As Barack Obama prepares to become the 44th President of the United States next month it is not just Americans who should be concerned by the inauguration of a man who holds such extreme anti-life views.Few politicians anywhere espouse policies as extreme as Mr Obama’s. In 2001, when as a member of the Illinois State senate, he repeatedly voted against a law requiring medical personnel to give treatment to babies who survived abortion.
In no sense could the survival of a child after an abortion be considered a threat to his or her mother yet Mr Obama believed helping such a baby to live would undermine the legal right to abortion. Explaining his opposition to the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act he said:
"...whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – child, a 9-month-old – child that was delivered to term. …
"I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute..."
Although he sought to avoid the issue of abortion once he had secured his party's nomination, the abortion industry has not forgotten that he told them "...the first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act."
While the US Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v Wade made legal efforts to limit abortion virtually impossible, a number of regulations have been successful in gradually reducing the abortions figures in recent years. The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) would remove these. It could end the bar on the the use of tax-payer's money to provide abortions, dispense with waiting periods and inform consent requirements and as well as parental notification laws of States where clinics are prevented from carrying out secret abortions to underage girls.
An insight into the radical agenda influencing the incoming US government is provided by “Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration,” a memorandum signed by 60 or so pro-abortion organisations, including International Planned Parenthood Federation, the biggest promoter of abortion in the world, and a group which calls itself Catholics for Choice.
Despite its publication by the Obama-Biden transition team on the President-elect official website, it is unlikely that such a detailed and wide-ranging paper was intended to be seen by the public. It is so precise in its demands that it even contains draft wording of executive orders the abortion industry wants Mr Obama to sign within the first 100 days of his presidency. It also lists abortion advocates suitable for government jobs and the names of those the abortion lobby would like to see appointed as judges to federal courts.
Amongst its demands is coverage in any tax-payer-subsidised national health care programme. Such a programme would almost certainly compel all major hospitals, including Catholic hospitals to provide abortions. Other proposals made in the 55-page document include:
- a dramatic increase in the funding for birth control clinics from its present $300 million to $700 million in the next financial year;
- allocation of $50 million on "comprehensive" sex-education promoting abortion and abortifacients birth control, while stripping abstinence-only sex-education programmes of all funding;
- $20 million to be spent on teenage pregnancy programmes;
- $10 million for the promotion of the morning-after pill;
- removal of budgetary restrictions on abortion in the federal sector, such as military facilities and prisons;
- "reinvigoration” of the National Task Force on Violence against healthcare providers, code for getting tough on pro-life opposition at abortion facilities;
- the appointment of only pro-abortion judges and officials;
- re-establish liasion between women's groups and the White House; and
- a review the Federal Refusal Rule proposed last August aimed at protecting medical personnel who object to involvement in abortion.
In the international arena the authors of the memorandum want Mr Obama to:
- allocate $1 billion in funding for birth control and abortion programmes;
- give $65 million to the UNFPA, which is complicit in coercive abortion through its involvement in China’s coercive one-child policy;
- “reclaim” US leadership in the field of women's health in developing nations by providing $900 million for maternal mortality action, including action against so-called unsafe abortion - a public relations spin for pressuring governments of poor nations to legalise abortion;
- meet the Bush administration's spending plans on HIV/AIDS programmes but integrate birth control programmes with AIDS prevention schemes (Bush’s pledge not to support programmes which do not oppose prostitution should, however, be revised)
- issue new guidance on USAID policy so that it can fund programmes involving abortion.
If Barack Obama complies with each of these demands the effects will be felt for a generation not just in the US but across the globe. As I wrote recently the world is facing a time of unprecedented danger. This danger is intensified when leading world figures such as Tony Blair, (who refuses to repudiate, since his reception into the Catholic Church, the anti-life laws and policies he supported and promoted as prime minister and as a Member of Parliament) and Cherie Blair (who has a long track record of supporting anti-life groups and anti-family causes which she has failed to disown) appear to be manipulating the Catholic Church, which is the largest organization worldwide with a mission to defend human life and the family.
