Christian Leftist

Eight years and a day after Bush revived the law that prohibited the U.S. from giving governmental assistance to health clinics abroad that discuss abortion options or provide abortions abroad, President Obama overturned it with a stroke of the pen.

According to the L. A. Times:

President Reagan instituted the rule, also known as the “Mexico City policy,” in 1984, stating that the U.S. government would not contribute to groups that “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.”

The result, critics said, was that nongovernmental organizations working in the developing world could not refer women to safe abortion providers or even conduct family planning education campaigns that discussed the procedure.

This is one of the first acts of Obama’s presidency, and it signals to me and other progressives that he has not forgotten the most grievous of the past ills of the Bush Administration. Whether or not his White House will attempt to or even be able to dismantle all of the harm Bush has done remains to be seen. I would hope for an overal reversal, but I suspect that not allof the damage the neoconservatives have done in the name of so-called “patriotism” and “family values” will be as easy to erase from the legal system or our memories. Still, the future is looking better than it has for a long time now.

I think he will see us through this depression. I hope he will.

I could weep for joy. I have been waiting a third of my life for this day.

…Aaaand we’ve come full-circle.

I knew George W. Bush was going to give me a headache when in January 2001 he used his second day in office to deny African aid organizations U.S. funding if they chose to give women information about abortions. Never mind that the drugs to prevent spreading HIV to one’s unborn child weren’t usually available to women in poorer countries back then; they may not be now. The point was that regardless of the final decision women may have made, the mere action of discussing the option of aborting was enough to economically devastate non-profit aid groups who were giving health care to women who needed more than almost any other group in the world.

Now it appears that Dubya wasn’t done making his point.

Nicholas Kristof reported that USAID, or the United States Agency for International Development, has ordered that six African countries it serves not use any of its money to supply British aid organization Marie Stopes International with any condoms, I.U.D.s, birth control pills or any other contraceptive devices whatsoever.

The Bush Administration has falsely claimed that this action was a response to Marie Stopes Int’l.’s support of the Chinese government’s family-planning policies. Yes, China still madates that couples have only one child, and this law occasionally results in forced abortions, and it’s a horrible way to exert population control, but there is absolutely no evidence of MSI’s involvement or support for such measures. It’s outright dishonesty and misinformation.

GWB taking out the religious right’s issues with Planned Parenthood on some of the most vulnerable and destitute human beings in the world was not a responsible, moral, or ethical move seven years ago. It isn’t a good move now.

Oh, will the trail of underqualified, overly righteous, neo-conservative appointees from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell’s colleges who commit political suicide never end?

As for Randall Tobias, the Boston Globe article that describes his past controversial positions on AIDS treatment programs really says it all in the first sentence:

“Randall L. Tobias , the Bush administration official responsible for foreign assistance who resigned late Friday because of his use of an escort service allegedly involved in prostitution, was ridiculed as a hypocrite yesterday because he supported US policies that forced overseas organizations not to help prostitutes.”

This is what happens when people try to play the moral police. Whatever happened to loving the least of one’s brethren? People are going to have sex whether you think it’s right for them to do so or not. Why did the Bush administration assume that they themselves were infallible pillars of morality?

I really couldn’t care less if Tobias received ‘massages’ in a house not his own from the fingers of a woman not his wife, or what specific types of therapy those massages entailed. That’s his problem and God’s. It probably throws his personal character into doubt, but the fact is that as long as he didn’t use government property to do it, it’s solicitation at worst, because morals aren’t the same as ethics.

At least, they’re not supposed to be. Now, because Tobias has injected his personal religious beliefs (and those of the Bush administration) into policy, he has made himself look like a dogmatic imbecile and a fraud. Deservedly so, in my opinion, but the point remains that no one can or should judge another’s private sex life. Abstinence education is an oxymoron because it presumes that using unfounded conclusions from biased think tanks to tell people to control their biological urges is more sensible than teachingthem how to use condoms.