Planned Parenthood Gives Award to Pro-Abortion "Catholic" Speaker Nancy Pelosi
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 16, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — At a Planned Parenthood gala on Capitol Hill Thursday evening, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was treated like a rock star by the abortion business. Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards presented Pelosi with an award in front of an event featuring 300 college and high school students cheering her.
The large abortion business gave Pelosi its "Champion of Women’s Health" award and also recognized pro-abortion Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.
The award comes even though Pelosi has been repeatedly at odds with the Catholic Church, in which she claims membership, over the issue of abortion.
The students came to Washington to lobby members of Congress to implement the health care bill, which contains massive funding of abortions.
During her acceptance speech, according to Politico, Pelosi recalled the process of getting the controversial legislation through the House.
"We had some pretty dark days," she said. "Sometimes it didn’t look as if we’d be able to pass the bill. And sometimes people in the press said to me, this looks pretty desperate. How on earth are you going to pass this bill?"
"And I said well, we’re going to pass it. And we’re going to go up to the gate and we’re going to push open the gate. And if the gate is locked, we’re going to climb over the fence. And if the fence is too high, we’re going to pole vault in. And if that doesn’t work we’re going to helicopter in. We’re going to parachute in. But we’re going to pass this obstacle," Pelosi explained.
Planned Parenthood has a long relationship with Pelosi as Cecile Richards is her former deputy chief of staff.
Although Planned Parenthood has issued some statements critical of the legislation and the executive order President Barack Obama issued to supposedly cut off abortion funding (pro-life groups say it doesn’t), Richards and Pelosi were all smiles at the event and Richards lavished praise on her former boss.
"I think when the history books are written about who stood up for women when the chips were down, when a lot of folks were ready to throw us under the bus, it was Speaker Nancy Pelosi who did that work," Richards said, according to Politico. "She’s walked across hot coals for us."
However, neither mentioned the executive order nor the dustup this week where the National Right to Life Committee uncovered two instances of the Obama administration paying for abortions via the health care plan and later backtracking and promising no funding.
Afterwards, Richards told The Hill, a congressional newspaper, that the abortion funding dustup took Planned Parenthood by surprise this week. Her group has already expressed reservations about the Obama administration, although pro-life organizations say they don’t trust Obama to not fund abortions.
The award Pelosi received recognizes "efforts to support women and their reproductive health" and was presented earlier this year to a group of congressional staffers.
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