CPAC Makes No Room for Pro-Life Panel

Pro-life leaders have noticed that not a single panel or specific speaker on life issues has been scheduled for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which is supposed to be the preeminent annual gathering of conservatives in America.

Pro-lifers note there are important panels on the IRS scandal, immigration, Common Core, privacy, gun control, and criminal justice reform–issues in which pro-lifers would be keenly interested. Pro-lifers generally pride themselves on being “full spectrum conservatives”; that is, supporters of the three-legged stool: economics, national security, and moral issues. So they would not complain about panels covering these issues.

But they note other panels on career counseling, methods of making friends, pot smoking, making posts go Upworthy, and even one on Vaccines vs. Leeches, and wonder if there is no room for a panel or two on life issues–issues that motivate a tremendous number of grassroots activists who also vote conservative.  

In an age when religious freedom is under attack, they also note there isn’t a single panel on the issue or a panel on traditional marriage, an issue that is roiling the country and will end up in the Supreme Court in the coming months.

There are speakers who are recognizably pro-life, such as Rick Santorum, Ralph Reed, Focus on the Family’s Tim Goeglein, and Phyllis Schlafly who is speaking about Common Core.

David Bossie’s movie on issues of life is running on day two of the conference. There is a panel on whether libertarians and social conservatives can ever get along that features Tom Minnery, previously of Focus on the Family and now running CitizenLink, a Focus spin-off. But even that panel is posed as open-question.

There isn’t a single panel or workshop dedicated to life issues or marriage, two key topics to social conservatives.

A number of pro-life leaders spoke exclusively to Breitbart News about this matter.

Kristan Hawkins, the young president of Students for Life of America, said: 

While CPAC certainly has pro-life politicians speaking, this year they have apparently chosen not to have a panel addressing abortion, the greatest human rights issue our nation faces. In the wake of the left’s successful “war on women” campaign, CPAC should be the place where conservatives go and discuss how to counter these disgusting claims and how abortion should be brought up in political races.

Allan Parker of the Justice Foundation said, “I will say the Republican Party will die if it rejects the pro-life position.”  

Prolific pro-life researcher/analyst Professor Michael New of the University of Michigan said:

CPAC has always advertised itself as a conference where a wide variety of conservatives could network and engage ideas. As such, it is disappointing that this year’s CPAC offers precious little of interest to social conservatives. On the CPAC program, there are no panels dealing with abortion, traditional marriage, or religious liberty. While there are a number of other panels dealing with interesting and important subjects, the fact that CPAC has neglected issues of interest to social conservatives is disheartening.

Ryan Bomberger, chief creative officer of the Radiance Foundation, also added:

Thank God CPAC didn’t exist in the late 1860s. They would have waxed eloquent about military spending, national debt, how to improve the economy … while pretending that the violently inhumane institution of slavery didn’t exist. Today, CPAC ignores an industry that is not only violently inhumane–killing over 56 million since Roe–but a political juggernaut, in the form of Planned Parenthood, that spends millions to defeat conservatives who do quite a splendid job of defeating themselves.

Paul Rondeau, executive director of the American Life League, explained:

Liberals have successfully used the strategy of divide and conquer. There used to be just conservatives. But now, dancing like marionettes to the liberals’ tune, we have foreign policy, fiscal, and social conservatives. The GOP and CPAC have swallowed that bait–hook, line, and sinker. The GOP is no longer the conservative party, and CPAC has become CPAC.

Finally, Troy Newman of Operation Rescue blasted the entire event:

I never attend CPAC. It’s run by the Rove Republicans. I have always thought of it as a pragmatic conservative-in-name-only group that panders to whatever the conservative brand is today. That is not to say that there are not real true-believers who are a part or who attend, but to me, CPAC has always been about the parties, the celebration, and the Kool-aid drinking over and above deep-seated principles that drive the hearts of the American people.