City Council Declares Philadelphia 'Pro-Choice City'

  

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - June 8, 2007 -- City Council has voted to declare Philadelphia a "Pro-Choice City."

The resolution, which has no practical implications, was approved on a contentious 9-to-8 vote.

It proclaims that the city supports "women's reproductive rights and freedom" and defends "the right to choose a legal and safe abortion as a final but critical option for women."

Planned Parenthood helped Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown draft the resolution. Other council members pressed her to withdraw it, but she refused. Three Republicans and five Democrats voted against it.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, the spiritual leader of hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics in the region, immediately responded with a rebuke urging "people of good will," as he put it, to reject the "divisive and erroneous label."

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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