The Hill News

It seems George W. Bush’s “armies of compassion” have become Barack Obama’s armies of contraception. 

Many were surprised that when President Obama entered the White House he didn’t close the faith-based office his predecessor had created. As the man who led that office for over four years under Bush, I think I now know why.

Indeed, Obama telegraphed his intentions from the start. The new administration wasn’t in place a month before he re-launched the initiative and declared that a priority of his faith-based office would be to “look at how we support women and children, address teenage pregnancy, and reduce the need for abortion.”

From day one he set his administration on a course to make contraception another federal entitlement, and to utilize his faith-based office as a political outreach shop. He even appointed a Pentecostal preacher who was the president’s “director of religious affairs” on the campaign ! trail (talk about audacity of appointment!). Of late, the White House faith-based office has been scrambling to line up religious leaders, many themselves the recipients of millions of dollars in federal grants and TARP funds, willing to vouch for the president’s faith-friendliness. On the day of the “accommodation” announcement the faith-based office staff conducted the political equivalent of an “altar call” to secure such support.

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