69 Days of Life: So The President Admitted “Misleading***” on Keeping Your Plan – What About the Deception on Abortion Funding?

Over the weekend the Democrats once more said they will continue their “War on Women” rhetoric with Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz vowing to continue the mantra.  I think this might be the first time Rep. Wasserman Schultz and I agree on something.  There is a War on Women – what we disagree on is who is waging it.

 

In truth it has been the pro-life side, regardless of party, that has repeatedly stood up for the woman when it comes to her safety in relation to abortion – be it offering alternatives through pregnancy care centers, offering counseling like with Project Rachel Ministry, helping to expose the inhumanity of abortion giant Planned Parenthood (who is at the forefront of the gender war) like Live Action has with their expose videos or in trying to ensure that the facilities that perform abortions meet at least minimal health care requirements.  The pro-abortion caucus for years have fought against pregnancy care centers that hope to give women options other than death they have fought against parental notification bills in cases of abortion, they have fought against the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act that seeks to protect infants born alive after a failed abortion (our current President fought against a similar bill at the state level) and they have fought against the partial birth abortion ban. 

 

Those who claim the right is conducting this war on women are the same people who oppose legislation that would protect taxpayers of both sexes from having to pay for the brutality of abortion (a “procedure” that kills unborn female babies as well as unborn male babies.)

 

Abortion, and Abortionists, Targets Women

Abortion is a procedure that in many countries primarily kills girls.  In 2005, 90 million women were estimated to be “missing” in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan alone, due to sex-selective abortion. The practice occurs in not only countries like India and China but in the U.S. as well.

 

One Planned Parenthood worker when asked about sex selection abortions stated “I can tell you that here at Planned Parenthood we believe that it’s not up to us to decide what is a good or a bad reason for somebody to decide to terminate a pregnancy.”  This is no fluke as abortion-giant Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards is opposed to a ban on sex-selective abortions on the grounds that it would “limit [a woman’s] choices as she makes personal medical decisions.”

 

President Obama has repeatedly vowed to stand by abortion giant Planned Parenthood, and he has repeatedly kept that vow.  Even once threatening to cut off funding for poor women and children in Texas unless taxpayer funding to the abortion organization was restored.

 

Commodification and Sex-Trafficking

Planned Parenthood has been caught once again in possible complicity with crimes – this time related to child prostitution.  Planned Parenthood has apparently fired the offending worker; however they have shown they cannot be trusted to police themselves.  This is hardly a surprise.  Years ago while working with Rep. Joe Pitts’ (R-Penn.) office on making sure that taxpayer funds that are supposed to be fighting diseases in Africa don’t instead go to groups that promote or support prostitution it was the pro-abortion folks who fought against that provision – eventually taking the issue to court.

 

Planned Parenthood also has a long history of covering up statutory rape.  Yet still that doesn’t threaten the hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies they get.

 

Additionally one of the largest relief agencies for women who are being trafficked is the U.S. Catholic Church, yet the Obama Administration took away a government grant because the Catholic Church refuses to promote abortion.  So the Obama folks put fealty to the cause of abortion above helping women out of forced prostitution and slavery. 

 

Safety Regulations for Abortion Facilities

Planned Parenthood has done more than anyone to make sure abortion facilities are less safe and regulated then beauty parlors.  Despite proof that human monsters like Kermit Gosnell are far from being an aberration.  Here is an excerpt from the grand jury report describing in detail Kermit Gosnell’s crimes which explicitly states that the tragedy in this man’s abortuary could have been avoided if someone had simply spoke out:

This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.

If Democrats truly were the “Party of Women” then they should be consistent when they think they see their rights trampled, however it is the policies of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her pro-abortion allies that have created the Kermit Gosnell’s of the world.  

 

If Speaker Pelosi wants further proof that her party is the party of Kermit Gosnell she merely needs to look within her own caucus (via Creative Minority Report):

 

Rep. Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania is one of the fastest rising stars in the Democrat Party, taking on a recently announced leadership role at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Schwartz, a four-term suburban Philadelphia congresswoman, is taking on the position left vacant by Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz who was just tapped to chair the Democratic National Committee.

 

One fact that has gone unmentioned in all the media reports trumpeting Schwartz’s as
cendancy is that Allyson Schwartz, besides having a perfect pro-abortion record in Congress, co-founded and acted as Executive Director of an abortion clinic in Philadelphia for 13 years (1975-1988). The clinic was called the Elizabeth Blackwell Center which is ironic because Blackwell, the first female physician in the U.S., was pro-life.

 

The clinic was not without its troubles. The Philadelphia Daily News quoted a call from a Republican candidate that detailed an assortment of lawsuits against the clinic:

 

“18 lawsuits have been filed against Miss Allyson Schwartz’s clinic, including assault, battery, negligence, perforated bowels and uteruses,” the woman said, “and even abortions performed without consent of her patients.

 

In 2002, the Blackwell clinic declared bankruptcy due to diminished demand for abortion and stiff competition in the area. In its last year, the center still performed about 1,500 abortions. According to the Daily News, the center derived its largest share of revenue from abortions.

 

You want to know the difference between Kermit Gosnell and one of those abortionists Nancy Pelosi seeks to protect over the cause and life of women?  So do I .

 

Pregnancy Care Centers

On the pro-life side courageous men and women have stepped up to be able to offer alternatives to the killing of a child.  They have one agenda and it is not a political one.  All they care about is the mother and her child.  In reward those who would claim the mantra of helping women seek to close them down.  In jurisdictions like Baltimore or Washington State laws are passed to unfairly target pregnancy care centers.  In a state like New York former Governor Elliot Spitzer (D) (who somehow is still seen as a champion of women despite his exploitation and abuse of them) built a legacy on fighting pro-lifers.  Now New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has pledged to continue the lawsuit against pro-life crisis pregnancy centers – for he considers them as “sham” clinics and since they don’t offer abortion are not to be considered giving “legitimate health care.”

 

Ultrasounds

Last year those toiling under the War on Women banner fought against ultrasound procedures being part of a women’s choice to have an abortion or not.  Among those opposing was abortion-giant Planned Parenthood, which must have surprised a number of Planned Parenthood technicians since “a 2003 study shows 99% of Planned Parenthood abortion facilities do them before [a surgical abortion].”

 

All of these are just a few examples.  Look how even as far back as the Clinton Administration dangerous abortifacients were politicized at the FDA and the Presidents long stream of nominations of people who believe abortion “rights” are more important than women’s health (one example here).  Add in how his fiscal policy has put women business owners out of work and the bias against mothers prevalent within the liberal movement and you have to admit there is a war on women, and its Generals are Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Deborah Wasserman Shultz and Planned Parenthood.

 

In my various roles in the conservative movement one fear that has followed me from place to place is fear of mission creep.  If I work at a “tax and spending  group” doesn’t everything in DC involve some sort of taxing and spending?  If I work at a “family” group don’t all issues ultimately affect the most important core of any civilization – the family?  And now that I am with a strictly pro-life group – does fighting for quality of life qualify as a “pro-life” stance?

I think in each of my roles I have been lucky to be included in those decisions and, in my opinion, those groups I have worked at have stayed true to their core mission for the most part.  However there are issues that happen in DC that while on the surface might seem outside of the mission parameters of an organization – when they in fact are essential.  One of those issues is Presidential nominations for when it comes to Washington, D.C. and Presidential power – personnel IS policy.

I will be the first to point out that most of President Obama’s nominees need to be blocked due to them begin to radical to hold government office. A number of Senators from both parties have done what they could to stop some of these nominees from getting confirmed. However too often Senators defer to the President in power, forgetting it is their role to “advise and consent”, not “roll over and sit.”  

Look at early in the Obama Administration.  The fact that Dawn Johnsen, President Obama’s nominee to the Justice Department, disagrees with ANY form of parental rights when it comes to their children getting an abortion IS relevant. Or that it is troubling that the President’s nominee to the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Chai Feldlum, believes that sexual license ALWAYS triumphs over religious liberty. And the fact that Kevin Jennings helped form an organization that fights against parental rights in their children’s education, while teaching young kids explicit and dangerous sexual techniques, is so germane to his role at the Safe and Drug Free School Office that to ignore it is almost criminal.  While Dawn Johnsen was blocked, Kevin Jennings and Chai Feldblum were not and Ms. Feldblum is still in power today.

Too often, and especially in this Administration, these bureaucrats, be they political appointees or otherwise, abuse the office they are given.  Think of the recent IRS abuses, Homeland Security designating pro-lifers as “potential terrorists” or the Justice Department unilaterally deciding what laws they will enforce and which ones they will ignore.  It is the role of Congress to ensure such abuses do not occur, either through hearings process after such abuses happen or during the nomination process to ferret out nominees who are likely to abuse the system for personal or ideological gain.

Lesson number one in how personnel are policy is Kathleen Sebelius, currently testifying today in front of the Senate Finance Committee.  When she was up for Health and Human Services Secretary I was very vocal in my belief she should not be given the power over the American health care system and I was not alone among pro-lifers.  While at the Family Research Council I put together a backgrounder that documented her close ties to the abortion industry as well as her support of a larger government role in health care.  Less than a year after her successful nomination the U.S. Congress gave her what some people described as more power than the President. 

After the passage of Obamacare the American Spectator did a cover story on the new powers of “Empress Sebelius.”:

There are more than 2,500 references to the secretary of HHS in the health care law (in most cases she’s simply mentioned as “the Secretary”). A further breakdown finds that there are more than 700 instances in which the Secretary is instructed that she “shall” do something, and more than 200 cases in which she “may” take some form of regulatory action if she chooses. On 139 occasions, the law mentions decisions that the “Secretary determines.” At times, the frequency of these mentions reaches comic heights. For instance, one section of the law reads: “Each person to whom the Secretary provided information under subsection (d) shall report to the Secretary in such manner as the Secretary determines appropriate.”

The powers given to Sebelius are wide ranging. In the coming years, if she remains in office, the former Kansas governor will be able to determine what type of insurance coverage every American is required to have. She can influence what hospitals can participate in certain plans, can set up health insurance exchanges within states against their will, and even regulate McDonald’s Happy Meals. She’ll run pilot programs that Democrats have set up in an effort to control costs, and be in a position to dole out billions of dollars in grant money.

But the full breadth of her powers will be known only over time, due to the ambiguity of the language in many parts of the health care legislation. As conservatives make the case for repealing ObamaCare over the course of the next several years, it will be imperative to highlight the arbitrary new powers given to an unelected bureaucrat.

Just this past spring former-Senator and current president of the Heritage Foundation Jim DeMint made a similar point:

A 2010 Congressional Research Service report found that the number of new bureaucracies “that will ultimately be created” by ObamaCare “is currently unknowable.” Little wonder that Vice President Biden boasted shortly before the law was passed, “We’re going to control the insurance companies.”

While Mrs. Sebelius is doing some tough dog and pony shows in front of Congressional committees due to the poor performance and roll out of the key signature law of her entire reign at HHS their also appears ultimately there will be little accountability. 

I know what you are thinking: “Tom McClusky is so smart (and humble) and if we all only had listened to him.”  However that is not my point (though I modestly couldn’t disagree).  My point is that if you care about a certain issue you should pay attention to the political appointee that the President is going to put in charge of affecting that issue.  Personnel is policy, and in this administration it is also about power.