Pro-Life Groups, Faith-Based Office Have 'Honest' Talk

Mar 25, 2009 01:01 PM EDT

Evangelical pro-life groups met with the director of the White House’s Faith-Based Office Tuesday for an “honest” discussion on how to reduce abortion in America.

Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, told The Brody File of Christian Broadcasting Network that the meeting was “very cordial” and “quite honest.” Wright had initiated the meeting and the White House agreed.

“Joshua [DuBois, White House Faith-Based Office director,] is a young and dynamic man and he seems to understand the faith perspective,” Wright said in the video interview with CBN after the meeting. “It was a very cordial meeting. It was also quite honest.”

Wright along with representatives from several other pro-life groups shared information on programs that don’t work in reducing abortion, as well as those that do.

“[W]e needed to be very honest in presenting that,” Wright said. “It remains to be seen what they will do with the information … the burden now is on them to come up with the kinds of policies that do show respect for the faith-based community.”

The goal of the meeting was to open dialogue between pro-life groups and the White House and suggest ideas on how to reduce abortion and promote responsible fatherhood with the hope that they will be implemented in future initiatives and the administration’s policies.

Wright said some of the information presented to the White House staff was new to them, and “they’ve not heard it before.”

“I hope that if that’s the case that the information will influence their current positions,” the CWA president said.

“Right now what we have seen from this administration has been very disappointing,” she continued. “The kinds of policies and programs they have backed so far are the same kinds of things that have not reduced the number of abortions. We hope with meetings like this they will be presented and hear information they haven’t heard before and it could help to reshape their own positions.”

CWA was joined by representatives from Family Research Council, Christian Medical Association, and pro-life pregnancy crisis group Care Net at the White House meeting.