The Moral Compass of the Obama Administration

I often hear pro-choice people argue that they are not really FOR abortion. No one, they say, thinks abortion is a good thing -- it is merely the best of a bunch of bad options in some tragic cases. Well, there are probably plenty of pro-choice individuals who really do consider abortion a bad thing and even a tragedy, but the leaders of the Democratic party are definitely not part of that group.

In fact, for them abortion is so precious that the very word is avoided, lest it produce a negative reaction. Democrats don't talk about abortion -- they always use euphemisms like "the right to choose," "women's rights," and "family planning services." The right to choose what? They never say. Someone unfamiliar with American political word games would be utterly clueless as to what these politicians were even talking about. Of all the important choices that exist in this world and all the important rights that women have, it all boils down to one thing for the Obama crowd: abortion. Abortion for any reason, at any stage in the pregnancy, with no restrictions. They mean nothing more and nothing less than this when they talk about "choice" and "women's rights." This right is so sacrosanct to Obama that he refused to support a bill in the Illinois state legislature that offered protection to babies that were delivered alive as a result of botched abortions. It is so sacrosanct to Senator Barbara Boxer that she once stated on the Senate floor that a baby obtains rights once the mother "takes it home from the hospital."

For Democratic leaders and liberal activists, "the right to choose" (you know, abortion, that procedure that nobody thinks is a good thing) trumps almost every other issue. It was one of the only major issues that President Clinton never compromised with the Republicans on during his time in office, even going so far as to veto a ban on partial-birth abortion. Obama and Pelosi insisted on taxpayer funding for abortion in the final version of the health care bill even when doing so risked the defeat of the entire measure.

But if you really need proof of how sacred abortion rights are to the modern Democratic party, look no further than the Obama Health and Human Services Department, led by pro-abortion crusader Kathleen Sebelius. I found this article from the National Catholic Register, which tellingly shows what happens when the cause of helping victims of human trafficking comes into conflict with promoting abortion. The author of the article, Steven Wagner, formerly directed the Human Trafficking Program at HHS.

To summarize: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was chosen in 2006 as the organization best qualified to administer the Human Trafficking Program, and has been doing so ever since. That is, until this year, when Sebelius changed the rules of the competition to give "strong preference" to applicants that offer "the full range of legally permissible gynecological and obstetric care" (translation: perform abortions). Even under the new rules putting the USCCB at a disadvantage, their grant proposal still scored the second highest of all proposals submitted. Sebelius still chose to deny any funds to the USCCB and gave those funds instead to two other abortion-providing organizations that were deemed by the non-political program staff to be unqualified.

Wagner, who is very familiar with the horror of the sex trade, goes on to explain why having an abortion puts women who are trafficking victims in more danger. Victims are under the domination of someone else and therefore cannot provide informed consent to an abortion. Pregnancy keeps the victims off the street; an abortion merely serves the interest of the pimp by putting the victim back on the street to face further risk of exploitation and death (average life expectancy of victims involved in the sex trade is 7 years). Pregnancy also dramatically increases the likelihood that a woman will seek help, while an abortion reduces that likelihood.

It's pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that in Obama's HHS, abortion must be promoted at all costs, even if it harms victims of human trafficking. The moral priorities of this administration could not be clearer. I hope that pro-choice people who do at least acknowledge some moral dilemma in regard to unrestricted abortion -- rather than regarding it as a positive moral good to be promoted at all costs -- will recognize how radical this administration's position really is. You don't have to believe that life begins at conception to recoil at the actions of people like Sebelius and late-term abortionist Leroy Carhart in Germantown.