special edition
BUSH’S PRO-LIFE RECORD: Some people argue that President George W. Bush is enthusiastically pro-life. President Bush’s record speaks for itself:
- Bush appointed an almost wholly pro-abortion cabinet. His “pro-life” cabinet members during his first term include former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson at HHS, who supports human embryo research, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
- Bush broke his campaign promise and authorized funding for human embryonic stem cell research. The supposedly “narrow” policy is managed by Thompson and has expanded, just as he supported it in Wisconsin.
- Bush’s appointed National Institute of Health director, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, is a pioneer in embryonic stem cell research.
- As a consequence of Thompson’s appointment, HHS has done nothing about the highly irregular approval of RU-486 during the Clinton administration.
- President Bush appointed pro-aborts to his bioethics council, which produced a split opinion on human cloning stating the commission could not come to a consensus on the “moral status of the human embryo.” His handpicked bioethicists confirmed the ludicrous claim of Roe v. Wade that scientific and ethical experts cannot come to consensus on when life begins. Though this is absurd in any authentic representation of science or ethics, it has allowed the administration political cover behind their so-called “experts.”
- Despite his well-publicized statement that he was completely opposed to all human cloning, Bush blocked a vote on the Brownback/Landreiu amendment in the Senate to ban the patenting of human embryos.
- The Bush administration’s attorney was on the wrong side of the NOW v. Scheidler case, intervening on behalf of the plaintiffs in the racketeering suit against Joseph Scheidler and other pro-life activists. The U.S. Solicitor General agreed that there were grounds for considering clinic blockades a form of extortion.
- Despite his statements regarding the sanctity of human life, Bush positively requires a legal freedom of killing preborns when the children are conceived in rape, incest, or when their mothers’ lives are allegedly in danger due to their pregnancy (which is medically never the case).
- On the subject of contraceptives and abortifacients, Bush has maintained millions in funding for Planned Parenthood, and has signed hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for abortifacient chemicals worldwide. His Mexico City policy permits such funding to go to government family planning programs that promote abortion as long as they “segregate” the funds. In both 2002 and 2003, the Bush administration approved USAID population control funding of $446.5 million, higher than the $425.0 million Clinton approved for 2001.
- Bush approved an expanded Medicaid coverage of abortifacients in New York.
- His AIDS package provides $15 billion for potential payments to overseas organizations that promote abortion including the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
- Bush’s White House counsel (and attorney general nominee), Alberto Gonzales, is being whispered to be “on the short list” as a possible nominee for the Supreme Court should there be a vacancy. As a Texas Supreme Court justice, Gonzales voted to authorize abortion for teenagers without parental involvement, and other rulings during his tenure on the court raise doubts about how he would rule on life-related matters if he were confirmed as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.
- Bush’s 2004 budget request for Title X of the Public Health Service Act, is $264 million, or $11 million more than the program was appropriated during Bill Clinton’s last year in office. Planned Parenthood alone expended nearly $59 million from this program in fiscal year 2001.
- Bush’s 2004 budget request for international population control programs/USAID is $425 million, plus an additional $25 million set aside for the U.N. Population Fund if it becomes eligible for U.S. funding. During the last year Clinton was in office, USAID population control programs were appropriated $425 million.