The 1 man who can stop publicly funded D.C. abortions
By Jill Stanek
Published December 16, 2009 at 12:00am
For his phenomenal work convincing just enough Catholic voters that proabortion, pro-infanticide, pro-human-embryo-experimentation Barack Obama was actually pro-life, Catholic law professor Doug Kmiec was awarded an ambassadorship to the country of Malta, a group of Mediterranean islands off the southern coast of Italy.
Kmiec labored hard to earn that plum appointment, going so far as to rustle up a book, "Can a Catholic Support Him?" just seven weeks before the 2008 election.
Sitting in a Panera cafe with winter boots on in the aftermath of Chicago's first blizzard of the season, let me check Malta's weather right now. … December being one of its coldest months, the daily average temperature is 65 degrees with five hours of sunshine.
But I digress. Of course, Kmiec's answer was an emphatic, "Yes!" In a May 2008 op-ed in Catholic Online, Kmiec explained (bold emphasis mine):
Not because Sen. Obama's position on abortion is mine; it is not … but because I believe that my faith calls upon me at this time to focus on new efforts and untried paths to reduce abortion practice in America.
Sen. Obama's emphasis on personal responsibility … best moves this issue forward. … [He] honestly concedes the abortion decision poses serious moral issues which he argues can only be fully and successfully resolved by the mother facing it with the primary obligation of the community seeing to it that she is as well-informed as possible in the making of it.
I do not understand Sen. Obama to be proabortion. … But where he looks for the greatest … opportunity to reduce the number of abortions "is on the idea of reducing unwanted pregnancies," because, he reasons, "if we can reduce unwanted pregnancies, then it's much less likely that people resort to abortion. …"
So, as Kmiec explained it, Obama's plan to lower the number of abortions if elected president was to pre-empt them by focusing on personal responsibility and education, which he saw as the "primary obligation of the community."
Kmiec added, in an October 2008 interview for Beliefnet.com (bold emphasis again mine):
[W]hile the senator and I are in disagreement [on abortion], it does not dim my enthusiasm for his presidency since I believe for the first time we will have a president who genuinely intends to address the poverty and anxiety that in the vast majority of cases determines a woman's decision.
As an aside, Beliefnet.com was one of the pro-Obama Web squads for Protestants during the 2008 campaign. Coincidentally, Beliefnet.com's editor, Steve Waldman, just accepted Obama's offer to take a new position created just for him at the Federal Communications Commission: senior adviser to the chairman.
But darn it, I digress again. I have ADD this morning.
So Kmiec further understood Obama 1) to think poverty creates the perceived need to abort; and 2) to plan to alleviate poverty, thereby lowering the number of abortions.
Which brings us to today and an apparent major misunderstanding.
A bill to allow the District of Columbia to use public funds to underwrite abortions of poor mothers is on its way to President Obama's desk to sign. Strangely, it was Obama himself who suggested this when submitting his budget proposal in May.
This makes no sense, given Obama's antiabortion initiatives as channeled through Kmiec, particularly in the District of Columbia.
The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood's research arm, reported in 2005 that the District of Columbia had the highest rate of abortion in the entire United States, with over half – 54 percent – of all pregnancies ending in abortion there.
So not only is Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, it is the capital of abortion in the United States.
Thus, it would seem the perfect place for Obama to trial his campaign pledge to make the "primary obligation of the community" to be reducing abortion through prevention education, poverty reduction, a call to personal responsibility and fully informed consent about fetal development and abortion. (What else could "seeing to it that she is as well-informed as possible in the making of [the abortion decision]" mean?)
Obama appears to be thwarting his own intentions by increasing access to abortion in an obviously abortion-vulnerable population, like giving an alcoholic a drink or taking a gambling addict to the casino.
Even Guttmacher agrees, reporting earlier this year that decreased public funding of abortion results in 25 percent fewer abortions. So if Obama signs this bill, one of four babies who would have otherwise lived will be killed.
Doug, we need you to help President Obama stand by those campaign promises you explained to us! You may have to drag yourself away from sipping Maltese honey liqueur and smoking spicy Maltese cheroots with dignitaries on the embassy's sun terrace, but it's a sacrifice well worth making, we're sure you'll agree.
Make sure to pack your gloves.
Jill Stanek fought to stop "live-birth abortion" after witnessing one as a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. In 2002, President Bush asked Jill to attend his signing of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. In January 2003, World Magazine named Jill one of the 30 most prominent pro-life leaders of the past 30 years. To learn more, visit Jill's blog, Pro-life Pulse.
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