While the public still can’t visit the White House, one member of the Baltimore Ravens’ 2012 Super Bowl championship team voluntarily skipped the team’s visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue this week because of the president’s pro-choice beliefs.
Ravens center Matt Birk, who retired from professional football after the Super Bowl, decided not to make the trip after learning of the president’s Planned Parenthood speech back in April.
“I would say this, I would say that I have great respect for the office of the presidency, but about five or six weeks ago, our president made a comment in a speech, and he said, ‘God bless Planned Parenthood’,” Birk said during an interview on KFAN-FM radio’s “The Power Trip Morning Show” Thursday.
“Planned Parenthood performs about 330,000 abortions a year,” he continued. “I am a Catholic. I’m active in the pro-life movement, and I just felt like I couldn’t deal with that. I couldn’t endorse that in any way and was very confused by that statement — for God to bless a place where they’re ending 330,000 lives a year, so I just chose not to attend.”
Birk, who opposes gay marriage as well, also defended the comments made last month by Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, in which he said that having an openly gay teammate “really wouldn’t bother me that much” but that it could make him uncomfortable in specific situations.
“He made his position clear,” Birk said during the interview Thursday. “He keeps getting asked about it. That’s more of a reflection on the media, or that specific person in the media who was asking the question over and over and over. Obviously they’re just trying — trying to get him to say something that will make headlines, and that’s unfortunate.”
Several other former Ravens skipped the visit as well, but did so for football-related reasons.
In 2012, then-Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas famously skipped the team’s visit to the White House after winning the Stanley Cup because he believed “the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.”
Listen to Birk’s interview on KFAN-FM below.
