The abortion president would gravely damage America's reputation worldwide

Senator Barack Obama, de facto Democrat candidate for US president, has said he will reinstate American funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Such spending is presently prevented by the 1985 Kemp-Kasten Amendment which, according to the Population Research Institute "forbids U.S. funds from going to any organization or country that participates in a program of forced abortion or sterilization." Earlier this month, President Bush's government withheld some $40 million from UNFPA, making a total of $235 million withheld over seven years.

Reinstating funding for UNFPA will gravely damage America's reputation worldwide. Under the current president, the US has done a lot of good work to protect the unborn overseas and an Obama victory would throw all that away. He will also do immense damage in his own country. Mr Obama has said that, if elected, he will immediately sign the Freedom of Choice Act which would enshrine abortion in US law and overturn all state-based restrictions. No wonder the Christian Defense Coalition has called him the abortion president.

While SPUC never endorses candidates, least of all those in other countries, an Obama presidency would have bad effects throughout the world, so it is a legitimate concern for us and our pro-life colleagues elsewhere to know that a new administration would fund UNFPA. Obama's neo-colonialist abortion policies will kill unborn children, destroy the lives of women and families overseas, and gravely damage the good name of the US.

On a related note, the Democratic and Republican parties have yet to choose their candidates for US vice-president. The choice is an important one, because vice-presidents sometimes succeed the incumbent (e.g. Lyndon Johnson succeeded JFK; Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon) or can become influential, either while vice-president (e.g. Dick Cheney) or in later life (e.g. Al Gore). It stands to reason that Mr Obama's running mate will probably share his anti-life positions. John McCain, Mr Obama's Republican rival, said recently that his running mate should share his "values, principles, and priorities." Among those speculated as a possible running mate for Mr McCain is Condoleezza Rice, the current Secretary of State (equivalent to the British Foreign Secretary). It would seem that Miss Rice does not share what is reported to be Mr McCain's position on abortion.

Happy Population Day!

The United Nations has declared today to be World Population Day. An organisation which respected the gift of human life and the dignity of the family would celebrate such a day by welcoming the report that Britain's birth rate is at its highest (1.91 children per woman of child-bearing age) since 1973. But the United Nations, in particular the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), has created World Population Day as an opportunity to promote abortion and contraception as a means of population control. The organisers of World Population Day should have the honesty to re-name today World Anti-Population Day!

Steve Mosher, an expert colleague of SPUC and the president of the Population Research Institute (PRI), has written a very information piece about World Population Day here. PRI has also written:

"Some will find population decline a cause for celebration. But keep this in mind: The world's population will age rapidly in that time, due to the few births. Most of the world, including its poor nations, will develop the same massive social security and health care problems that increasingly plague fast-aging First World nations in Western Europe and North America as well as Japan. The UNDP [United Nations Development Program] projects the median age of the world will go from 28 today to 38 by 2050. The proportion of the population over 65 will go from 7.4% to 16.1%, the oldest old - those over 80, who cannot work and usually require daily if not constant care from others - will more than triple from 1.3% to 4.3%. That's a big bill for any society. At the same time, the proportion of the population of productive working age, defined as between ages 15 and 64, will go from 64.5% to 63.7%, while the next generation - those under 4 - will go from 9.5% to a crippling 6.7%."

But it's not all doom-and-gloom. Naturally, pro-lifers have, and continue to have, more children than anti-lifers, passing on their message to the next generation. So, population controllers, in the end we will outsmart you by outbreeding you.