Head of U.S. bishops says no compromise on abortion

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Catholic bishops' group said on Monday that Barack Obama's election as president should be celebrated but he made it clear the church would not compromise its strict stand against abortion.

Obama won solid support from Catholics in last week's election, exit polls indicated, even though the church opposes the view, supported by the Illinois Democratic senator, that a woman has the right to choose whether to have an abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 legalized abortion.

Obama's election "is a moment that touches more than our history when a country that once enshrined race slavery in its very constitutional order should come to elect an African- American to the presidency," said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.

"In this, I truly believe, we must all rejoice," the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told the group's semi-annual meeting in Baltimore.

George said the country may have reached a point where "all races are safely within the American consensus." But he voiced concern that Catholics face political pressure when seeking office to compromise on "fundamental Catholic teachings."

The central Christian teaching, George added, was that God became man and "took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, nine months before Jesus was born in Bethlehem."

"This truth is celebrated in our liturgy because it is branded into our spirit. The common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed at choice," he said.

"If the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision that African- Americans were other people's property and somehow less than persons were still settled constitutional law, Mr. Obama would not be president of the United States," George said, referring to the 1857 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Today, as was the case a 150 years ago, common ground cannot be found by destroying the common good," he added.

The bishops issued a general statement on issues before the election, urging voters to consider all life issues in casting ballots, including war and capital punishment.

Some bishops still came out against Obama during the campaign over his stand on abortion. Abortion opponents have expressed concern that possible Supreme Court appointments by Obama could undo efforts to reverse Roe v. Wade.

(Editing by Peter Bohan and Peter Cooney)