Carlos Polo, a Peruvian who is Director for Latin America of the Population Research Institute, asked “Where is Obama’s promise to fight poverty in order to reduce the number of abortions?”
He predicted the consequences of the new policy, telling CNA; “The money that USAID has been distributing to fight poverty, relieve hunger and droughts, will end up in the pockets of feminist and pro-abortion organizations to push the legalization of abortion in our countries.”
“The hard-earned American tax payers’ money will be diverted from poor children and women to the fat salaries of feminist leaders.
“This is not a potential scenario; it is exactly what happened in South America during the Clinton administration, when he reversed the Mexico City Policy.
“In Peru during those years, USAID financed the most brutal, compulsory campaign of sterilizations, with the open support of feminist, pro-abortion organizations, despite the fact that poor peasant women were the victims of the campaign.”
Polo reported that international outcry forced USAID to end its funding of then President Alberto Fujimori’s sterilization campaign.
“But by then, thousands of women, most of them in their late teens and early 20s, had been sterilized, and several died as a consequence of the procedure.”
The reversal of the Mexico City Policy, Polo said, clearly demonstrates that President Obama is not interested in fighting poverty to reduce abortions, and that there is no possible common ground with those who want to fight for the right to life.
“President Obama has chosen to do exactly the opposite in the poorest countries: increase abortions and reduce help for the poorest…”
Steven Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute, predicted possible political fallout for Obama:
“By signing a series of pro-abortion Executive Orders, President Obama will be perceived as governing from the Left. The die will be cast, and pro-lifers will rally against him from that moment. They will start looking towards 2010 to restore some checks and balances on this man, [whom] they will rightly perceive as a pro-abortion zealot.
“Clinton’s pollster argue strongly against acting on abortion policy as one of the new administration’s first pieces of business, but he went ahead regardless. The debacle of the 1994 House elections for the Democrats began at that moment.”
“Obama overturns Mexico City Policy, pro-lifers react,” Catholic News Agency, 2009, http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=14870
Steven W Mosher, President of Population Research institute, has testified before House and Senate committees and met with Bush administration officials to urge them to defund the UNFPA. PRI has also worked successfully to keep the Mexico City Policy in place.
Mosher notes that a major setback to the work of PRI came as early as 2006, “when Nancy Pelosi took over as the Speaker of the House and promptly increased funding for population control programs at home and abroad.” He does not mince words in describing the seriousness of the challenges presented by the Obama administration:
The abortion lobby went overboard to elect Barack Obama. Planned Parenthood’s political action committee alone spent at least $10 million in the elections to turn out one million more pro-abortion voters in order to “elect a pro-choice president” and “to keep [their] doors open.” Now it’s payback time.
The three things that the abortion movement wants from President Obama are more money for their international contraception and sterilization programs, an end to any and all restrictions on abortions [in the U.S.], and a massive increase in [domestic] government funding, including funding for abortion itself.
Obama has said that he would like to increase Title X funding, much of which goes to Planned Parenthood, to $700 million and to double spending on overseas population control programs to $1 billion.
Obama has promised to sign the radical Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which would nullify any and all restrictions on abortion .… He is also an original co-sponsor of the “Prevention First Act,” which will force insurance companies to fund, hospitals to provide doctors to prescribe, and pharmacies to dispense abortifacient contraceptives. Obama pledges, for example, to provide “compassionate assistance to rape victims.” Translated into plain English, this means forcing you and me to pay for morning-after pills and abortions.
Although the Democrats will control both houses of the national legislature at least until 2010, Mosher pledges to “continue to work with Congress, both against FOCA and in favor of new legislation banning sex-selective abortion, a form of discrimination that feminists refuse to address.” Many Asian cultures traditionally favor sons, and the availability of abortion has resulted in the deaths of over 100 million girls worldwide. “And it is happening here. According to a recent study published by the National Academy of Sciences, many American groups of Asian descent have the same skewed birth rates as found in their country of origin.”
Mosher encourages “all of those in the pro-life movement to stay the course.” The frontline troops picketing outside abortion facilities or staffing crisis pregnancy centers must remain at their posts. “In the weeks and months to come, we [at PRI] will continue to highlight abuses in China’s one-child policy and elsewhere. We will make the argument that population control pro· grams not only violate the right to lite, but also human rights. We will point out the contradictions in the liberal mindset, how liberals talk incessantly about human rights but deny the unborn the right to be human.”
Michael J. Miller, “Abortion and the Obama Presidency,” The Catholic World Report, January 2009, http://www.ignatius.com/Magazines/CWR/miller_jan09.htm
