The President says he will reduce abortion

Lots of stories coming out on President Obama's meeting with Pope Bendict XVI, a meeting lasting around 40 minutes and turning out to be a more substantial than I thought it would be.

The president explicitly expressed his commitment to reducing the numbers of abortions and to listen to the church's concerns on moral issues,

Two days ago the President promised to reduce global temperatures. The only thing that I am sure he will reduce is the size of our wallets. Sometimes it is annoying being skeptical. I would like to take the President at his word, but unfortunately it has been worth about the same as the paper the Treasury printing presses are pumping out. If the president was serious about his pledge, then what would he personally do?

As far a making abortion illegal this is one front where we will see no change. His current and likely future candidates for the Supreme Court will make no progress in this direction. The idea that he would appoint somebody actually open to overturn the bad law of Roe v. Wade is pretty slim. The law is a teacher and as long as we have legalized abortion we will have plenty of abortion.

Will he rescind his executive order that allowed agencies that provide abortion from receiving Federal money overseas?

On Jun 30th President Obama issued a budget recommendation for the 2010 fiscal year that would ease the restrictions on taxpayer funds for abortions in Washington D.C. Will he withdraw this? Funding abortions in D.C. will increase them.

Allowing destruction of frozen human embryos is a form of abortion. Well he order this stopped?

Will he change his executive order funding embryonic stem-cell research and then provide funding for adult stem-cell research (which he stopped)?

What really needs to be changed is the culture of death that says abortion is like having a mole removed and the same moral weight. This altitude is part of the problem. The only way we could take seriously the President's promise to reduce abortion is for him to say that abortion is morally wrong - the only real reason to reduce abortion in the first place. Again if he was serious he could do great good just by proclaiming this truth.

I don't see any of the above happening. Now we so often hear about common ground and those areas that where there could be cooperation to reduce abortion.

One of those areas is abstinence education. Something which the Obama Administration has not been friend to at all. As Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex has shown is that those states accepting abstinence only funds have dramatically reduced teen abortion while states who rejected this have only seen a slight decrease. Abstinence education is one of the very few areas that actually got budget cuts in the Obama Administration. Will he change this?

How about the Pregnant Women Support Act? Will he encourage fellow Democrats to actually bring this to debate and pass this bill so that he can sign it? Up until now the President has not lent his support to this bill, though there were previous false reports that he did.

How about asking congress to stop funding Planned Parenthood?

Actual reduction in abortion has come about in the state level from parental notifications laws and ultrasounds. Will he be a leader in this regard in speaking out to states on using these types of laws to help reduce abortion?

How about the sneering and hatred of "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" by his party? Will he lead in talking about the good they do in helping women to bring their child into the world? The bully pulpit could certainly be used to proclaim the good that has been done at the local level helping women.

How about talking about the toxic culture that denigrates women as sex objects in all forms of the media which contributes to sex outside of marriage and abortion?

So let us see what is left? Funny I don't see anything, common ground, or not that he would ever do. Maybe more sex eduction and contraception and other ideas that throw gas on the fire.

Oh I guess I can see him saying he will reduce abortion and then not doing anything at all in this area. Yeah I know he is a politician, but his track record on promises is even worse than most.

Please Mr. President prove me wrong. I would so love to be wrong and would rejoice in being wrong. We should certainly pray that whatever seeds the Pope speaking to him has had will grow on fertile foil.