USCCB on common ground:  No need to "reduce need" for abortions because there is "no need for abortions."

In his column, God and Country, at US News and World Report, Dan Gilgoff underscores the Obama Administration’s focus on "reducing the need for abortion," an objective supported by many in the pro-choice community because it focuses on the real issue: unintended pregnancies, and the need to dramatically expand access to basic prevention services.  Fewer unintended pregnancies means fewer abortions in the long-run, but, if implemented effectively, is a strategy compatible with ensuring that women who want to terminate a pregnancy have access to timely and affordable safe abortion services.

This, not surprisingly, is not good enough for the USCCB.  Gilgoff quotes  U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Deirdre McQuade, assistant director of policy and communications as saying:

The phrase "reducing the need for abortion" is not a common-ground phrase. We would say that there is no need for abortion, that abortions are signs that we have not met the needs of women. There is no authentic need for abortion.

This of course from a group that is not only opposed to any form of modern contraception or HIV prevention method (e.g. male and female condoms) but whose position is not even shared by its own adherents in the United States. They don’t share the same analysis of the problem as the majority of people working on this issue, disregard evidence in favor of religious ideology, and can’t agree on any solution to whatever problem that makes sense from either a public health or human rights standpoint.  Instead, their position is to replace government policy with theology and ideology.

So I am still confused: Why do they have a seat at the table?