Fred Thompson Lobbied for Federally-Funded Abortions -- Good for Him

This post, written by Cliff Schecter, originally appeared on Cliff Schecter's Blog

Holy Schmoly.

Abortion-rights group says Thompson once lobbied for it

A spokesman for the GOP presidential hopeful says he did no such work. An ex-colleague calls the denial 'bizarre.'

By Michael Finnegan, Times Staff Writer

7:35 PM PDT, July 6, 2007

Former Tennessee Sen. Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as a "pro-life" Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for the former senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year.

His task was to urge the administration of President George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money, according to the records and to people who worked on the matter.