The chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama was today’s keynote speaker at the Power of Choice Summit sponsored by leading pro-abortion activists group NARAL.
Tina Tchen, who has been a part of the Obama administration since its early days, spoke at the event — which NARAL says was organized to attack pregnancy centers providing women with abortion alternatives at no cost.
“The Power of Choice Summit brought together students, activists, and community leaders for education and training, featuring a session on dangerous “Crisis Pregnancy Centers.” There were also sessions featuring Black Women for Wellness and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice discussing anti-choice billboards,” NARAL says on its web page.
While the promo for the event doesn’t mention Tchen, NARAL affiliates today applauded having Michelle Obama’s top staffer at the NARAL summit and shared snippets of her comments and pictures of her at the event on Twitter. NARAL itself said it was “honored” to have the Obama staffer at its event and supplied a picture of her speaking to a small room of pro-abortion activists.
“Keynote speaker today is Tina Tchen, the chief of staff for First Lady Obama. Great person for women’s rights,” one NARAL activists tweeted. NARAL’s Arizona affiliate had Tchen saying, “No one is more with women than President Obama.”
“Tina Tchen (First Lady’s chief of staff and total rockstar): keynote speaker at NARAL summit. She’s pretty stellar,” NARAL’s Colorado affiliated said.
President Barack Obama selected Tchen to become the director of public liaison at the White House and, in March 2009, she became the executive director of the White House Council on Women and Girls, which pro-life advocates worry promotes abortions.
Tchen is a Chicago lawyer who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Obama presidential campaign. Previously, she served as the vice president of the National Organization for Women, a prominent pro-abortion organization.
She upset pro-life advocates in July 2009 when she spoke to gathering of Planned Parenthood activists. There, she promised leaders of the abortion business that Obama is a pro-abortion president and urged them to continue their pro-abortion lobbying efforts.
During the event, Tchen told the Planned Parenthood activists that if they want abortion as a part of the health care restructuring plan Congress is considering, they need to “bring it” — and up their lobbying efforts.
Tchen, who shared a panel with Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, told activists that Obama is committed to abortion and health care.
“I can say this directly from the White House, the President reiterated to all of us in the senior staff that health care is the most important issue,” she said. “It is the signature issue that he ran on, it is what he believes is one of the singularly most important reforms that need to be made that affects America, that affects our economy.”
Tchen also reminded the pro-abortion stalwarts that they had elected a president who shares their views and pointed them to his January 22 statement, his first as president on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, praising the decision that resulted in more than 52 million abortions and millions of women injured.
In preparation for the event, Tchen had a one-hour private meeting with Richards. Tchen also met with pro-life advocates at the White House before the votes on ObamaCare, but the meeting did not result in any efforts to prevent abortion funding.
Michelle Obama is no stranger to promoting abortion and she has promoted abortion and went after John McCain on the issue during the 2008 presidential elections.
Also, she came under fire for a 2004 letter in which she promoted partial-birth abortions — the mid-term abortion procedure done mostly on healthy women and healthy unborn children.
