President Obama Names Abortion Backer to New Foreign Women’s Issues Post
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 10, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Most of the attention on President Barack Obama recently has focused on his moves to make taxpayers fund embryonic stem cell research, rescind protections for pro-life doctors, and put in an abortion advocate as Health Secretary. Yet, the president has undertaken a second decision to promote abortion abroad.
The Obama administration recently announced the creation of a new foreign policy position to focus on women’s issues.
Melanne Verveer, an abortion advocate who served as chief of staff to former First Lady Hillary Clinton, will occupy the new post.
Her role as the new Obama ambassador to women abroad? Promote abortion and overturn pro-life laws in nations across the world.
Verveer was nominated to the post based on her close ties to Clinton and her experience as co-founder of Vital Voices Global Leadership. She will hold the rank of Ambassador-at-Large.
Verveer founded Vital Voices with assistance from pro-abortion former UN ambassador Madeline Albright to reaffirm the population and development goals of the United Nations conference in Beijing in 1995.
In 2005, while marking the ten year anniversary of Beijing, then-Senator Clinton applauded the role of Verveer’s group and talked about the kind of measures needed to advance the interests of women. Clinton placed advancing abortion in third-world nations at the top of the list.
Marie Smith, the director of the Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues, told LifeNews.com on Monday that Obama’s creation of this post and appointment of Verveer to it will advance abortion on a global scale.
Combined with his decision to overturn the Mexico City Policy, she said the announcement "adds to the evidence that both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are pursuing a global abortion agenda" that "makes no attempt at common ground."
That agenda, Smith explains, will include lobbying other nations to overturn their historical pro-life laws that are based in their cultural and religious beliefs.
"The change to pro-life laws and policies that Hillary Clinton and Vital Voices pursue will now be promoted by a US ambassador," Smith added. "This is blatant disregard for sovereign laws and policies of nations who respect the inherent worth and dignity of life and who treat the unborn child as a valued member of the family."
Smith said Obama’s decision will promote abortion at a time when women need real help and assistance ranging from economic support to better health care and education.
"It is tragic that the United States will pursue a path of imposing an extremist view of abortion that 60% of the world’s countries reject, while at the same time, women globally are in need of life-affirming measures to improve their and their families’ lives," Smith said.
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