The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic (15 page)

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Authors: David Limbaugh

BOOK: The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic
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Some pro-life advocates contend that Obama’s policies show he is actually promoting
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abortions. He has undoubtedly spread his pro-abortion leanings throughout the government by consistently nominating or appointing ardent pro-abortion officials and advisers. These include:
* His former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who had a 0 percent pro-life voting record from the National Right to Life;
* Former senator Tom Daschle, Obama’s failed nominee as Health and Human Services secretary, whose pro-abortion voting record was well established;
* Former NARAL legal director Dawn Johnsen, who served on his Department of Justice Review Team, and later as assistant attorney general for the Office of the Legal Counsel;
* Ellen Moran, former director of the pro-abortion outfit Emily’s List, as White House communications director (Emily’s List only supports candidates who favor taxpayer-funded abortions and oppose a partial-birth abortion ban);
* Pro-abortionist Jeanne Lambrew as deputy director of the White House Office of Health Reform, a choice that “excited” Planned Parenthood;
* Melody Barnes, another Emily’s List board member, as director of the Domestic Policy Council;
* Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has a perfect pro-abortion voting record and even supported making unlimited abortions an international right.
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Between his election and inauguration, Obama’s in-your-face pro-abortion transition team published a 55-page memo from numerous pro-abortion groups listing their demands. The memo’s publication apparently surprised these groups, which thought Obama would initially be more discreet about his pro-abortion proclivities, and which feared that news of Obama’s work on their behalf would block progress on their militant agenda. But Obama’s zeal for the cause hardly surprised pro-life activists, who remembered his July 2007 pledge that he would be Planned Parenthood’s fierce advocate.
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Calling for more funding for Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups, the memo also urged Obama to lobby Congress to pass the Freedom of Choice Act, as Obama had already pledged to do, which would legalize unlimited abortions through all stages of pregnancy and nullify hundreds of pro-life laws in all fifty states, ranging from partial-birth abortion bans to parental involvement laws. Further, the memo advocated striking all limits on taxpayer-funded abortion in various circumstances, the appointment of pro-abortion judges, repeal of the Hyde Amendment, and including an abortion mandate in Obama’s healthcare reform program. The memo also pushed for restoration of funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), even though that organization has supported China’s oppressive one-child policy, which includes forced abortions and sterilizations. Finally, the memo urged Obama to reverse the so-called Mexico City Policy, which reversal would effectively restore taxpayer funding for groups that promote or perform abortions in other nations.
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As president, Obama quickly acted on the agenda outlined in the memo. In his first week in office, he signed an executive order reversing the Mexico City Policy.
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By 2013, this will likely result in hundreds of millions of dollars being distributed to groups that promote or perform abortions throughout the world, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation—an organization that endorses abortion on demand as a universal birth control method. With the Mexico City rule reversed, two major abortion providers, U.S.-based Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International, both became eligible for taxpayer funding without discontinuing their performance or advocacy of abortion.
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The administration also cooperated with pro-abortion advocacy groups at the United Nations during the March 2009 Commission of the Status of Women meeting, where they worked on a document that included language that could be used to promote an international right to abortion. The administration called for a review of all national laws to ensure they comply with international human rights instruments, which some fear could be misused to force countries to remove restrictions on abortion.
In addition, the administration created a new foreign policy advisory post inside the State Department that would focus on global women’s issues, immediately appointing pro-abortionist Malanne Verveer to lead it as ambassador-at-large. Verveer has been a staunch advocate of the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), a radical international agreement that seeks to enforce “abortion rights” internationally and to reduce or negate parental rights, among other things. Were the United States to approve the convention, it would be legally bound to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of healthcare in order to ensure, on the basis of gender equality, access to healthcare services, including those related to family planning. Though CEDAW doesn’t include the word “abortion,” the CEDAW committee interprets Article 12 to include abortion as a part of family planning. Under it, countries that restrict or outlaw abortion are reprimanded and instructed to change their laws.
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Approving CEDAW would require a 67-vote majority in the Senate. With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton having indicated that ratification is a major priority of the Obama administration, Verveer is working on Capitol Hill to get this accomplished,
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and she appeared before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearing on Women and the Arab Spring in November 2011 to tout the importance of ratifying the convention.
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OBAMA’S BROKEN ABORTION FUNDING PROMISE
Further violating his pledge to make abortion rare, President Obama and congressional Democrats enabled the District of Columbia to fund abortions with taxpayer dollars, resulting in some 300 abortions being performed with public funds. Associated Press files showed that the District expended $185,000 for elective abortions for any reason and at any point in the pregnancy for women below the poverty level. Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said, “The responsibility for these 300 government-funded abortions rests squarely with President Obama, who urged Congress to lift the longstanding ban in 2009, and with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who rammed through the repeal without allowing roll call votes on the issue in either house of Congress. Some of these unborn children would be alive today, if it had not been for the Obama-dictated change in policy.”
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In his healthcare reform speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9, 2010, Obama said, “One more misunderstanding I want to clear up—under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” But in fact, the ObamaCare bill did provide that federal dollars would pay for elective abortions and explicitly authorized federal subsidies for private abortion insurance. As a result, in order to secure the vote of Congressman Bart Stupak for the bill, Obama had to promise Stupak he would issue an executive order reaffirming a ban on the federal funding of abortion.
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As Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, noted, “By offering an executive order as a so-called solution, President Obama is finally admitting there is a problem with a bill that would force taxpayers to pay for elective abortions for the first time in over three decades.” Perkins also observed that an executive order would not likely have much legal effect.
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Many doubted Obama’s sincerity in following through with this commitment. Sure, he issued an executive order as he promised, but it didn’t keep him from planning to fund abortions through high-risk insurance programs to be created by his ObamaCare bill in states such as Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Maryland.
On July 13, 2010, three months after the bill was signed, the Obama administration approved the allocation of $160 million in federal funds to Pennsylvania for a high-risk pool of people with pre-existing conditions. The administration claimed the Pennsylvania legislation would pay for abortions only in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life, yet the statutory language omitted those restrictions. The solicitation describing the plan said it would include “only abortions and contraceptives that satisfy the requirements” of certain Pennsylvania statutes. One of those statutes specified that abortions could be provided by physicians who would determine whether in their “best clinical judgment, the abortion is necessary… in light of all factors (physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman’s age) relevant to the well-being of the woman. No abortion which is sought solely because of the sex of the unborn child shall be deemed a necessary abortion.”
Doug Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said this language means that “federal funds will subsidize coverage of abortion performed for any reason, except sex selection. The Pennsylvania proposal conspicuously lacks language that would prevent funding of abortions performed as a method of birth control for any other reason, except sex selection—and the Obama administration has now approved this.”
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The administration also authorized federal funding for abortions in the state of New Mexico. National Review Online reported that the state’s new, $37 million high-risk pool would begin receiving benefits in August, including elective abortion services, and this was corroborated by the state insurance department’s website. House minority leader John Boehner said, “In just the past 24 hours, we’ve learned of two states in which the new federal high-risk insurance programs created under Obamacare and approved by the Obama administration will use federal funds to pay for abortion, despite promises by the White House and Democratic leaders that no such funding would occur under Obamacare. These developments provide stark confirmation that President Obama’s executive order last spring was little more than a political ploy to ensure passage of Obamacare by circumventing the will of the American people, who are clearly opposed to taxpayer-funded abortion.”
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A few days later, it was announced that Maryland, too, would receive federal funds for high-risk insurance programs created under ObamaCare that would include coverage for abortion.
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Despite its aggressive record of federal funding for abortion, the administration still misrepresents its position. In early 2011 Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declared, “There is no taxpayer funding for abortion. Not at community health centers, not as part of the new bill, not as any part of any services that we deliver.”
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HAVING “SURROGATES DO ITS DIRTY WORK”
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated the administration’s spending in Kenya and discovered that at least one grantee of the funds openly pushed to expand abortion—notwithstanding the Siljander Amendment, a law that prohibits federal tax dollars from being used to lobby for or against abortion in other nations. Further, the GAO reported that a key Obama official stonewalled investigators. Congressman Chris Smith said, “The Obama administration basically hired surrogates to do its dirty work of abortion promotion in Kenya. U.S. policy on international constitutional reform is, by law, supposed to be abortion-neutral.” Instead, it actively lobbied for abortion with taxpayer dollars.
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The GAO called for an internal review of the expenditure of these funds. It also suggested that the State Department develop “specific guidance” to comply with restrictions on funding for abortion laws overseas, a suggestion the State Department rejected.
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HARASSING A PEACEFUL, PRAYERFUL MAN
Obama’s Justice Department definitely got “the memo”—not the one instructing his administration to make abortion “rare,” which was never sent, but the one promoting the work of pro-abortionists. In deference to Obama’s soul-mates at Planned Parenthood, the DOJ sued an elderly pro-life “sidewalk counselor” for his ministry on behalf of young pregnant ladies outside the Planned Parenthood facility in Washington, D.C. Dick Retta, described as a “peaceful, prayerful man,” conducts training sessions to empower fellow pro-life advocates to offer words of encouragement to young women who enter and leave the abortion center. He insists he does not seek to block access to the facility, but to remind women that they have a choice—something self-styled pro-choice proponents would have no objection to if they were really “pro-choice,” and if abortion were not a highly profitable industry. Retta and his associates also offer post-abortion healing for women, based on their belief, supported by peer-reviewed research, that significant numbers of women who undergo an abortion suffer emotional or mental health problems.
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