So much for the idea that President-elect Barack Obama is a closet pro-lifer.

This notion is being comprehensively disproved by the continuing string of appointments of people with strongly pro-abortion views to Obama’s cabinet and White House staff.

The most compelling evidence to date is the choice of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) as Obama’s Secretary of State and the selection of Ellen Moran, executive director of EMILY’s List, as his White House communications director.

I was present as a journalist at a 1999 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) conference in The Hague, Netherlands, at which then-UNFPA Executive Director Nafis Sadik introduced Clinton as “the First Lady of the World.”

The primary reason for that effusive introduction was not lost on any of the almost exclusively pro-abortion participants who had been invited to the conference by the UNFPA: Sadik’s salutation was given in recognition of Hillary’s unstinting promotion of global abortion rights throughout husband Bill’s presidency.

In fact, perhaps the strongest testimony to Obama’s abortion extremism is the fact that NARAL Pro-Choice America endorsed him for president this year over Hillary, who for decades has been one of the abortion lobby’s favorite politicians.

The appointment of Moran is even stronger evidence of Obama’s determination to advance the abortion lobby’s agenda. EMILY’s list exists specifically for the purpose of funding the election campaigns of pro-abortion politicians in order to secure political objectives such as passage of the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) and the appointment of pro-abortion judges to the Supreme Court — both of which Obama has promised to advance.

Or, to put the matter in a slightly different way, what message is Obama trying to “communicate” by making a career abortion lobbyist his communications director? We think even Doug Kmiec should be able to figure out that it’s not a pro-life message that’s being communicated.

— Tom McFeely