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Obama wades into abortion controversy at Notre Dame
Staff Reporter | Posted May 17, 2009 5:00 PM
Following weeks of controversy, Barack Obama has his first new degree since becoming president. The University of Notre Dame awarded Obama an honorary degree at its annual commencement ceremony Sunday at its Indiana campus.
The awarding of the degree came despite controversy from anti-abortion activists who complained that the Catholic university should not honor a politician who supports abortion rights for women.
Obama did not avoid the controversy in his remarks. "Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions," Obama told the crowd. He asked people on all sides to "work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.
But the president also called for greater civility from both sides in the dialogue about abortion and recounted a letter he received from a pro-life doctor who complained that his own campaign Web site once referred to abortion opponents as "right-wing ideologues." After he got the letter, the president said he didn't change his position, but he did tell his staff to change the words on his Web site.
Abortion has re-emerged as an issue in recent weeks because of the Notre Dame speech and because the president will be appointing a new Supreme Court Justice soon to replace Justice David Souter, a moderate judge who upheld the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Despite the trouble the issue has generated for the president in recent weeks, he said the abortion debate is not likely to go away, in part because most Americans' views on the subject are "complex and even contradictory" and the views of the two camps are "irreconcilable."
But with graduates facing a troubled job market and an economy in the midst of recession, the president encouraged them to help move the country forward. "This generation, your generation, is the one that must find a path back to prosperity and decide how we respond to a global economy that left millions behind even before the most recent crisis hit -- an economy where greed and short-term thinking were too often rewarded at the expense of fairness, and diligence, and an honest day's work," Obama said.
The president was briefly interrupted by protesters as he continued. "Your generation must decide how to save God's creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it," he said. "Your generation must seek peace at a time when there are those who will stop at nothing to do us harm, and when weapons in the hands of a few can destroy the many. And we must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity -- diversity of thought, of culture and of belief. In short, we must find a way to live together as one human family."
Last week, the president spoke at Arizona State University, but that school did not award him an honorary degree.
In the video below, the president receives an honorary doctorate of laws degree.
In the video below, the Associated Press explains the controversy surrounding the awarding of the degree to President Obama.
Articles written by a Staff Reporter are unsigned reports from a member of the staff.
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