Alternet: Obama's other family-planning move

It's good to have some good news to report on the new administration besides "Bush is gone"! Let's all hope this is a trend that will extend to the other mass murderous campaigns left over from the last administration, Afghanistan and Iraq.--Pete

By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly

President Obama's decision to repeal the global gag rule ("Mexico City Policy") will make a huge difference in the lives of countless families around the world. With a stroke of a pen, Obama has taken a key step towards advancing international family planning and women's health.

But let's also note the other important move Obama made on family planning yesterday.

In a related move, Obama also said he would restore funding to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA). Both he and Clinton had pledged to reverse a Bush administration determination that assistance to the organization violated U.S. law known as the Kemp-Kasten amendment.

Obama, in his statement, said he looked forward to working with Congress to fulfill that promise: "By resuming funding to UNFPA, the U.S. will be joining 180 other donor nations working collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries."

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, said: "The president's actions send a strong message about his leadership and his desire to support causes that will promote peace and dignity, equality for women and girls and economic development in the poorest regions of the world."

Indeed, it does more than just send a message; by restoring UNFPA funding, Obama is poised to save some lives.

This never should have been controversial. In Bush's first term, the former president intended to maintain UNFPA funding at Clinton-era levels. Then- Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "We recognize that UNFPA does invaluable work through its programs in maternal and child health care, voluntary family planning, screening for reproductive tract cancers, breast-feeding promotion and HIV/AIDS prevention." The administration sought the money, and Congress overwhelmingly approved it.

And then, some right-wing activists with the Bush administration's ear, starting complaining bitterly. Since its inception in 1969, the Fund has won widespread recognition for its work in improving the lives of women in developing countries, but for far-right leaders, most notably in the religious right, UNFPA is a pro-abortion enterprise that supports China's one-child policy.

Bush put a hold on the money he'd already requested and received, so he could investigate UNFPA's work in China. When international investigators and a U.S. team found "no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization" in China, Bush suppressed the findings and blocked the funding anyway. It's a callous, twisted position he maintained for the rest of his terms in office.

Because of Bush's actions on UNFPA, fewer women in developing countries received pre-natal care, fewer doctors were trained to deal with pregnancy complications, fewer HIV prevention programs could operate, and less medical equipment was made available to expectant mothers.

Obama is going to make this right.

© 2009 Washington Monthly All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/122428/

Christ Kills Two, Injures Seven In Abortion-Clinic Attack (Satire)

HUNTSVILLE, AL–Jesus Christ, son of God and noted pro-life activist, killed two and critically wounded seven others when He opened fire in the waiting room of a Huntsville abortion clinic Tuesday.

Enlarge Image

A U.S. Marshal leads Christ to a holding cell. Inset: One of the injured is loaded into an ambulance.

Security guards at the Women's Medical Clinic of Huntsville were able to disarm the Messiah before He could reload His weapon, a secondhand Glock 9mm pistol that authorities said He purchased legally at a Jackson, MS, sporting-goods store. "Abortion is a sin," said Christ as He was led away in handcuffs. "It is an abomination in the eyes of Me." Witnesses said the attack, which took the lives of Dr. Nelson Woodring, 51, and clinic nurse Danielle Costa, 29, came from "out of nowhere."

"He walked up to the admissions desk and asked if He could see Dr. Woodring," receptionist Iris Reid said. "The next thing I knew, He was shouting Biblical verses and opening fire on everything moving."

"It was horrible," said injured clinic nurse Jessica Combs, recovering at a local hospital with bullet wounds to the leg and abdomen. "He put his hands over Dr. Woodring's head and told him He forgave him for his sins, and then He shot him right in the face." Huntsville police officials are not certain how the Messiah was able to bypass clinic guards and proceed undetected past security cameras and into the clinic waiting room, where He produced the gun from its hiding place in the folds of His robe. Federal investigators are similarly baffled, saying that the heavily armed Christ had moved in "mysterious ways."

Speaking to reporters from His holding cell, Christ, 33, said He had "no regrets" about what He had done.

"As I said in John 16:21, every life is precious," Christ said. "This means every life, not just those who have already been born. My father, the Lord, feels the same way I do. In Jeremiah 1:5, He said unto the prophet Jeremiah, 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.' The unborn fetus is a sacred, living creation of my Father in Heaven and should be treated as such."

Added Christ: "What if the Virgin Mary had decided to abort me? Certainly she must have been tempted to do so. After all, it wasn't even her decision to conceive me in the first place. But in the end, she made the right decision, bringing her pregnancy to term and giving the world a Savior. Blessed is she among women." According to legal experts, if convicted, Christ could face the death penalty.

Enlarge Image

Christ (second from right) leads pro-life demonstrators at a 1995 rally in Washington, D.C.

"The state of Alabama has the death penalty, and this crime is certainly the sort that would be construed as a capital offense," University of Michigan law professor Arthur Lipscomb said. "With the right judge and jury, Christ could very well be put to death yet again." In such a case, Lipscomb said, Alabama would likely use lethal injection rather than crucifixion. Christ said He is unafraid of the prospect of execution. "Those who know me know that I am willing to die for the sins of others, whether those sins be avarice, slothfulness, false idolatry or the butchering of unborn life," Christ said. "The bottom line is, abortion stops a beating heart." Tuesday's shooting is not Christ's first brush with the law. On April 8, 29, He was arrested in the Roman province of Judea for alleged false claims to the throne of the Kingdom of Israel. On Jan. 11, 1996, He and six other pro-life activists were jailed for blocking the entrance to a Cheektowaga, NY, abortion clinic. In October 1997, He was arrested for plotting to mail anthrax-laced packages to two dozen abortion doctors across the U.S. "Abortion is an abomination. It is a sin. It is murder," Christ said. "I only did what any good Christian would have done." Christ's followers have been overwhelmingly supportive of their leader.

"As it says in Psalm 139:13-16, 'For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body,'" said Ralph Anson of the Houston-based Every Life Is Precious. "Those people at that clinic were killers, and they deserved to die." "We may not understand everything He does, but we must believe it is for the best," said Rev. Joseph Abernathy, minister at First United Baptist Church of Huntsville. "As Christians, it is not our duty to question what our Savior does. We can only live according to His example.