Obama Chickens Out

President Obama was scheduled to give the keynote address at the annual Planned Parenthood convention on Thursday night.   He probably scheduled it many months in advance, so it might have looked pretty good back in the day when the Democrats' "war on women" meme was ostensibly making headway against Republicans on abortion rights.  

That was before the gruesomeness of the abortion industry became evident in the Kermit Gosnell trial.   Now the President isn't so eager to talk to the nation's largest abortion provider:

Obama backs out of Planned Parenthood keynote address

President Obama has canceled plans to deliver a keynote address at Planned Parenthood’s annual fundraising dinner Thursday night after critics decried his high-profile role at the abortion rights group amid new concerns about the brutality of illegal forms of abortion.

White House spokesman Jay Carney announced the decision to cancel the keynote speech at the gala during his daily press briefing with reporters Wednesday. He attributed the schedule change to Mr. Obama’s desire to spend more time at a memorial service in Waco, Texas, for family members of the victims of the fertilizer plant explosion.

Mr. Carney said the president will still address Planned Parenthood and its supporters Friday morning. Still, the shift to a lower-profile address at a more low-key morning event, rather than an evening gala fundraiser, is significant.

Earlier this week, abortion opponents pressed Mr. Obama to rescind his agreement to speak at the Planned Parenthood fundraiser, considering the gruesome revelations emanating from the trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell.

Lila Rose, who heads the anti-abortion group Live Action, said the accounts by Mr. Gosnell’s former clinic staff have “shell-shocked the nation.”

“It is incumbent upon the president to reconsider his support for the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood, which last year profited from abortion $87 million committing over 300,000 abortions,” she said Tuesday.

Chicken.   This is the same man who couldn't vote for the Born Alive Protection Act in Illinois.   He pretty plainly doesn't want his own record on abortion (the most radical for any President ever) in the foreground.   You can't answer questions that are unanswerable, no matter how slick a rhetorician you might be.   You can't really explain away why killing live babies would ever be OK and shouldn't be illegal... why it's not murder.   So he runs.