Exporting Torture
Posted in Uncategorized on 01/26/2009 03:14 pm by JohnThe post that follows from my blog has very little to do with adoption on one hand, and has everything to do with adoption on the other. It does, however, cover a very hot topic and one that troubles us as a family deeply. Thanks for visiting, JD.
Amid much fanfare, President Obama signed an executive order Thursday, January 22, 2009, that ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center and prohibited the use of torture in the questioning of military combatants.
In contrast, President Obama quietly signed another executive order the following day that actually funds and exports torture and killing of innocents. This executive order reversed the “Mexico City policy” which banned U.S. taxpayer funds from being given to international groups that perform abortions
This is undoubtedly the first of many steps that the new administration will take in its efforts to satisfy its pro-abortion agenda. Other promised and predicted steps include:
- Signing of the Freedom of Choice Act which will destroy about 500 local, state and federal laws designed to protect life according to Vision America. Included among the laws overturned would be the Partial Abortion Ban of 2003.
- Restoring of funding to the U.N. Population Fund, which was barred by the Bush administration because of its work in China which includes coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization.
- Lifting of restrictions on the use of taxpayer money to fund embryonic stem cell research.
Tod Preston, a spokesman for Population Action International, said, “Women’s health has been severely impacted by the cutoff of assistance. President Obama’s actions will help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, abortions and women dying from high-risk pregnancies because they don’t have access to family planning.”
Mr. Preston’s ignorance on the issue is monumental. First of all, he fails to note or consider the impact abortions have on women’s physical and psychological health. These are well documented in the book Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments by Randy Alcorn. Secondly, abortions do nothing to decrease the number of pregnancies; an increase in abortions leads only to an increase in murders. Although not documented, I would expect that the number of so called “unwanted pregnancies” actually increases in an environment where abortion is readily available and personal responsibility is not encouraged. Finally, the afore mentioned book by Randy Alcorn also documents the skewed statistics surrounding high risk pregnancies. The number of high-risk pregnancies is significantly less than is commonly reported in the pro-choice literature, and the reported risk to the mother is also exaggerated.
Mr. Preston, and pro-choice advocates in general, fail to realize that family planning, which is properly defined not only as birth control and the conscious efforts of couples to prevent pregnancy, but also as the efforts of couples to induce pregnancy. Family planning, correctly defined, would have minimal impact on high-risk pregnancies, or those where the risk of birth defects or complications is increased due to the health history of the mother or the child. Prenatal interventions and support would likely do more to lessen the risk.
Ironically, the pro-choice lobby would probably look at a child in a broken home, abandoned by his father, raised by his struggling single mother, and say, “It would have been better if she had access to family planning to prevent that pregnancy.” The description of that child fits that of our new president, President Barack Obama.