The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama’s Radical Agenda for Abortion

Obama’s constitutional philosophy on Supreme Court appointments was aptly revealed when he implored that “we need someone who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it is like to be a young teenage mom”.  He elaborated saying “the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”  Empathy means “judicial activism” and seems a strange criterion by which to select judges for an intellectual who taught constitutional law for a decade.  Ironically, Obama claims he would not have appointed Clarence Thomas, who’s only the second African American ever appointed to the court, saying Thomas “was not a strong enough jurist or legal thinker”.  

Obama orchestrated a brilliant “cult of personality” campaign centered on the banal platitudes of HOPE and CHANGE. His charismatic persona, soaring rhetoric, and ubiquitous campaign slogans of “Change We Can Believe In” and “Audacity of Hope” were overarching themes on which he built his bipartisan presidential bid. Let’s all “hope” Obama as “the one we’ve been waiting for” will indeed bring “change” but not just to America but also to himself with a repudiation of his militant commitment to unrestricted abortion with the appointment of non activist judges that respect our constitution and the inalienable rights of all Americans whether they be born or unborn.

Not surprisingly Obama, after only days of becoming the 44th President in a furtive move that doesn’t bode well for prolife groups, has signed an executive order to reverse the ban on federal aid to international groups that perform abortions. Interestingly, he signed the bill quietly late on Friday without media coverage unlike the fanfare earlier in the week for several other bills such as the order closing Guantanamo Bay.

The federal policy known as the “Mexico City Policy” bans U.S. taxpayer money from going to third world family planning groups that either offer abortions or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion. Anti abortion groups roundly critisized the order signed a day after the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade. The legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, Douglas Johnson lamented “President Obama not long ago told the American people that he would support policies to reduce abortions, but today he is effectively guaranteeing more abortions by funding groups that promote abortion as a method of population control”. Apparently Obama’s hackneyed mantra “Yes We Can” doesn’t apply to policies reducing abortion in the third world. Once again Obama affirms his militant commitment to unrestricted abortion not only in the U.S. but in the rest of the world.