SOUL FOOD:

On Jan. 22, I was ready for President Barack Obama to make good on his word. But I was also holding my breath (at times literally, I discovered), hoping he had instead reconsidered his promise made to abortion rights advocates.

In July 2007, after the then-presidential candidate spoke to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, senior field organizer Dessa Cosma asked Obama what, as president, he’d do at the federal level to ensure access to abortion.

With trademark cool swagger and to considerable applause, (you can see it on YouTube) he replied. “The first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing that I’d do.”

But it’s the last thing I and many advocates for the unborn want.

Enactment of the FOCA, however, would among other things put an end to states being able to places limits on abortion access at all. Where a woman’s right to abortion already goes farther than it does in most developed nations, the Freedom of Choice Act would take our laws well beyond the parameters of the Roe v. Wade decision.

Still, before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Obama spoke of the need for a different attitude in the Supreme Court. He spoke about writing a new chapter in American history. He spoke about the need to play offense.

And if that’s what Obama meant to do, what better time than on the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade — and his second day in office? To my relief, that’s not the way the day played out.

The president did, though, mark the occasion with praise for Supreme Court’s landmark decision as one that, “stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters.”

Then the following day he reversed the Mexico City Policy instated by Ronald Reagan 25 years ago. Known as the “global gag rule” by its critics, it prohibited U.S. funds from going to overseas non-governmental organizations that perform or promote abortion.

No more. A portent, perhaps, of things still to come. Though not if the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops can help it.

On Jan. 24, by unanimous vote of its bishops, the USCCB launched a National Pro-Life Postcard Campaign that will run through February. It is asking Roman Catholics in particular but also “all concerned citizens — regardless of creed” to speak up.

Among the president’s statements about abortion on Jan. 23, he said, “It is time that we end the politicization of this issue.”

In our democratic republic, as long as abortion remains an issue for legislation, abortion will also be politicized. Where the people are participants in their government, how can it be otherwise?

Through postcard communications, the USCCB campaign seeks to urge members of Congress to “retain current pro-life laws and policies” and to “oppose the federal funding and promotion of abortion, including the so-called ‘Freedom of Choice Act’ (FOCA) or any similar pro-abortion measure.”

Catholic or not, you can download postcards to send this message to your senator and house representative at www.usccb.org/prolife. Congregations and other groups can purchase large quantities of cards.

As the web page explains, our Congress now includes more pro-abortion rights members than it has since 1993. So retaining current restrictions on abortion presents a challenge.

While on one hand endeavoring to end restrictions on abortion rights, Obama has also made the reduction of abortions the focal point for finding what he calls common ground among those who champion abortion rights and those who oppose them.

And if a significant reduction of abortion seemed feasible — especially, say, the 95% reduction over 10 years cited in the 95/10 initiative bandied about by certain Democrats and abortion rights groups — the plan might win some skeptical hearts and minds.

Yet a number of studies and analyses suggest that a plan to reduce abortion while increasing access to it may only be a pipe dream, if not delusional. Factors seem, at best, complex.

A 2007 article in the Guttmacher Policy Review on the lack of public funds for abortion for poor women, for example, estimated that as many as “18% to 35% of women who would have had an abortion continued their pregnancies after Medicaid funding was cut off.”

An article titled “The effect of abortion costs on adoption in the USA” was published in the International Journal of Social Economics last year. Written by Huntington Beach resident and Cal State Long Beach economics professor Marshall Medoff, it looked at the link between Medicaid funding for abortion and the number of infants relinquished for adoption.

Abstracts of his study point out that “for poor women with unwanted pregnancies either an abortion or raising an infant is preferable to relinquishing an infant for adoption” yet “higher abortion costs influence fertility through increasing pregnancy avoidance behaviors; hence liberal abortion policies are linked with higher rates of relinquishment for adoption.”

Which would seem to imply that liberal abortion policies are linked with higher rates of unwanted pregnancies.

“The Supply of Infants Relinquished for Adoption: Did Access to Abortion Make a Difference?” was written by Lisa A. Gennetian and published in Economic Inquiry nine years earlier. It concluded, “As abortion laws become more restrictive the total number of unwanted births may decrease.”

Studies by University of Alabama political science professor Michael J. New also indicate that restriction on the public funding of abortion as well as informed consent laws and parental involvement laws have served to reduce abortion in recent years. You can read an overview of New’s findings online at the Witherspoon Institute website, www.thepublicdiscourse.com.

Even a study commissioned by the (pro-Obama) Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good linked Medicaid funding of abortion to a 10% increase in the abortion rate.

Reading these studies and others, it’s hard to imagine what makes our president think that increased access to abortion is instrumental in reducing the rate of abortion.

Do your homework. And let your senator and house representative know what you think.

Don’t underestimate what Tom Grenchik, executive director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has called the power of postcards and prayer.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].