Move Over Bill Clinton

The following op-ed appears in the March 29, 2009 issue of the National Catholic Register.

Move Over, Bill Clinton: A New Abortion President
BY Derrick Jones

March 29-April 4, 2009 Issue | Posted 3/20/09 at 10:23 AM

For unborn children, and the pro-life movement charged with protecting them, nothing could have been worse than the presidency of Bill Clinton. For eight years, he pushed his pro-abortion views on the country.

Beginning two days after his inauguration, on the 20th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Clinton rescinded the Mexico City Policy, thereby allowing tax dollars to go to organizations that perform and promote abortion overseas. He vigorously supported the so-called Freedom of Choice Act and pushed for mandatory abortion coverage in the Clinton Health Care Plan. And, let’s not forget, he’s the president who vetoed – not once, but twice – the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Bill Clinton was secure in his position as “The Abortion President.” Until now.

In just over a month as president, Barack Obama has already usurped the coveted title from the former president. And, if his radical abortion agenda is successful, Obama will be remembered as the most pro-abortion president since Roe v. Wade.

Unlike Clinton, however, Obama started running for the title before the election. As a member of the Illinois State Senate, he opposed a bill (an astonishing four times) to provide care and protection to babies who survive abortions. When National Right to Life called him on it last summer, he called us liars.

Then, there’s that infamous speech before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in 2007, when he pledged his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, which, like a bad penny, had come back yet again.

Since taking up office in the West Wing, Barack Obama has stepped up his efforts to ensure he will be remembered as “The Abortion President.” Following Clinton’s lead, Obama once again rescinded the Mexico City Policy (which had been in place for eight years thanks to President George W. Bush’s swift action in his first days in office). Taxpayer funds are now once again flowing into the coffers of international abortion-performing organizations.

Next, Obama set his sights on a regulation announced by the Department of Health and Human Services during the final weeks of the Bush presidency that enforces federal laws protecting the conscience rights of doctors and health-care providers. This regulation was designed to raise awareness in the medical community and general public, as well as increase compliance with federal laws protecting doctors and health-care providers from discrimination in federally funded health-care programs.

Health-care providers are increasingly being pressured to violate their moral convictions with regards to abortion. The conscience-protection regulations are based on underlying federal conscience-protection laws that Congress has enacted, including the 1973 Church Amendments, the 1996 Public Health Service Act amendment, and the Hyde-Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment, which was first added to a funding bill in 2004.

So great is his contempt for pro-lifers, and so great is his desire to advance his pro-abortion agenda, that Obama intends to rescind this regulation. And, although rescinding this federal regulation does not repeal the underlying federal laws, pro-abortion advocacy groups have targeted the Hyde-Weldon law for repeal. 

In addition to wielding his pen to rescind pro-life regulations, Obama, tragically, but not surprisingly, has appointed a veritable “Who’s Who” of the Abortion Industry to positions within his administration.

While the list could go on and on, some highlights of Obama’s appointees include: Dawn Johnsen, a former legal director for NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) Pro-Choice America, who was named as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel; Ellen Moran, who was taken from her position as executive director of the pro-abortion political committee Emily’s List and appointed to the message-shaping post of White House communications director; Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, who compiled a 100% pro-abortion voting record during his tenure in the House of Representatives; and Melody Black, who previously served on the boards of both Emily’s List and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, was appointed domestic policy advisor, a high-ranking West Wing post with the ear of the president.

Most recently, Obama tapped Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a pro-abortion extremist, to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Sebelius, of course, was his second choice after Tom Daschle, the pro-abortion former senator from South Dakota, withdrew his name from nomination. What makes Sebelius’ nomination all the more tragic are her ties to the rather infamous Kansas abortionist George Tiller.

All too often, pro-abortionists use words like “intolerant” and “closed-minded” to describe pro-lifers and our respect for the dignity and sanctity of human life. But, in reality, it is pro-lifers who seek to engage the public in a thoughtful, compassionate and respectful discussion about the humanity of unborn children and the effects of abortion on their mothers.

It is so profoundly ironic that a president who campaigned on a message of tolerance for all Americans of all political stripes and social views has decided that, rather than using his position to engage in a thoughtful debate that advances policies to help mothers facing crisis pregnancies and save unborn children, he has demonstrated, through his words and actions, that he will wield his power like a sledgehammer to advance the pro-abortion cause.

Derrick Jones is the communications director
for the National Right to Life Committee,
the nation’s largest pro-life organization.

Now Posted: The Obama Record on Life

The Obama Record on Life is now available from the National Right to Life website. To access the PDF file (as well as the PDF files for the records of Presidents Regan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush), see the POTUS records page at nrlc.org.

These are a great  tool you can use in your communities to educate friends and family about the life and death actions taken by the presidents during their time in the Oval Office.  Please feel free to download, copy and distribute these materials freely.

NRLC to Notre Dame: Rescind Obama Invitation

For immediate release:
Monday, March 23, 2009 

NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE CALLS ON NOTRE DAME
TO RESCIND OBAMA INVITATION

 WASHINGTON – Today the National Right to Life Committee, the nation’s largest pro-life organization, called upon University of Notre Dame president Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., to rescind the University’s invitation to Barack Obama to speak at Notre Dame’s commencement May 17.

 “Notre Dame’s invitation to the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history is a betrayal of the University’s mission and an affront to all who believe in the sanctity and dignity of human life,” said Anthony J. Lauinger, National Right to Life Vice-President (and father of seven Notre Dame alumni and one current student.)  “We call upon Father Jenkins to rescind the invitation and stand up for the millions of unborn children who face death under Obama Administration policies.”

 In a letter to Father Jenkins, Mr. Lauinger pointed out that, through words and actions, Barack Obama has launched a comprehensive anti-life agenda that targets decades of life-saving policies while treating the views of pro-life Americans with complete contempt.  The full text of Mr. Lauinger’s letter is printed below.

 “As a Notre Dame parent and supporter, I am outraged by this invitation to Barack Obama.  I have apologized to my eight children for the poor guidance I provided them when I encouraged them to enroll at Notre Dame,” Lauinger said.

 The National Right to Life Committee is the nation’s largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide.  National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

 HERE IS THE TEXT OF MR. LAUINGER’S LETTER TO FATHER JENKINS: 

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
President
University of Notre Dame

Dear Father Jenkins,

            In your January 27 letter to my wife Phyllis and me, you thanked us for support “for our (Notre Dame’s) most essential, and mission-bound, priorities.”  In the wake of the commencement announcement regarding Barack Obama, I am compelled to ask whether Notre Dame recognizes what those priorities are.

            Disillusionment, incredulity, betrayal – all describe my feelings.  I am left questioning my own judgment in having encouraged our eight children to go to Notre Dame.

            Abortion is the unspeakable evil that causes my outrage – abortion and the fact that Barack Obama is the Abortion President.  His first two months in office have constituted an all-out assault on the unborn child.

            Not content with legal abortion-on-demand in this country, he seeks to foist the same policy on the rest of the world by rescinding the Mexico City Policy, which previously kept U.S. tax dollars from funding groups working to subvert the pro-life laws of countries overseas; and he seeks to export abortion around the world through his policies and appointments at the United Nations, including providing U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund, actively involved in China’s coerced-abortion program.

            Not content with Roe v. Wade, he champions the “Freedom of Choice Act,” which would nullify some five hundred state and federal laws which impose modest, limited regulations on the unfettered right to abortion.  Signing the “Freedom of Choice Act” would be “the first thing I’d do as president,” he promised the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.  See his promise in this short video clip: http://americaschoicenow.com/

            Not content with having pro-abortion doctors perform abortions, President Obama has announced he will rescind the Conscience Rule which protects the rights of pro-life doctors and nurses to refuse to participate in abortions or other killing procedures on religious or moral grounds.  Cardinal Francis George, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is urging Catholics to tell the Obama Administration to retain conscience protections for health-care workers.

            Two weeks ago, the President signed an executive order reversing a ban on federal funding of embryo-destructive stem cell research.  The policy that had been in effect the past eight years protected American taxpayers from being complicit in the killing of embryonic human beings for purposes of harvesting their stem cells.  Embryo-killing stem-cell research, the act of destroying living members of our species, homo sapiens, in order to provide raw material for experimentation, has never benefited a single human patient, whereas adult stem cells have benefited patients suffering from more than 70 different disorders.   

           On the same day he authorized federal funding of embryo-killing research, the President rescinded a policy that had been providing federal funding for alternative methods of obtaining pluripotent stem cells through “cell reprogramming,” in which ordinary human skin and other cells are transformed into “induced pluripotent stem cells.”  This breakthrough, which does not require destroying human embryos, was deemed so important that the journal Science named it the scientific breakthrough of the year for 2008.  

         The President’s appointments to key White House and cabinet positions have had extreme pro-abortion records: Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, former congressman with a 100% pro-abortion record; Domestic Policy Adviser Melody Barnes, previous board member of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund; Communications Director Ellen Moran, former executive director of the pro-abortion group EMILY’s List; Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the radically pro-abortion former governor of Kansas: Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg;  Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Dawn Johnsen, the former legal director of the National Abortion Rights Action League…  These are but a small handful of examples.

            One of the many problems caused by Notre Dame’s decision to honor the man doing more to destroy unborn children than anyone else on the face of the earth is the scandal to which it gives rise: to our own students; to Catholics across the country and beyond; to those of us who thought Notre Dame stood for something special; to everyone who believed Our Lady’s University aspired to values higher than the approval of a debased secular culture.

              Father, I have attached, above, a joint statement on Faithful Citizenship by Bishop Kevin Vann and Bishop Kevin Farrell, the bishops of Fort Worth and Dallas, respectively.  Their letter puts the worth and dignity of human life in proper perspective.

             Finally, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document, “Catholics in Political Life,” offers this exhortation: “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”  I would submit that what is planned for May 17 is a classic example of precisely the type of scandal the bishops direct us to avoid.      

            I apologized today to my eight children for the poor guidance I provided them when I encouraged them to enroll at Our Lady’s University, and for having misled them, and myself, about what I believed to be the core values of Notre Dame.

Sincerely,
Anthony J. Lauinger
Tulsa, Oklahoma

Click here to view the attachment: “A joint statement on Faithful Citizenship” by Bishop Kevin Vann and Bishop Kevin Farrell (PDF Format)

Release: Idaho Bill Would Throw Patient’s Rights Out the Window

For immediate release:
Monday, March 23, 2009                                                              

IDAHO SENATE BILL 1114
THROWS PATIENT RIGHTS OUT THE WINDOW

 Idaho Senate Bill 1114, which has passed the Idaho state Senate, is currently awaiting hearing before the Idaho House Health and Welfare Committee. If passed, the bill would authorize health care providers to deny life-sustaining procedures, including food and fluids through feeding tubes or IV, against the will of patients and their family members.

The bill establishes a procedure by which healthcare providers can override patient and family decisions to choose lifesaving treatment and care, including patient’s wishes in their written advance directive. The bill’s dangerously vague language means that health care providers would be able to deny treatment to patients they think have a poor “quality of life,” as arbitrarily determined by a hospital ethics committee.                                                                                       

“In short, the bill dangerously overrides patient and family rights,” said Burke Balch J.D., Director of NRLC’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics.  “It takes choices away from the patient and family, instead placing life or death decisions in the hands of a hospital ethics committee or the health care provider acting even without an ethics committee. In effect, the passage of SB1114 would mean the deaths of those patients the health care providers deem unworthy to live.”

 Spokespersons, including independent experts, are available for interviews on this legislation. To arrange an interview, please contact the National Right to Life Committee Communications Department at 202-626-8825 or mediarelations@nrlc.org

 The National Right to Life Committee is the nation=s largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide.  National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

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Study: Abortion causes future premature births

OneNewsNow is up with a story about a study that appeared in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine showing an increase in future premature births among women who have previously had an abortion.  The report quotes NRLC President Dr. Wanda Franz:

Wanda Franz, president of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), says it makes sense. “And of course there’s a logical connection that if you have an abortion where you’re artificially intervening in a pregnancy so that you can potentially damage the system of the mother, that you might create conditions under which preterm delivery would be more likely,” she contends.

Stem Cell Coverage – Day 2

USA Today ran a Q&A piece citing researchers and policy experts:

Q: What dangers do opponents see in Obama’s action?

A: The National Right to Life Committee says the order “opens door to human embryo farms,” charging that researchers will start mass-harvesting embryos to create cell lines. Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., echoed these concerns and, in a statement, called the moves “divisive” amid larger concerns about the economy.

The San Francisco Chronicle picked up on the NRLC release:

“It is a sad day when the federal government will fund research that exploits living members of the human species as raw material for research,” said Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee. The organization said Obama’s order places the country on a slippery slope toward the rise of “embryo farms” to create human embryos for the sole purpose of research.

The Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown cites NRLC in her story about Obama’s order:

But the anti-abortion community — a group which Obama courted during his campaign — made clear its anger.

“It is a sad day when the federal government will fund research that exploits living members of the human species as raw material for research,” said Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee, who added that the move puts the country on a “very steep, very slippery slope” toward cloning.

Alex Wayne at CQToday:

But Democrats are approaching any changes to Dickey-Wicker cautiously, as it is potentially an even more explosive flash point than embryonic stem cell research. The National Right to Life Committee on Monday warned against any changes to the amendment, raising the specter of a future in which human embryos are purposely created for research.

“Any member of Congress who votes for legislation to repeal this law is voting to allow federal funding of human embryo farms, created through the use of human cloning,” said Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the group.

NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson appeared on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition with Julie Rovner yesterday morning.  You can listen to the story here and click on the “Listen Now” button in the top center of the page.

From One News Now:

Douglas Johnson, spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee, was asked about the president’s statement that he would oppose reproductive cloning.
 
“This is the kind of code that’s intended to mislead the public,” the pro-life leader states. “…[W]hat he’s saying is that he doesn’t want human clones to be brought to birth; but he’s quite conspicuously not saying that he doesn’t want to create them in the first place.”
 
Johnson believes the president’s action violates current law. “…[T]he president is basically giving a wink to the National Institutes of Health to try to find a way to do that, and they’re also giving a signal to Congress that they should try to repeal the law which prohibits it.”
 
And that, Johnson believes, is due to pressure from the bio-tech industry. He fears the end result will be creation of human embryo farms, which will likely lead to millions of dollars in profit.

Other news outlets that picked up the NRLC statement in their coverage of Obama’s executive orders include:

Buffalo News – Buffalo, New York

Columbus Dispatch – Columbus, Ohio

Stem Cell Coverage

Recent NRLC sightings:

NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson in The Hill:

“He’s telling [the National Institutes of Health (NIH)] to write rules, and there’s nothing in his statement that is limited to leftover embryos,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee. “It appears he’s opening the door to NIH funding researchers who would deliberately create embryos for the purpose of research.

“It’s starting to look like he’s basically giving NIH the green light to do whatever they can get away with,” Johnson told The Hill.

Also in the New York Times:

“The administration now steps onto a very steep, very slippery slope,” Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said in anticipation of Mr. Obama’s action. “Many researchers will never be satisfied only with the so-called leftover embryos.”

2.38 p UPDATE: Johnson in Bloomberg News Service:

The National Right to Life Committee issued a statement criticizing Obama, saying his order will lead to the destruction of human life and may lead to federal funding of research that creates embryos for study, which is still prohibited under existing law.

‘Slippery Slope’

The action “places our society on a very steep, very slippery slope,” the group’s spokesman, Douglas Johnson said.

3.43p UPDATE:

CBSNews picks up NRLC’s statement:

The National Right to Life Committee titled their response statement, “Obama Order Opens Door to Widespread Killing of Embryonic Humans in Government-Funded Research.” “It is a sad day when the federal government will fund research that exploits living members of the human species as raw material for research,” spokesman Douglas Johnson said.

“Obama’s order also places our society on a very steep, very slippery slope. Many researchers will not be satisfied to use only so-called surplus embryos.”

7:05pm UPDATE:

FoxNews.com picks up the distinction between “cloning for reproduction” and “cloning for research”:

Also, some argue that Obama’s statements opposing human cloning are misleading. Derrick Jones, spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee, said the administration has left the door open to create, and then destroy, embryos through cloning for the sole purpose of harvesting stem cells.

7.20p update: The Providence Journal (Rhode Island) picks up the NRLC statement:

Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee asserted in a news release that, besides the moral question, Mr. Obama’s action raises a serious practical worry. He said the lifting of the embryonic stem cell research ban “places our society on a very steep, very slippery slope.”

Johnson said, “many researchers will not be satisfied to use only so-called surplus embryos” from clinics that make them to help childless women have babies. Many researchers, he said, want taxpayer support for research not only on embryonic stem cells but on the embryos themselves. Nothing in Mr. Obama’s remarks yesterday would limit the National Institutes of Health to “the use of so-called surplus embryos” from fertility clinics, he said.

Release: Obama opens door to human embryo farms

For immediate release: 

Monday, March 9, 2009                                                   

 

Obama Order Opens Door to Widespread Killing

of Embryonic Humans in Government-Funded Research

 

WASHINGTON – In a White House ceremony today, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to allow federal funding of research that will require the killing of human embryos.

 

This order reverses a policy instituted by former President George W. Bush in August 2001, which funded research on already-existing stem cell lines without encouraging any further destruction of human life.

 

“It is a sad day when the federal government will fund research that exploits living members of the human species as raw material for research,” said Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee.  “Obama’s order also places our society on a very steep, very slippery slope.  Many researchers will not be satisfied to use only so-called surplus embryos.  Many researchers are already demanding federal support for research in which human embryos would be created for the specific purpose of research, through human cloning and other methods, and there was nothing in the President’s remarks today to limit NIH to the use of so-called surplus embryos created in IVF clinics.

 

“This sets the stage for an attack on the Dickey-Wicker law, which since 1995 has been a provision of the annual appropriations bills for federal health programs.  This law prohibits federal funding of ‘the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death . . .’  Any member of Congress who votes for legislation to repeal this law is voting to allow federal funding of human embryo farms, created through the use of human cloning.”

 

Much of the press coverage anticipating Obama’s order continued to ignore or downplay the striking advances made in recent years in research using stem cells from non-embryonic sources, including adult stem cells and reprogrammed adult body cells (iPSCs).  Do No Harm, a coalition of scientists and researchers opposed to embryo-killing stem cell research (www.stemcellresearch.org), has posted a list of over 70 different disorders for which there have been one or more peer-reviewed scientific studies showing a measure of positive benefits in human patients. 

 

In contrast, embryonic stem cells have yet to benefit a single human patient, and have proven most adept at generating tumors.

 

Regarding Obama’s instructions to NIH to develop “strict guidelines” to govern embryonic stem cell research, Johnson commented, “These so-called ethical safeguards are really merely procedural requirements, an attempt to cloak the fundamentally unethical act of sacrificing living members of our species, homo sapiens, in order to provide raw material for research.”

 

Obama also issued a second directive purporting to free federally sponsored scientific research from the influence of “ideology.” Johnson commented, “Giving an absolutely free hand to elites of specialists can result in the ideology of the specialists being imposed on society as a whole.   Scientific endeavors that utilize human subjects or otherwise pose dangers to innocent human life must always be subject to oversight by society as a whole, through regular democratic processes.”

 

National Right to Life spokespersons are available for comment on these subjects.  To arrange an interview, please contact the NRLC Communications Department at (202) 626-8825 or mediarelations@nrlc.org.

 

The National Right to Life Committee is the nation’s largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide.  National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

 

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Release: Sebelius Nomination Continues Obama Abortion Agenda

For immediate release:                                                    
Tuesday, March 3, 2009          

 SEBELIUS NOMINATION CONTINUES
OBAMA ABORTION AGENDA

WASHINGTON – The following statement may be attributed to David N. O’Steen, Ph.D., executive director of the National Right to Life Committee:

 The selection of an extreme pro-abortionist as head of the Department of Health and Human Services is tragic, but not surprising.  Viewed in the context of Barack Obama’s first month in office, his nomination of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius represents a continuation of the extreme abortion agenda Obama hopes to enact.

 Already he has rescinded the Mexico City Policy, allowing taxpayer funds to go to organizations that perform and promote abortion overseas.  And the Administration is set to take action this week to rescind a regulation that enforces federal laws protecting the conscience rights of doctors and other health care providers.

 Governor Sebelius is one in a line of pro-abortion activists appointed to positions in the Obama administration: Dawn Johnsen, former legal director of NARAL, was named as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel; Ellen Moran, former executive director of the pro-abortion EMILY’s List, was appointed White House communications director; and Melody Barnes, Obama’s domestic policy advisor, previously served on the boards of both EMILY’s List and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

 Indeed, many of Obama’s appointees to key public policy and health-related positions look like a “Who’s Who” of the Abortion Industry focused on promoting and protecting abortion on demand.

 The National Right to Life Committee is the nation’s largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide.  National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

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