David Brody caught up with Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America following her meeting at the White House yesterday and has posted a short video of an interview he conducted with her and this edited transcript that pretty well covers Wright’s remarks:
“Joshua (DuBois, White House Faith Based Director) is a young and dynamic man and he seems to understand the faith perspective. Our intention with this meeting was to open a dialogue and to ensure that as they are forming their policies and programs that they’re taking into consideration the views of those deeply involved in the faith community and that there also taking into consideration the policies and programs that actually work, that are evidence based that have proof of reducing the number of abortions.”
“We hope that this will be the first of many meetings.”
“It was a very cordial meeting. It was also quite honest. We provided information on the kinds of programs that don’t work in reducing abortions and the programs that do work and so we needed to be very honest in presenting that. It remains to be seen what they will do with that information….the burden now is on them to come up with the kinds of policies that do show respect for the faith based community.”
“I can’t really say I came away with any new information or a new impression. Generally what we heard are the same things that we’ve been hearing…perhaps the information we gave to them was new to them, they’ve not heard it before. I hope that if that’s the case that the information will influence their current positions.”
Wright says their main goal was to give the White House information concerning programs that “actually work” in terms of reducing abortion, by which she means so-called crisis pregnancy centers and regulations and restrictions like parental consent laws and mandatory ultrasounds.
Of course, as we’ve pointed out before there is a key difference between “the need to reduce abortions” and “reducing the need for abortion,” and groups like CWA focus exclusively on the former as they do not recognize the latter and are fundamentally opposed to things like family planning and sex ed.
From Wright’s description of the meeting, it doesn’t sound like they made much headway with the White House, which is good.
But as she says, she hopes to have more meetings and ultimately be able to influence the administration’s positions and get it to embrace the “kinds of policies that show respect for the faith based community.”
The Christian Post and LifeNews have more on the meeting.
