{"id":231,"date":"2013-06-07T10:33:39","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T10:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/?p=231"},"modified":"2025-09-30T01:45:30","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T01:45:30","slug":"baltimore-raven-center-matt-birk-chooses-not-to-meet-with-the-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/?p=231","title":{"rendered":"Baltimore Raven center Matt Birk chooses NOT to meet with the President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Matt_Birk\" target=\"_self\">Matt Birk<\/a> is a Harvard graduate, six time Pro Bowl selection, has six children and his wife volunteers with a crisis pregnancy group. <\/p>\n<p>And he made his reasoning public.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/nfl-champ-skips-wh-visit-because-obama-said-god-bless-planned-parenthood\/article\/2531299\" target=\"_self\">Retired<br \/>\nBaltimore Ravens center Matt Birk, who won a Super Bowl with the team<br \/>\nlast year, skipped the team\u2019s visit to the White House due to President<br \/>\nObama\u2019s support for Planned Parenthood.<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u201cI have great respect for the office of the presidency but about five or<br \/>\nsix weeks ago, our president made a comment in a speech and he said,<br \/>\n\u2018God bless Planned Parenthood,\u2019\u201d Birk, a former Minnesota Viking, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kfan.com\/pages\/vikingsblog.html?article=11361151#ixzz2VSXgUxcq\">told a local Minnesota sports blog<\/a>.<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019m very confused by [Obama&#39;s] statement,\u201d he explained. \u201c\u201dFor God to<br \/>\nbless a place where they\u2019re ending 330,000 lives a year? I just chose<br \/>\nnot to attend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n<a class=\"asset-img-link\" href=\"http:\/\/hvcljournal.typepad.com\/.a\/6a00d8341cc5fb53ef01901d1accb1970b-pi\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Matt_Birk_Ravens_Training_Camp_August_5,_2009\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a00d8341cc5fb53ef01901d1accb1970b\" src=\"https:\/\/hvcljournal.typepad.com\/.a\/6a00d8341cc5fb53ef01901d1accb1970b-320wi\" style=\"width: 320px;\" title=\"Matt_Birk_Ravens_Training_Camp_August_5,_2009\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matt Birk is a Harvard graduate, six time Pro Bowl selection, has six children and his wife volunteers with a crisis pregnancy group. And he made his reasoning public. Retired Baltimore Ravens center Matt Birk, who won a Super Bowl with the team last year, skipped the team\u2019s visit to the White House due to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/life-net-bf3c43.ingress-alpha.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}