SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser has a commentary in this week's issue of The Weekly Standard, "The Abortion Administration." In it she addresses President Obama's support for the abortion agenda and the growing record of anti-life policies pursued by his Administration. She takes an important look at the upcoming debates on taxpayer funding for abortion in DC and health care reform.
Here's a sneak peek:
In his first week in office, President Obama issued an executive order overturning the Reagan-era Mexico City regulations, which had prohibited American foreign aid from going to organizations that finance overseas abortions. Just a few weeks later, the Gallup organization revealed that the executive order was the single most unpopular action taken by the president during his honeymoon period. At a time when American families had experienced an average 25 percent decline in their net worth, it would appear that increasing the net worth of foreign abortionists was not high on their to-do list.
Their reaction was even less surprising in the light of another recent Gallup finding: For the first time in over 10 years, voters who describe themselves as pro-life have taken the lead (by 51 to 42 percent) over voters who describe themselves as pro-choice. Even this understates antiabortion sentiment, since many people who describe themselves as pro-choice, when probed, favor restrictions on abortion that the present Supreme Court, with its five members who voted for or favor Planned Parenthood v. Casey, would never allow.
Given the breadth of his domestic agenda, the president might want to make a midcourse correction on abortion. Why highlight an issue where the bulk of the American people, including a sizable share of the 52.9 percent of the electorate who voted for him, are either going in the other direction or have severe qualms?
But by now, nearly six months in, the bottom line for Barack Obama is clear. After making a few polite noisesabout finding "common ground" with pro-lifers, his administration has
shown zero interest in doing so. Instead, the Obama agenda is to weave
government-backed abortion into the fabric of American life and make it
a far more integral part of domestic and foreign policy than ever
before.
