Abortion Advocates Applying for Money Obama Okays for Foreign Abortions
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 2, 2009
Nairobi, Kenya (LifeNews.com) — Abortion advocates are already beginning to apply for funding President Barack Obama is making available to them to promote and perform abortions. Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy during his first week in office and now one British abortion business is restarting efforts in Kenya as a result.
Walter Odhiambo is the Kenya director for Marie Stopes International, a British-based abortion business that operates in numerous African nations.
Odhiambo told the Associated Press over the weekend that he will be applying soon for American foreign aid funds that had previously been restricted to abortion-free groups under the former Bush policy.
While the money will be used to promote contraception and birth control, the funds will also be used to counsel women for abortions.
Odhiambo told AP that he will expand MSI’s programs in rural Africa, where modern medicine, not abortion, is still needed.
While Odhiambo criticizes the Bush administration for the policy and claims he had to shut down two Marie Stopes Kenya clinics because of the Mexico City Policy, had he ended his affiliation with the British abortion business, his clinics would have continued to receive the foreign aid funds.
While they are supportive of family planning efforts, which the U.S. funds even with the policy in place, residents of Kenya and other African nations with either a Christian or Muslim heritage are pro-life and the nations prohibit abortions.
While abortion advocates will promote abortions in the African nation and elsewhere using taxpayer funds, local Kenyans say basic needs are more important.
"We are struggling with poverty, health issues, even hunger," Dr. Louis Machogo, a pharmacist says.
Still, the AP story creates an impression that local Africans are clamoring for more U.S.-funded pro-abortion groups to operate there.
That, according to John Smeaton, the director of the British-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, is a false impression.
"Watch out very carefully, particularly if you live in a developing country," he says. "The international pro-abortion lobby is going into overdrive to create a completely false image of reaction in the developing world following Obama’s executive order to abort babies in developing countries."
He chided AP for quoting "one pro-abortion professional after another" and said they are abortion advocates "working for groups like Marie Stopes International, Population Action International, and Family Health Options Kenya."
"Virtually an international professional army of pro-abortion lobbyists – and the weapons they use (principally the weapon of misrepresentation) are aimed at the unborn and their mothers," Smeaton said.
Smeaton points out that polls show Kenyans are pro-life.
A recent Sunday Nation newspaper story indicates 56 percent oppose legalizing abortions, according to research by the Steadman Group conducted last month.
The rest are not pro-abortion as 30 percent of the remaining 44 percent who didn’t say they oppose a pro-abortion law only favor abortions in cases of saving the life of the mother and many of the rest are unsure.
Smeaton urges pro-life advocates in other nations to write the leaders of Kenya and other African countries urging them to keep their pro-life policies in place.
"If you want to do something practical to oppose Obama’s appalling decision, one of his first actions as US President, to abort the world’s poor: take the time to write now," he says.
Smeaton urges letters to "President Mwai Kibaki, the Kenyan President, and to Vice-President Stephene Kalonzo Musyoka of Kenya, calling on them to resist US and other financial and political pressures, and, in particular, to oppose the Reproductive Health Bill drafted for Kenya by the pro-abortion lobby."
You can write to them by post at: Office of the President, P.O. Box 30510, Nairobi, Kenya and Office of the Vice President; Jogoo House Wing A, Taifa Road, PO Box 30478, NAIROBI, Kenya, 00100.
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