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Obama Sells an Audacious Bill of Goods
By
Dave Andrusko
Editor's note. Please send your comments to
daveandrusko@gmail.com. They are much
appreciated.
"One
important lesson pro-choice progressives should
take from recent setbacks is the value of
developing a vision and a long-term strategic
plan. …Progressives should now take the time to
take the long view and formulate ambitious
goals, informed by deep ideological commitments
and not unduly constrained by present realities.
In short, progressives should think big in
defining objectives and devise effective
strategies for moving toward these objectives."
Dawn Johnsen, speaking to the American Constitution
Society for Law and Policy in January 2008.
Johnsen, who has drunk deeply from the most
extreme pro-abortion pool of ideas, is
pro-abortion President Barack Obama's choice to
be the influential assistant attorney general
for the Office of Legal Counsel.
"As
his very first pick for one of the very powerful
federal courts of appeals, Obama recently
nominated David Hamilton, a federal district
judge in Indiana. Hamilton was the vice
president for litigation for the Indiana chapter
of the Illinois affiliate of the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), one of the major
pro-abortion litigating outfits, before
President Clinton put him on the federal bench."
From "Move Over, Bill Clinton: A New Abortion
President," by NRLC's Derrick Jones.
"[P]eople on both sides of the stem cell debate
say Mr. Obama's announcement could lead to a
reconsideration of the ban on Capitol Hill, an
idea so controversial and fraught with ethical
implications that the mere discussion of it
would have been unthinkable just a few months
ago, when President George W. Bush was in
office."
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times, March 8.
The "ban" is a reference to the Dickey-Wicker
amendment, which since 1995 has been a provision
of the annual appropriations bills for federal
health programs. This law prohibits the use of
federal tax dollars to create human embryos, or
research in which human embryos "are destroyed,
discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of
injury or death."
At the
risk of stating the stupendously obvious,
Candidate Barack Obama's vague assurances that
he would blur, if not erase, hyper-partisan
political lines in Washington is sharply at odds
with his actions as President. Is it possible to
draw starker lines of demarcation than he has on
abortion and related issues? Far from tempering
the habitual pro-abortion zealotry of the
leadership of the Democratic Party, Obama is
forging an alliance with the outer fringe of the
outer fringe of the Abortion Establishment.
When
you say or write this, it is not uncommon for
those unfamiliar with Obama's talent for
rhetorical sleight of hand to roll their eyes.
Our 44th President may be
"pro-choice," they say, but he is also committed
to "reducing the number of abortions" and to
finding "common ground." Beyond blowing an
occasional kiss our way, evidence for this is in
short supply.
Please
understand that I understand that I understand
that the American people choose Obama over
another candidate who had a good pro-life
record. But I also understand that as important
as anything to Obama's victory last fall was his
promise to move beyond the usual back-and-forth
on abortion.
And he
has, but not in the way most people would
have wanted or guessed. Obama is undertaking a
kind of anti-life Lewis and Clark expedition,
exploring new pro-abortion territory with
companions the likes of Dawn Johnsen.
Their
two-fold goal is as audacious as it unknown to
the American people. It goes beyond obliterating
every pro-life gain, however large or small,
made since 1973. That's child's play. They also
want to take us in directions supported only by
a tiny percentage of the public.
Let's remind ourselves about Obama's March 9
executive order that overturned the carefully
crafted policy on embryonic stem cells
instituted by pro-life President George W. Bush.
The impression left was that the only difference
would be that federal dollars would now flow to
researchers who would strip-mine so-called
"spare embryos" for their stem cells. And for
good measure, Obama told us, science henceforth
would be free of "politics" and "ideology."
But
contrary to the impression left, nothing in what
Obama said limited NIH to the use of stem cells
scavenged from "spare embryos" created in IVF
clinics. Why is this important? Because many
researchers never did focus on (or have long
since stopped caring about) what is in fact the
relatively small number of human embryos parents
are willing to have experimented on. They are
eager to create human embryos, by cloning
and other methods.
As the
alert sent out by NRLC makes clear, it is likely
that there will be a "bait-and-switch" ploy on
stem cell research. Members of Congress will
think that proposed legislation only authorizes
NIH stem cell research on "spare
embryos" embryos. In fact, it "will also empower
NIH to use human embryos created especially to
be used in research, including embryos created
by human cloning."
Dawn
Johnsen wasn't kidding last year when she talked
about "tak[ing] the time to take the long view
and formulate ambitious goals, informed by deep
ideological commitments and not unduly
constrained by present realities." And things
have changed markedly. In 2008 the "present
realities" included a pro-life President. Now
the Oval Office is occupied by a soul mate to
Planned Parenthood, NOW, and the ACLU.
Who is
Dawn Johnsen? She "has a long history as a
pro-abortion strategist, propagandist, and
litigator, including about five years as legal
director for NARAL, as well as work on behalf of
the ACLU and Abortion Rights Mobilization," as
NRLC explained in an action alert. "Throughout
her career, Johnsen has expressed her opposition
to all limitations on abortion in vivid terms,
and she has often criticized courts for being,
in her view, insufficiently expansive in their
application of pro-abortion legal doctrine. For
example, Johnsen has criticized the Supreme
Court rulings that upheld the Partial-Birth
Abortion Ban Act, the Hyde Amendment that
prohibits the use of federal Medicaid funds for
abortion, and others." I could go on, but you
get the point.
We all
know these are difficult times for the Right to
Life Movement. But it is not the first time we
have faced daunting odds, nor will it be the
last.
We
know the Obama Abortion Agenda is as far from
where the American people are as the east is
from the west. Our job is to clear away the fog
so the public can see the real Barack Obama up
close and personal.
And
when we accomplish that goal, their eyes will be
opened to the truth that they have been sold an
audacious bill of goods. |
