
our (Notre Dame's) most essential, and
mission-bound, priorities." In the wake of the
commencement announcement regarding Barack Obama,
I am compelled to ask whether Notre Dame
recognizes what those priorities are
Disillusionment, incredulity, betrayal – all
describe my feelings. I am left questioning my
own judgment in having encouraged our eight children to go to Notre Dame.
Abortion is the unspeakable evil that
causes my outrage – abortion and the fact that
Barack Obama is the Abortion President. His first
two months in office have constituted an all-out assault on the unborn child.
Not content with legal abortion-on-demand
in this country, he seeks to foist the same
policy on the rest of the world by rescinding the
Mexico City Policy, which previously kept U.S.
tax dollars from funding groups working to
subvert the pro-life laws of countries overseas;
and he seeks to export abortion around the world
through his policies and appointments at the
United Nations, including providing U.S. funding
to the United Nations Population Fund, actively
involved in China's coerced-abortion program.
Not content with Roe v. Wade, he champions
the "Freedom of Choice Act," which would nullify
some five hundred state and federal laws which
impose modest, limited regulations on the
unfettered right to abortion. Signing the
"Freedom of Choice Act" would be "the first thing
I'd do as president," he promised the Planned
Parenthood Action Fund. See his promise in this
short video clip: <http://americaschoicenow.com/>http://americaschoicenow.com/
Not content with having pro-abortion
doctors perform abortions, President Obama has
announced he will rescind the Conscience Rule
which protects the rights of pro-life doctors and
nurses to refuse to participate in abortions or
other killing procedures on religious or moral
grounds. Cardinal Francis George, President of
the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops,
is urging Catholics to tell the Obama
Administration to retain conscience protections for health-care workers.
Two weeks ago, the President signed an
executive order reversing a ban on federal
funding of embryo-destructive stem cell research.
The policy that had been in effect the past eight
years protected American taxpayers from being
complicit in the killing of embryonic human
beings for purposes of harvesting their stem
cells. Embryo-killing stem-cell research, the act
of destroying living members of our species, homo
sapiens, in order to provide raw material for
experimentation, has never benefited a single
human patient, whereas adult stem cells have
benefited patients suffering from more than 70 different disorders.
On the same day he authorized federal
funding of embryo-killing research, the President
rescinded a policy that had been providing
federal funding for alternative methods of
obtaining pluripotent stem cells through "cell
reprogramming," in which ordinary human skin and
other cells are transformed into "induced
pluripotent stem cells." This breakthrough, which
does not require destroying human embryos, was
deemed so important that the journal Science
named it the scientific breakthrough of the year for 2008.
The President's appointments to key White
House and cabinet positions have had extreme
pro-abortion records: Chief of Staff Rahm
Emanuel, former congressman with a 100%
pro-abortion record; Domestic Policy Adviser
Melody Barnes, previous board member of the
Planned Parenthood Action Fund; Communications
Director Ellen Moran, former executive director
of the pro-abortion group EMILY's List; Health
and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius,
the radically pro-abortion former governor of
Kansas: Food and Drug Administration Commissioner
Margaret Hamburg; Assistant Attorney General for
the Office of Legal Counsel Dawn Johnsen, the
former legal director of the National Abortion
Rights Action League... These are but a small handful of examples.
One of the many problems caused by Notre
Dame's decision to honor the man doing more to
destroy unborn children than anyone else on the
face of the earth is the scandal to which it
gives rise: to our own students; to Catholics
across the country and beyond; to those of us who
thought Notre Dame stood for something special;
to everyone who believed Our Lady's University
aspired to values higher than the approval of a debased secular culture.
Father, I have attached, above, a joint
statement on Faithful Citizenship by Bishop Kevin
Vann and Bishop Kevin Farrell, the bishops of
Fort Worth and Dallas, respectively. Their letter
puts the worth and dignity of human life in proper perspective.
Finally, the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops' document, "Catholics in
Political Life," offers this exhortation: "The
Catholic community and Catholic institutions
should not honor those who act in defiance of our
fundamental moral principles. They should not be
given awards, honors or platforms which would
suggest support for their actions." I would
submit that what is planned for May 17 is a
classic example of precisely the type of scandal
the bishops direct us to avoid.
I apologized today to my eight children for
the poor guidance I provided them when I
encouraged them to enroll at Our Lady's
University, and for having misled them, and
myself, about what I believed to be the core values of Notre Dame.
Sincerely,
Anthony J. Lauinger
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Note: The letter's attachment can be viewed with
the full post of this press release at:
<http://nrlcomm.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/notredame>http://nrlcomm.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/notredame.
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