LIFE DIGEST: Pro-life Democrat stands up to Obama
- Jun 16, 2009
A Democratic congressman has acted to prevent President Obama from rescinding a pro-life provision in the federal budget.
Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia retained language in a spending bill that prevents grant recipients of the Legal Services Corp. from litigating in support of abortion, according to LifeNews.com. Obama recommended repealing the restriction when he submitted his budget in May.
Also in this edition: Surrogacy for British couples growing in India, PPFA hire to promote abortion overseas and New social networking site aids pro-life teens.
Mollohan, however, refused to include the president’s proposal in the bill he drafted as chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies of the House Appropriations Committee. Abortion rights advocates may challenge the language during likely debate the week of June 15-19, LifeNews reported.
The federally funded Legal Services Corp. describes itself as the country’s “largest provider of civil legal aid for the poor.”
Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, told LifeNews the effort by Obama to rescind the restriction on abortion-litigation funding is another example of his administration’s “relentless, step-by-step, week-by-week advancing of the pro-abortion agenda, even as it distracts the gullible with chatter about how they are seeking ‘common ground’ and ‘abortion reduction.’ We say, ‘Watch what they are doing, not what they are saying.’”
Mollohan, a pro-life leader among congressional Democrats, also maintained in the bill a prohibition on funding of abortions for federal prisoners.
Surrogacy for British couples growing in India
An Indian surrogate is giving birth to a baby for a British couple every two days in one Mumbai doctor’s practice.
The report by the London Evening Standard demonstrates the growing popularity of surrogate motherhood in India. Indian women increasingly are carrying babies conceived by in vitro fertilization performed with the sperm and eggs of British couples. The women deliver the babies and surrender them to the genetic parents, who take them home to rear them.
Anita Soni, an obstetrician at a Mumbai hospital, says she delivers more than 15 babies a month from Indian women for British couples, according to the Evening Standard. Recently, she delivered twins carried by a Gujarati woman for Chris and Susan Morrison, a childless London couple. The Morrisons paid the surrogate mother about $13,000.
Soni said such an amount “is life-changing” for the Indian surrogates. “It helps them set up a home, get their daughters married or something like that. There is absolutely no exploitation of these women. It is really big money. It is a jackpot.
“They go through a little bit of emotional trauma, but then they go back home and they [realize] they have done it for a good cause,” Soni said.
It’s not that harmless, says American bioethics specialist Wesley Smith.
“It is very disturbing to see well off Westerners with such a sense of entitlement that they think it is perfectly fine to use poor women as so many brood mares,” Smith wrote on his weblog June 13.
“And what about the well being of the birth mothers: What psychic cost do they pay to gestate children and then have them taken away, never to be seen again – perhaps never to be ever known about by the children they bore? And what if something went wrong and the surrogate lost her health, her fecundity or her life? Or what if the baby was born with a disability and the parents ‘change their minds?’ There is a lot more involved here than the joy of the parents.”
PPFA hire to promote abortion overseas
Planned Parenthood has hired a State Department official to advocate for abortion overseas in the wake of a restoration of federal funding for organizations that promote or perform the procedure internationally.
Jeff Meer, who has served as a career foreign service officer at the State Department and participated in three international population conferences, is the new director of international advocacy for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). The announcement was made in a June 15 email to PPFA supporters by Veena Siddharth, vice president of international programs, LifeNews.com reported.
In January, President Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, which prohibited international family planning organizations from receiving federal funds unless they agree not to perform or counsel for abortion, or lobby in order to liberalize the pro-life policies of foreign governments.
The International Planned Parenthood Federation was one of two organizations that refused to abide by the Mexico City Policy in recent years and consequently was refused the funds, according to Democrats for Life of America (DFLA). There were 650 organizations that accepted federal money under the restrictions, DLFA reported.
PPFA is the United States’ No. 1 abortion provider. Its affiliates performed more than 305,000 abortions in 2007, the most recent year for which statistics are available. The organization’s total revenue reached $1.04 billion in the most recent financial year, which extended from July 2007 to June 2008. More than $349 million of that figure came in government grants and contracts.
New social networking site aids pro-life teens
A new social networking, online site is seeking to produce a generation of pro-life teenagers.
Teens for Life (www.teensforlife.com) provides a variety of features to help teens learn about abortion, as well as other sanctity of life issues, and to take a stand for the pro-life cause.
“This is the first time that the pro-life movement has actively embraced the power of social networking for the purpose of raising up a new generation of leaders,” said Mike Fichter, the site’s editor. “The future of the pro-life movement is here, and we’re giving it a voice of its own.”
Teens for Life is a national outreach of the Indiana Right to Life Education Fund.
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