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.

The definition of peace now includes the promotion of environments that avoid conflicts over land and natural resources. Al Gore and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) will share the prize jointly. Al ore is going to donate his $1.5 million winnings to helping to counteract global warming.

CNN International did a great piece today on it, and was fair enough to refute the falsehoods of this one conservative commentator who tried to pass off the old lie that there isn’t a consensus on global warming. Good for CNN International. The regular CNN often lets guest commentators use it as a bully pulpit to spew biased propaganda, and I’m glad that the company at least knows that the global community doesn’t appreciate a program that lets anyone come on and say anything without substantiation.

Today is such a great day.

The issue came up at a meeting in Vienna for the European Society of Cardiology. Shocker, that. The Discovery web site has an article about it here.

What is shocking is that this wasn’t news during the massive heat wave of 2003, when 35,000 people died in Europe, many of them the sick, the elderly, or others with undiagnosed health problems. That number was well above the normal expected deaths from heatstroke and cardiovascular failure from heat exhaustion.

Once the North Pole reaches that tipping point - when the amount of dark warmer water is heating up the ice so much that there is no way to reverse the melting trend - it will cause a chain reaction of events that will result in all of the other nasty effects that scientists have warned the public about for years…with one notable exception.

It’s going to be a long, long, long, hot summer.

Just something to think about.

Another example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. Chavez is trying to change Venezuela’s constitution to eliminate term limits so that he can run for president again in 2012 (and presumably in every election thereafter until he dies).

Here at Christian Leftist, I try to point out the upsides and downsides to any and all systems of government, although I obviously have access to more news on American democracy than anything else. Chavez is not a true leftist because he is ultra-authoritarian; anyone who curtails civil liberties while espousing economic egalitarianism is not an egalitarian but a despot who seeks to slowly acquire all political power within his sphere of influence.

Anyway, here’s the article from the New York Times.