Barack Obama is reported to have made several appointments to his forthcoming administration:
- Tom Daschle (pictured with Obama) as secretary of health and human services. Mr Daschle is strongly anti-life, and, like all too many anti-life politicians, is a Catholic.
- Alto Charo, a bioethicist, also to the health and human services department. Charo has described pro-life beliefs as "the endarkenment" (the opposite of the Enlightenment).
- Rahm Emanuel, an anti-life Democrat congressman, as chief of staff.
It has been
suggested that pro-lifers seek a rapprochement with anti-life governments like the future Obama administration, on the basis of those governments' alleged desire to promote better health care, welfare, adoption and other services for expectant mothers. Don't be fooled: it's a ploy to neutralise pro-life criticism of anti-life governments. It's also a way of caricaturing the pro-life movement as only being interested in moralising rather than actually helping people and changing public opinion. The pro-life movement, individual pro-lifers and the faith communities to which they belong, have been caring for decades for expectant mothers, as well as educating the public, passing laws, reforming policies and doing many other things which have served to reduce the likely numbers of abortions. The right response to anti-life governments' policies and legislation is ever-stronger resistance to the culture of death - the kind of resistance personified, for example, by the
courageous politicians and people of Northern Ireland who by means of intelligent and determined opposition have succeeded, for over four decades, in stopping the imposition of the Abortion Act on the Province by the UK Parliament.
