To Anti-Choice Religious Leaders: What Happened to Truth Telling?

To the Christian Post, LifeNews.Com, California Catholic Daily, and those tons of smaller anti-abortion bloggers:

I understand that people of faith disagree about abortion. I understand that you would like abortion to be illegal once again and unavailable in all circumstances.

We've been on other sides of this issue for a long time.

I understand, then, why you were upset that more than 1,100 clergy and religious leaders endorsed the Religious Institute's Open Letter on Abortion as a Moral Decision.

And that you didn't like that we sent that out through Religion News Service and to members of the Senate, calling for them not to add further restrictions on women's access to abortion in health care reform.

What I don't understand, though, is why you distorted our press release and claimed that we were asking for taxpayer-funded abortions in the health care reform bill, rather than that existing plans that cover abortion services be allowed to continue to do so.

Moreover, you distorted our press release to say that denominations had endorsed the Open Letter, when it can only be endorsed by individual clergy, acting out of their personal faith commitments. Perhaps you wanted to create issues in denominations that have their own fault lines over choice?

And the words you use to describe the Religious Institute -- a "so called" organization "claiming to represent" more than 4900 clergy and other religious leaders are designed to disparage our leadership and organization. I invite you to learn more about our very real organization and the efforts we support.

The health care reform debate has been marred enough by the egregious lying of those who oppose it, from made-up death panels to using women's reproductive health access as a pawn to make it more divisive. Surely you don't have to lie to find something to disagree with us about.

I call you to our shared Scriptural commitment to truth telling. You do remember those passages, don't you?