The Obama Administration and Abortion: Defining What "Is" Is

The Obama Administration and Abortion: Defining What "Is" Is
Jeanne Monahan
Wednesday, April 14, 2010

President Obama is an exceptional orator and knows how to choose his words well. However in the end, while words hold a certain power, the intrinsic reality behind words is what really matters. It frequently has been the case that statements made by the Obama Administration either contradict themselves or do not accurately or transparently convey the reality they are communicating. In particular, abortion and all things related have been victim to deceptive rhetoric during the Obama Administration, with the truth behind the words seldom portrayed.

Most recently and dramatically this was witnessed during the healthcare debate. There are many examples to choose from, the most obvious being the Blair House Summit when the President dismissed charges of abortion funding in the healthcare bill as “inaccurate” and “Republican talking points” but then later contradicted his words by signing the now infamous (and impotent) anti-abortion Executive Order. Put simply, why would the president sign an Executive Order preventing something he claimed wasn’t there to begin with?

One other poignant example occurred just prior to the vote on March 22. Speaker Pelosi and other female Representatives claimed they were proud that “being a woman would no longer be a pre-existing condition.” One ponders what such words mean. We can all agree that no one should be excluded from medical benefits because of gender. Rather, Speaker Pelosi was equating being a woman with the ability to have a taxpayer-funded abortion (along with many others, I would argue that having an abortion is the antithesis of being a woman). The honest reality behind the words “being a woman is a pre-existing condition” is that abortion will now be supported by American taxpayer dollars. The Speaker’s statement was ironic and contradicted the press release on the Executive Order issued from the White House earlier that day. To borrow a phrase from the President, maybe the Democrats lost their “talking points.”

Apart from the healthcare reform debate, among the Administration’s initiatives the issue of maternal health receives much attention. Recently the U.S. Delegation led the way at the United Nation’s 54th Commission on the Status of Women by introducing and lobbying for a Maternal Health resolution; Maternal Health is a pillar of the U.S. government interagency $63 billion Global Health Initiative; domestically Maternal Health is a top priority within the Department for Health and Human Services and even within the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

So what exactly is maternal health? It sounds so good: All of us have mothers; most of us love our mothers dearly and would fight ardently on their behalf for excellent health services. But irony of ironies, the Administration’s definition of maternal health includes access to abortion. According to Secretary Clinton at the recent G-8 Summit on maternal health in Canada, “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health,” Mrs. Clinton stated. “And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.”

This might be a good moment to consider the reality behind the word “abortion.” Fittingly, the word does not adequately convey the reality of the procedure.

The following quote is from a woman who had an abortion and operated a clinic. “I’ve never been able to come up with the words to describe the abortion procedure. There are no words to describe how bad it really is. It kills the baby. I’ve seen sonograms with the baby pulling away from the instruments that are introduced into the [the woman’s body]… Yes, they are very painful to the baby. But, yes they are very, very painful to the woman. I’ve seen six people hold a woman on the table while they did the abortion.”

To the Obama Administration, abortion is a morally neutral and medically acceptable act. To women, born and unborn, it never will be.

Words have meaning. And among the most meaningful are these: Every single person from the moment of conception has dignity and the inherent right to live. Skillful oratory or not, that truth will long outlast the presidency of Barack Obama.
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Liberal vs. Conservative: A Difference in Species
Emmett Tyrrell
Thursday, April 15, 2010

WASHINGTON -- The pro-abortion lobby cannot be happy about a law that has just been passed and signed in faraway Nebraska. There anti-abortion forces must have clout. The law bans most abortions 20 weeks after conception on the basis of "fetal pain." Thus, the Nebraskan pro-life advocates are saying that the suffering of a fetus is at least as important as the suffering of a chicken at a poultry processing plant or of a stray dog picked up by the animal control authorities. For liberalism, this could mean still more liberal crackup, as sympathizers for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other advocates of animal rights are put in the awkward position of contemplating the pain suffered by that biological inconvenience that civilized Americans still call a fetus. If they contemplate with sufficient intelligence, they might conclude that a fetus has rights.

Naturally, pro-abortionists are promising a huge legal battle. There will be claims that the fetus does not suffer. Experts will be called in. The case will be as acrimonious as every abortion controversy has been since 1973, when, through the courts, pro-abortionists forced legalized abortion on the entire country. Had the question of abortion been left to legislatures, doubtless the process would have become legal in some states but not in others. Federalism's genius would abide. Diversity would exist.

Yet liberal justices on the Supreme Court found a "right" in the Constitution that never is mentioned in that document, the right to privacy. Thus was abortion brought down on the nation, not through the will of the majority but through the willfulness of a minority, the liberals.

The entire controversy brings to mind a thesis of mine about liberals and conservatives that I elaborate on enthusiastically in my new book, "After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery," which comes out this coming week. The liberal has the political libido of a nymphomaniac, at times of a sex offender. It is impossible to restrain. By comparison, the conservative's political libido is more subject to reason and restraint. Almost nothing restrains liberals' political activism. Conservatives are more disciplined. Process matters to them.

Consider how differently conservative President Ronald Reagan handled abortion than President Barack Obama handled health care. Reagan opposed abortion but realized that a large number of Americans favored it, perhaps not a majority but a large enough minority to render it reckless for him to force the issue. He chose persuasion and restrained his political impulse. Obama undertook health care reform recognizing that it was controversial. As Obamacare became ever more far-reaching and opposition to it grew to the point that a majority opposed it, the president just rammed his reform through. Today 58 percent favor repeal. There has been violence from both sides. The country is torn over yet another liberal grand design.

In the culture wars, there is a new battleground, health care. The battle is going to last as long as the abortion battles have lasted, unless Obamacare can be repealed. Increasingly, the law looks as if it might be repealed, for the law really is a slapdash creation, but you see my point. As it did with abortion, the liberal political libido went wild with health care. No restraint was shown. Tremendous anger replaced the mild dissatisfaction a significant number of Americans felt about the health care system.

In "Hangover," I argue that so different is the liberal political libido from the conservative political libido that, at least when it comes to politics, liberals and conservatives are not members of the same species. Let those who decry "gridlock" on Capitol Hill think about that. When the liberals and the conservatives confront each other, it is as though Homo habilis were confronting Homo sapiens. That is not a happy thought, though I at least take heart in knowing which of the aforementioned species survived.