Pro-Life Leaders Back Abortion Protest at National Education Association Event

Pro-Life Leaders Back Abortion Protest at National Education Association Event
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by Steven Ertelt

LifeNews.com Editor

June 2, 2008

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Pro-life leaders from across the country are endorsing a planned protest outside the National Educational Association's annual convention in July. They say NEA leaders and activists need to know that endorsing abortion and pro-abortion groups is anathema to its mission.
Bob Pawson of Pro-Life Educators and Students talked with LifeNews.com last month and said he hoped pro-life teachers and students will join him at the protest.
"Pro-Life activists, teachers, school employees, students, parents, and clergy are invited to come pray and peacefully picket" the event, he said. "Activate your groups. Bring your families, friends and pro-life signs and banners."
The endorsement of several pro-life leaders could help the New Jersey teacher and union member turn out more pro-life supporters.
Day Gardner the head of the National Black Pro-Life Union and Rev. Johnny Hunter, both leading African-American pro-life advocates, have put their voice behind the protest.
"Why protest the NEA convention?" Gardner asked. "Some schools hand out condoms and there have been reports of young girls being referred for abortions by teachers without their parents' consent."
"It is extremely important that we raise our voices to the NEA - to make a stand for our children. If parents don't - who will?" she said in a statement given to LifeNews.com.
Hunter says there are teachers, educators and school administrators across the country who are pro-life on abortion who should take part in the protest.
"A picket on July 2 at the NEA Convention is needed," he says, adding that it is "immoral, economic suicide and plain stupid for teachers to be abortion pushers."

Pawson, an NEA-NJEA teacher in Trenton, says the NEA should be one of the leading advocates against abortion because the practice is killing the next generation of students.
"A pro-abortion position isn't just morally outrageous; it's stupid; economic suicide. Twenty-five abortions equal one lost classroom, lost teaching careers, and catastrophic losses to America's future," he said.
Pawson said he expects one of the pro-abortion Democratic presidential candidates, either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, to address the convention as they did last year.
At the conference, Pawson also expects the NEA's political action committee to make a presidential endorsement -- likely for one of the pro-abortion candidates instead of John McCain, who opposes abortion.
The National Education Association came under fire in March for allowing a radical pro-abortion group to use its building to host a forum featuring controversial late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller.

Tiller is embroiled in a legal battle over charges filed by the state attorney general in Kansas that he repeatedly did illegal late-term abortions. He's also been criticized for escaping charges in connection with the legal abortion death of a mentally disabled teenager.
LifeNews.com reported on the NEA-hosted pro-abortion forum and the criticism of it. Later, NEA Assistant General Counsel Michael Simpson slammed the criticism as "untrue and unfair."
ACTION: If you can't make the NEA convention protest, you can send your complaints to the National Education Association online.

Go to http://www.nea.org/aboutnea/contact.html for contact information.