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President Barack Obama waded into an impassioned outcry from anti-abortion campaigners as he prepared to speak Sunday at one of America’s most prestigious Catholic universities.Obama was to deliver the commencement address for graduating students and receive a honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame, pitting him headlong into the nation’s culture wars on an issue that he has tried hard to finesse.

Hours before the president’s scheduled speech here at 1800 GMT, a few hundred activists lined the streets leading to the campus entrance holding signs denouncing Obama’s visit.

“This nation’s got blood on its hands and we’re going to pay the price for it,” said David McWilliams, 51, who drove 100 miles to stand with a pair of red gloves and a t-shirt with the words “Mr. Obama tear down this law: Roe v. Wade” spelled out with black and red tape.

A plane dragging a banner with a graphic photo of an aborted fetus flew circles over South Bend, Indiana as the protestors sang Amazing Grace to drown out the sound of a handful of counter-protestors chanting: “Not the church. Not the state. We will decide our fate.”

AFP Photo: A pro-life protestor demonstrates outside the campus of Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana….

“There are millions of women whose right to abortion is being compromised by these Christian fascists,” said Sunsara Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Local media reported the arrests of at least 10 trespassers by university police but the campus appeared largely free of disturbances as well-dressed families held picnics ahead of the ceremony.

Father Richard McBrien, a theology professor at the 167-year-old university, said the invitation did not imply approval of the Democratic president’s stances on abortion or stem-cell research.

“There are other positions he has taken, whether it’s on immigration or poverty or whatever, which are entirely consistent with Catholic social teaching,” he said on Fox News Sunday.

“If we required 100 percent agreement with the Catholic Church’s official teaching from everyone who speaks at or gets an honorary degree from a Catholic university, we would then not have any politicians of either party.”

But Priests for Life national director Frank Pavone, who was leading an alternative service for Notre Dame graduates boycotting Obama, said the university and Obama were “trivializing abortion.”

“We’re tired of looking at abortion as on an equal level with other issues. It’s not,” Father Pavone told the same Fox program, while noting that Obama’s honorary degree was in law.

“Law is for the protection of human rights. The president admitted on the campaign trail he doesn’t know when the child (fetus) gets human rights. How can you defend human rights if you don’t know who has them?” he said.

Pavone highlighted a new Gallup poll that said for the first time since the organization began surveying the question in 1995, most Americans identify themselves as “pro-life” rather than “pro-choice.”

In the poll released Friday, 51 percent of respondents said they were opposed to abortion while 42 percent said they for a woman’s right to choose.

The controversy comes as Obama prepares to name his first nominee to the Supreme Court, a pick sure to be excoriated by some in the Republican Party if he or she is viewed as too liberal on the abortion question.

The president has attempted to defuse one of the most emotive issues in US public life by arguing that while abortion should remain legal, the government should do all it can to limit unwanted pregnancies.

But he has angered the anti-abortion lobby by reversing predecessor George W. Bush’s restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research and for family-planning groups that carry out or facilitate abortions overseas.

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who is a Catholic, said Notre Dame was stamping its “imprimatur” on Obama by giving him an honorary degree.

“The president should speak, but the degree should not be conferred,” he said on NBC.

However, just 28 percent of Catholics surveyed in a recent Pew Center poll thought Notre Dame was wrong to invite Obama, while half said it was the right thing to do.

Obama also managed to carry the Catholic vote in the November 4 election and was the first Democrat since 1964 to win the midwestern state of Indiana, where Notre Dame is located.

Obama may address abortion in his speech but he is not going to “dwell on the things that divide us,” senior White House advisor David Axelrod said on PBS television.