Exclusive Commentary by Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer
Human Life International
January 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – President-elect Barack Obama’s Web site, change.gov, contains a link titled, “Open Government: Your Seat at the Table.” Follow this link and you will find hundreds of papers submitted to the Obama-Biden Transition Project by various interest groups.
One other such paper, entitled, “Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration: The First 100 Days,” is endorsed by over 50 pro-choice organizations ranging from the ACLU to one called Women Thrive Worldwide. Most of the demands contained in the paper are disturbing though not surprising: a massive increase in funding to Title X (which funds Planned Parenthood), an end to abstinence-only education, assuring that anyone, anywhere can have an abortion at taxpayers’ expense, passing the ironically-named Freedom of Choice Act, and making sure that only pro-choice ideologues are appointed to the federal judiciary, and so on.
The international ambitions of this anti-life coalition, however, are the most fearsome aspect of their agenda and US taxpayer funding is the new plum to be plucked. In post-Roe America, it is hard to find ways to make abortion more ubiquitous than it already is, but significant sectors of the developing world still maintain firm prohibitions against the destruction of innocent life, and these groups want to change all that. What they are advocating may be “change that America can live with,” but it certainly isn’t change that the developing world can live with.
In addition to the expected demand for a reversal of President Bush’s “Mexico City Policy” (the executive order first enacted by Ronald Reagan) which restricts funding for international organizations that promote abortion, these groups are calling for the investment of one billion dollars in the promotion of abortion and contraception around the world. This call includes the restoration of funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), that radical abortion-promoting arm of the UN which has supported and funded coercive abortion in China. They want to nearly double the US contribution to the UNFPA to the tune of $65 million in order to continue this malfeasance and other like works. Monies going to the organizations formerly blocked from funding by the Mexico City Policy could represent as much as a 10-fold increase in funding for contraception and abortion worldwide.
We can’t underestimate the potential negative impact of this funding on inherently life-affirming cultures. In a recent interview in Rome, Dr. Stephen Karanja, head of the Catholic Doctors’ Association of the country where Barack Obama’s father was born, had this to say about the coming US war on babies in the developing world: “We in Kenya know [Obama] as a person who is anti-family. A person who supports abortion … This is something that a lot of people don’t realize, that what these Americans do affects innocent people thousands and thousands of miles away. The truth is that they have put a bad man in the most powerful office in the whole world and are putting people outside your borders in danger.” It is rare to find someone so clear-sighted about Obama in the countries that are presently fawning over this “historic” presidency. Dr. Karanja sees the oncoming onslaught of American-led propaganda against his people, a full 90% of whom consider abortion to be an “abomination” (his wording).
As president of an international pro-life organization, I travel to countries all over the developing world and meet those who have been harmed by the United States’ most destructive export: our twisted “pro-choice” ideology which is deceptively re-packaged and re-named “reproductive healthcare” for propagandizing the decision-makers of the poorer countries. In our official support of “reproductive healthcare,” we, as Americans, communicate to the world that we think their economic and social problems would be solved if only there were fewer of them that had problems. This attitude is nothing more than the classic elitist mind-set of blaming the poor for their poverty and trying to eliminate poverty by eliminating poor people. And now we are dangerously close to putting billions of dollars behind that attitude.
If the Obama administration gives in to the demands of the anti-life coalition in its first 100 days, as we have every reason to believe he will, I fear there will be no undoing the damage we will be forcing on the developing world. It seems that often we have more to learn from the people of the developing countries of the world than they do from us. Dr. Karanja’s final word is true not only of Kenya but of all nations: “The only resource we have that is truly ours, is our people. Don’t attack them and we’ll be alright.” He added, ominously, “And this administration of Obama, is going to be a nightmare for our people.”
We owe it to our brothers and sisters in these countries to let President-elect Obama know that the “places at the table” should not be taken by those who think that the world would be better off without them.