Pro-Abortion Groups Issue 55-Page Marching Orders for Barack Obama Admin
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 10, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A coalition of dozens of pro-abortion groups have issued a 55-page memorandum and the web site for the Barack Obama transition team posted it online. The new memo from groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL gives Obama his marching orders for the next four years.
The memo sets forth the kind of decisions Obama should make when it comes to topics like abortion, abortion funding and abstinence education.
The pro-abortion directive calls on President Obama to take the lead in calling for Congress to pass the radical Freedom of Choice Act and to sign it into law once it arrives at his desk.
"We urge the President to signal public support for FOCA and call on Congress to pass this important legislation," the memo says.
The legislation would make unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy the national law and overturn hundreds of pro-life laws from partial-birth abortion bans to parental involvement laws in all 50 states.
Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for National Right to Life, said the abortion lobby laid out its Christmas wish list in the memo.
"This document is a road map to what we call ‘the Obama abortion agenda,’" he told LifeNews.com.
"The pro-abortion lobby has presented its radical abortion agenda to the Obama Administration in a single tidy 55-page package — even including the exact language of presidential orders that these lobbying groups want Obama to sign," he explained.
"The groups instruct the Obama Administration that it should propose repeal of the Hyde Amendment, and include an abortion mandate in a ‘health care reform’ bill, within the first 100 days. Longer-term goals include the so-called ‘Freedom of Choice Act’ and packing the federal courts with judges who are pre-committed to vote with the pro-abortion side," Johnson added.
The memo calls for Obama to strike all limits on taxpayer funded abortion in various circumstances.
"The President’s budget should strike language restricting abortion funding for (i) Medicaid-eligible women and Medicare beneficiaries (Hyde amendment); (ii) federal employees and their dependents (FEHB program); (iii) residents of the District of Columbia; (iv) Peace Corps volunteers; (v) Native-American women; and (vi) women in federal prisons," it says.
Instead, the pro-abortion groups want more funding directed to family planning programs — meaning more money in the pockets of Planned Parenthood, which already posted $1 billion in income in its last annual report.
The abortion advocates also want Obama to restore funding to the UNFPA despite the fact that the UN organization has been found to be involved in and supportive of the one-child policy in China that includes forced abortions and sterilizations.
"Over the last seven years, the Bush Administration has distorted the application of the Kemp-Kasten law to justify its political decision to withhold the funds that Congress has consistently appropriated for this critical partner agency. The President should make available to UNFPA as soon as possible all funds appropriated by Congress for FY 2009," they say.
In conjunction with the UNFPA money, the abortion advocates want taxpayer funding restored to groups that promote or perform abortions in other countries.
The Mexico City Policy, which bans the federal funding of such international pro-abortion groups "has stifled the public debate in developing countries" that make abortions illegal. The groups want to be able to lobby those nations to scrap their pro-life laws and to do so with public funding.
The memo urges Obama to take other actions like putting together a federal health care plan that covers abortion, reduce abstinence education funding, and pull down information from federal web sites that talks about the medical and mental health problems women suffer after abortions.
It also calls on Obama to only appoint pro-abortion judges to the Supreme Court and lower federal courts.
The memo includes the actual text Obama should use for Executive Orders and Presidential Memorandums, legislative language changes, new regulatory initiatives, and a list of judicial vacancies.
Johnson says pro-life advocates have a clear list of what they will need to oppose immediately after Obama takes office and he urges all pro-life advocates to get involved immediately to stop these proposals.
The public is invited to post comments about the memo and you can do so by going here.
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