A new Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans oppose President Obama’s Jan. 23 executive order reinstating taxpayer funding for oversea’s abortions.
According to Gallup, “Obama’s decision to reverse the prohibition on funding for overseas family-planning providers may be the least popular thing he has done so far. This was an executive order that forbade federal government money from going to overseas family-planning groups that provide abortions or offer abortion counseling. Fifty-eight percent of Americans disapprove of Obama’s decision to lift this ban, while only 35% approve of it.”
The ban was originally put in place by President Ronald Reagan, then lifted by President Bill Clinton and reinstated by President George W. Bush.
Upon lifting the ban, President Obama said, “For too long, international family planning assistance has been used as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back and forth debate that has served only to divide us. I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate.”
Yet, for at least 58% of the population, it’s a debate worth having. Given the problems facing our own economy, it isn’t surprising that a majority of Americans reject the idea that their own tax dollars are going toward killing babies abroad. It’s morally wrong, it’s bad foreign policy, and to borrow a phrase from Johannesburg Archbishop Buti Joseph Tlhagale it’s “biological colonialism.”
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