By Dave Andrusko

Editor's note. Part Two examines how Obama uses the word "compromise" while Part Three is good news from Minnesota. Please send comments on any or all parts to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

"Now, I have to tell you that it was a great privilege when I was told that I would receive this award. I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision. … I am really in awe of her. …. Yet we know that Margaret Sanger's work here in the United States and certainly across our globe is not done."

Pro-abortion Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, receiving Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger Award March 27.

"As part of 'Sanger's work' that remains undone, is the Obama Administration seeking to weaken or overturn pro-life laws and policies in African and Latin America countries either directly or through multilateral organizations including and especially the UN, African Union, or the OAS, or by way of funding NGOs like Planned Parenthood?

"And so we have total transparency, does the United States' definition of the term 1) 'reproductive health' or 2) 'reproductive services' or 3) 'reproductive rights' include abortion?"

Pro-life Congressman Chris Smith, questioning Clinton yesterday at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

It's not often that pro-lifers get an opportunity to cut through the rhetorical legerdemain that pro-abortionists employ to hide their agenda and even more rare when they get an answer. But, thanks to House Pro-Life Caucus Co-Chair Chris Smith's persistence, we got an answer to the question whether euphemisms (such as "reproductive health") are code for abortion.

"We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health," Clinton told Smith. "And reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal, and rare."

Clinton's reminder that "reproductive health" is code language for abortion on demand is particularly timely, as Administration officials and Congressional Democratic leaders prepare to unveil sweeping "health care reform" legislation.  As a candidate, Obama took the position that "reproductive health care is an essential service" and that it would be "at the heart of the [health care] plan that I propose."  (See "Obama and Democratic Leaders in Congress Hoping to Impose Sweeping Abortion Mandates in 'Health Care Reform,' April NRL News, page 1.)

Cong. Smith's office issued a statement after Wednesday's hearing. I include an excerpt.

Smith said Clinton's testimony today shows the Obama Administration is plotting to conduct a foreign policy that spreads abortion all over the world at U.S. taxpayers' expense. "'It is evident that Mrs. Clinton and President Obama want to force the tragedy of abortion upon women around the world especially and including in countries where democratically elected leaders want to continue to protect their unborn children," Smith said.

"There are other ways in which both mother and baby are protected, cared for and helped-- with food, nutrition, clean water and life-affirming healthcare," he said.  "Secretary Clinton's inability to see this will mean more babies will die and more women will suffer the consequence of abortion as a result of U.S. foreign policy overseas."

Also rare is a chance to talk publicly about Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, in a way that tells the truth. As I read Cong. Smith's remarks I immediately thought of Angela Franks' brilliant book, "Margaret Sanger's Eugenic Legacy."

In her scholarly but readable book, Franks argues that Sanger did more than any other person to expand the reach of eugenics, an ideology that has done irreparable damage to countless women, minorities, persons with disabilities, and the poor. The book definitively demonstrates why Planned Parenthood is the enemy of women and children around the world. (You can read our review at http://www.nrlc.org/news/2005/NRL04/Sanger.html)

Smith pulled no punches. He used several of Clinton's adulatory remarks about Sanger from Clinton's speech to paint his own picture of Sanger.

In receiving Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's award in Houston on March 27th, you said that you were in "awe" of Margaret Sanger; you said that Sanger's "life and leadership" was "one of the most transformational in the entire history of the human race" and that Sanger's work both here and abroad was "not done".

With all due respect, Madam Secretary, transformational yes; but not for the better if one happens to be poor, disenfranchised, weak, disabled, a person of color, an unborn child, or among the many so-called undesirables Sanger would exclude and exterminate from the human race.  Sanger's prolific writings drip with contempt for those she considers to be unfit to live.

I've actually read many of Sanger's articles and books.  Sanger was an unapologetic eugenicist and racist who said "the most merciful thing a family does for one of its infant members is to kill it."  And said on another occasion, "eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems."

In her book, Pivot of Civilization, Sanger devoted an entire chapter, which she entitled the "Cruelty of Charity", to explaining a shockingly inhumane case for systematic denial of prenatal and maternal health care for poor, pregnant women.

"Such benevolence is not merely superficial and near-sighted" Sanger wrote "it conceals a stupid cruelty" and leads to a "deterioration in the human stock" and "the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents."
So it is extraordinarily difficult how anyone especially a Secretary of State could be in "awe" of Margaret Sanger, a person who made no secret whatsoever of views that were antithetical to protecting human rights and that suggest that "her work" remains undone here and around the world.

In 2007 alone Planned Parenthood killed over 305,000 children by abortion in the United States and millions more worldwide.

As part of "Sanger's work" that remains undone, is the Obama Administration seeking to weaken or overturn pro-life laws and policies in African and Latin America countries either directly or through multilateral organizations including and especially the UN, African Union, or the OAS, or by way of funding NGOs like Planned Parenthood?

And so we have total transparency, does the United States' definition of the term 1) "reproductive health" or 2) "reproductive services" or 3) "reproductive rights" include abortion?

Please be sure to pass this edition of TN&V along to friends, family, and colleagues. Although the number is diminishing, there are some who see themselves as pro-life who believe that the Obama Administration is reaching for "common ground" on abortion.

But as NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson has remarked, "The common ground Obama seeks for the pro-life movement is the burial ground."