May 10, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — On May 4th and 5th, first in Kansas City and then in Wichita, I had the honor of presenting the 70th Secretary of State with a pro-life award on behalf of Kansans for Life. The inscription on the award read: “For heroic service in defense of mothers and their preborn babies across the world.”
In my introductory remarks, which follow, I explained why the award to Secretary Pompeo was so richly deserved.
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Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have to tell you that Kansans for Life has given me a very difficult assignment. They have asked me to introduce to you a man who needs no introduction to his fellow Kansans.
I mean, everyone here knows that from April 2018 through January 20, 2021, your fellow Kansan, Mike Pompeo, served as the 70th United States Secretary of State. He left office only a little over 100 days ago but — given the way things have been going — it seems like forever. Each day brings some new Biden insanity.
Everyone here also knows that Mike Pompeo previously served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency from the outset of the Trump Administration until April 2018, when he was tapped by President Trump to take over State.
And you also know that, before that, your fellow Kansan was serving in his fourth term as congressman from Kansas’ 4th District.
But let me share with you a couple of things that you may not know.
First of all, he’s the first Secretary of State in the last 40 years to get China policy right. This is because he sees China as it really is: a tyrannical Communist dictatorship bent on world domination. And because he understands this, he was able to craft the most sensible and comprehensive policy towards China that we’ve had since we normalized diplomatic relations with Communist China in 1979. It is a hard-headed policy of confronting Chinese aggression across all domains, from the military and economic, to trade and human rights.
Our previous policy towards China was one of naïve engagement. How naïve? Well, let me tell you a story. I once had dinner with President Clinton’s Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and tried to alert him to the danger from a rising China. I told him that we were in a New Cold War, not because we wanted to be, but because Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping had in 1991 declared us to be. If your enemy says that you are at war, then you are probably at war, whether you want to be or not.
I suggested to Secretary Christopher that, given the CCP’s long history of broken agreements, that it was foolish to take their word on anything. How did he respond? He dismissed my concerns saying, and I quote, “I have found that the Chinese always keep their agreements.”
Someone ought to ask Catholics in China, or the Tibetans, or the people of Hong Kong how well the Communists keep their agreements.
Secretary Pompeo’s approach to China has, I daresay, been the polar opposite. Instead of naïvely trusting China, his approach has been to suggest that we “[d]istrust and verify.”
It is a testament to the success of this level-headed policy that the current administration has largely left it in place. They’ve left it in place despite the fact that the President’s own son, Hunter Biden, scandalously remains a partner in an investment firm run by the Chinese Communist Party.
But I am afraid that this new crew will cut and run in a crisis. Pompeo’s successor as Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has said openly that his goal is not to contain China. The trouble is the Chinese Communist Party has made it clear that its goal is to dominate the world. This malignancy must be contained, or it will spread over the globe.
I often refer to the CCP as the biggest killing machine in human history. Some 80 million Chinese — no one knows the exact number — have been tortured to death, starved to death, or executed over the past 70 years. But that’s not the end of it. We must add to this number the 400 million aborted babies who have been killed over the past 40 years of the one-child policy. 400 million. The Communist Party official who shared this number with me bragged that it was greater than the entire population of the United States. He was proud. I was appalled.
Now as some of you know, I saw this killing up close and personal. I’m the only Western eyewitness to forced abortions and sterilizations in China. Today, as a result of this wholesale slaughter of the innocents, China’s population is literally dying, filling more coffins than cradles each year. The leadership of the Communist Party is increasingly desperate to raise the birth rate. If you want to know what the future holds for Chinese women, watch an episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” My prediction: We will see forced pregnancy in China within the next few years.
Yet even as the CCP is desperate to get the Han Chinese birthrate up, it is equally determined to force the birth rate among China’s minorities down. A Turkish-speaking minority in China’s Far West called the Uighurs is a particular target. Uighur women are being forcibly aborted and sterilized as we speak. The poor Uighurs are also the victims of mass incarceration, forced labor, gang rape, and organ harvesting, to name just a few of the ongoing human rights abuses being committed by the CCP.
After reviewing this evidence, Secretary Pompeo correctly — and courageously — declared that “genocide and crimes against humanity” had been perpetrated by China against the Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
Forced abortion and forced sterilization, in particular, is a clear violation of the convention on Genocide.
As this suggests, Secretary Pompeo is the most pro-life Secretary of State in recent American history.
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In fact, he is the first publicly pro-life Secretary of State since Roe v. Wade was decided. That the Trump administration was the most Pro-Life administration in American history was due in no small part to Mike Pompeo’s influence.
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Secretary Pompeo not only helped to reinstate the Mexico City Policy, but also mightily strengthened it. This critical pro-life policy prevents U.S. tax dollars from going to organizations that fund or perform abortions around the world.
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Secretary Pompeo convened the first ever ministerial on religious freedom at the U.S. State Department to highlight the issue of religious freedom and persecution of Christians and the Church around the world. Mike Pompeo’s Christian faith shapes his worldview, as it does ours.
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Secretary Pompeo also formed the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights headed by Professor Mary Ann Glendon. It was intended to call attention to our most basic rights as enumerated by our founders, including the right to life and religious freedom. These fundamental rights have been a model of rights for the entire world.
Besides our strong pro-life convictions, our Christian faith, and our tough-minded approach to China, I’ve discovered that I have a couple of other things in common with Secretary Pompeo.
He and I are both from California, and both of us had the good sense to leave at an early age. He went to West Point. I went in the U.S. Navy.
But the one distinction that we share that I am most proud of is that we have both been “canceled” by the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP was not happy that its genocidal actions against the Uighurs were called out by Secretary Pompeo, and announced on January 20 that he would henceforth be banned from China. It is quite a distinction to be put on an enemies list by the world’s most dangerous enemy of liberty, the Chinese Communist Party.
My own canceling occurred way back in 1981when the CCP declared that I was an “international spy.”
You might say that I was canceled before canceling was cool.
Being canceled by the CCP is a badge of honor. It’s a distinction that I am proud to share with Mike Pompeo, the greatest Secretary of State in my lifetime.
Of course, we have much work to do here in our own country as well, especially at the present moment. There are only seven countries on the planet that allow abortion after 20 weeks, and not just China but our own United States of America is on that list.
Kansas, thanks to the efforts of Kansans for Life, currently has a state ban on late-term abortions, but that is now being threatened. Recent state court rulings suggest that the ban on post-20-week abortions will likely be struck down. If that happens it will mean that Kansas, in the very heart of America, will have abortion practices as extreme as China’s. We can’t let that happen.
What you do here matters, not just here, but around the world. State Department officials have told us that nations in Europe and African have studied the pro-life laws that have been passed here in Kansas. That means that the world really is watching Kansas.
That is why it is so fitting that Mike Pompeo is returning to his home state at this critical hour. The man who held one of the most powerful positions in the U.S. government, the man who held the Chinese Communists accountable to the world, is determined to help hold the line in Kansas, so that Kansas abortion laws do not mirror China’s.
Please join me in giving a rousing welcome to a committed Pro-Lifer, a great American, and your fellow Kansan, Mike Pompeo.
