Biden Can’t Defend “Not Second Guessing” China One-Child Policy

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 12, 2012   |   4:55PM   |   Washington, DC

During Paul Ryan’s pro-life response on the question of abortion, he went after Vice President Joe Biden’s comments that drew significant controversy last year on the issue of China’s one-child policy.

Although Ryan’s debate remarks on this subject are not getting as much play as the candidates’ comments on abortion in general or Ryan’s going after the abortion-HHS mandate Obamacare implemented, the are important because they highlight just how extreme Biden is on abortion.

When it comes to abortion, Ryan said “the Democratic Party used to say they wanted it to be safe, legal and rare. Now they support it without restriction and with taxpayer funding. Taxpayer funding in Obamacare, taxpayer funding with foreign aid. The vice president himself went to China and said that he sympathized and wouldn’t second guess their one child policy of forced abortions and sterilizations. That to me is pretty extreme.”

Biden, during his response on abortion, didn’t mention the China comments, but Calvin Freiburger, a pro-life blogger at Live Action, noticed them.

“The most illuminating such moment of last night’s vice-presidential debate came during the abortion exchange, when Rep. Paul Ryan worked in a reference to Vice President Joe Biden’s expressed support for China’s one-child policy,” he said. “Biden responded to the rest of Ryan’s objections. But China? Complete silence, because he knew Ryan had him dead-to-rights, and no amount of spin would make his words sound less awful.”

“Let’s be perfectly clear: the policy America’s vice president “fully understands” is forced abortion and sterilization,” Frieburger continues. “But hey, China’s a crowded place and big families are expensive, so who are we to “second-guess” it?”

He continued:

Yes, Biden brought up one-child for the purposes of criticizing its economic effect. And an argument could at least be made that condemning it wouldn’t have been the diplomatic thing to do (though I believe letting its evil go unmentioned would still have been morally cowardly and politically useless).

CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!

 

But going out of his way to let the audience know he sympathized and wasn’t judging the state subjugation of China’s families? What good could that possibly serve? The only possible explanations are either that Biden really does sympathize with another country’s decision to control how many children its people have, or spinelessness compelled him to suck up to tyranny.

When America’s leaders grovel before power rather than speak truth to it, they betray the United States’ most basic principles of individual liberty and her very identity as an example of justice to the world. It’s shameful that the same media which incessantly harangued Ryan’s pro-life record and other controversial statements by Mitt Romney aren’t likely to press Biden on this any more than they did when he originally said it, because this is a question not of politics, but of basic decency.