Pro-Life Advocates: Obama Has Already Betrayed Promise to Reduce Abortions
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 23, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — With his move to make taxpayers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the performance and promotion of abortions overseas, pro-life advocates say President Barack Obama has already betrayed his promise to reduce abortions as president.
While abortions may decrease in the United States during his tenure, though pro-life laws and efforts may cause that, the increased number of foreign abortions must be factored into any assessment of Obama’s overall record.
Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, talked with LifeNews.com about Obama’s decision.
"President Obama not long ago told the American people that he would support policies to reduce abortions, but today he is effectively guaranteeing more abortions by funding groups that promote abortion as a method of population control," Johnson said.
Charmaine Yoest, the president of Americans United for Life, also responded to the news.
"What a terrible way to begin a new administration: with an abortion business bailout that will exploit women in developing countries for political ends," she told LifeNews.com.
"We should not export the tragedy of abortion to other nations, and we certainly shouldn’t do so via the hard-earned dollars of American taxpayers," she said.
Denise Burke, the pro-life group’s Vice President of Legal Affairs, said the move also creates foreign policy headaches because it has the U.S. funding pro-abortion groups that are actively lobbying other nations to reverse their long-standing pro-life laws.
"Pro-abortion organizations like the International Planned Parenthood Federation are actively working to impose radically pro-abortion laws on developing nations, showing no regard for the will of the people in these countries," she said. "This move is a significant step backwards in respecting the sovereignty of nations, in empowering women, and in protecting unborn."
Dorinda Bordlee, the vice president and senior attorney for the Bioethics Defense Fund, complained as well.
She called Obama’s executive order "the first part of the 3-pronged Abortion Industry Bail-out Plan."
Bordleee says that the reverse of the Mexico City Policy to fund abortions overseas will be followed by efforts to repeal the Hyde Amendment to allow tax-payer abortion on demand through Medicaid, and then by legislation to appropriate funding to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business.
Family Research Council president Tony Perkins also condemned Obama’s move to force taxpayers to promote overseas abortions.
He also condemned the one-day reprieve Obama gave, saying it was a political move.
"If this is an olive branch, we’d like to see the olive tree. Regardless of whether the order takes effect today or tomorrow, granting the unborn a 24-hour reprieve is not enough," he said. "It may be an extra day of life, but these children deserve a full life, welcomed into the world and protected under our laws."
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