Congresswoman Michele Bachmann promoted pregnancy centers over the weekend as a great way to help women find abortion alternatives. The comments came during a speech at an event in Florida for a statewide pro-life organization.
Bachmann appeared at a dinner sponsored by the Florida Family Policy Council, a statewide pro-family organization that presses the pro-life perspective as one of 50 statewide organizations promoting faith and family and working with groups like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.
During her speech, according to a Florida Independent report, Bachmann, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination to take on pro-abortion President Barack Obama, talked about how she has personally counseled women against an abortion. She describes her efforts to bring women to pregnancy centers, where they can find a wide range of practical medical support, counseling, and other forms of assistance during pregnancy.
“We reached out … to women,” she said. “We would invite them to our home. We would counsel them. We would take them in. We would drive them over to pro-life centers. I went through the childbirth classes with women — I held their hand as they gave birth. It was a privilege to be a part of bringing new life into the world.”
“It was a privilege to be a part of pouring ourselves out to these women,” Bachmann said, according to the FI report.
Bachmann also spend considerable time, the Orlando Sentinel reports, talking about her Christian faith. She urged dinner attendees to pour themselves into a religious life advancing Biblical principles and helping people in the way Jesus Christ would want them to do so.
“That’s our challenge, as believers in Jesus Christ… and for whatever your profession, maybe it’s as someone who is running to be president of the United States, to say, almighty God, yes, my Lord, I will pour myself out for you,” she said.
Bachmann has made promoting the pro-life perspective a central theme of her presidential campaign and, while she was campaigning in South Carolina, she explained how a “devastating” miscarriage helped shape her pro-life views on abortion. The compelling personal story ties in to her rationale for becoming a foster care mom. She had a miscarriage decades ago and that the event led her to solidify her pro-life views and prompted her and her husband to become a foster home to 23 children over the years.
“After our second child was born, we became pregnant with a third baby,” Bachmann said, according to a Politico report. “And it was an unexpected baby, but of course we were delighted to have this child. And the child was coming along, and we ended up losing that child. And it was devastating for both of us, as you can imagine if any of you have lost a child.”
She said the miscarriage also prompted Bachmann and her husband Marcus to re-evaluate their personal and professional life goals.
“At that moment we didn’t think of ourselves as overly career minded or overly materialistic,” she said, according to Politico. “When we lost that child, it changed us. And it changed us forever.”
“We made a commitment that no matter how many children were brought into our life, we would receive them because we are committed to life,” she added.
