Politics

The President’s Deeply Dishonest Statement about Life

Near the end of President Obama’s State of the Union Address, he said something deeply dishonest. I’m sure he doesn’t view it as dishonest, but it is nevertheless. In his own words:

I want our actions to tell every child, in every neighborhood: your life matters, and we are as committed to improving your life chances as we are for our own kids.

Does the President really want to tell “every child” that their life matters? That he wants to improve their “life chances”? How can he say such a thing when he actively supports policies that exclude a whole class of children from the human community? How can he say such a thing when he believes it is a Constitutional right to kill one particular class of children? President Obama believes that there is a Constitutional right to kill any child in the womb at any stage of gestation (from 0-9 months) for any or no reason at all.

What is even more cynical about the President’s words is that he delivers them on the same day that his administration issues a policy statement rejecting the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.” This act would not outlaw all abortions but would seek to limit those performed on unborn children capable of feeling pain during the procedure. Why the rejection? His administration opposes the bill because it…

…would unacceptably restrict women’s health and reproductive rights and is an assault on a woman’s right to choose. Women should be able to make their own choices about their bodies and their health care, and Government should not inject itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctor.

Where is the concern for “every child” being able to know that their life matters? Where is the burden to improve the “life chances” of unborn children? Nowhere. In fact, his administration doesn’t even acknowledge that they are a part of the moral equation. Rather, his administration cites “reproductive rights” and the “right to choose” as if they are absolute and inviolable rights. Bottom line: He believes that unborn children are nothing. Even if they feel pain while the abortionist rips them limb from limb, his administration refuses to acknowledge their lives in any way.

This week marks the 42nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. Roe v. Wade has presided over the deaths of 60 million children since 1973. That is the holocaust times ten. Abortion-on-demand is without question the greatest human rights crisis of our time, and President Obama acknowledges none of it. His administration issues a policy statement with more of the same old discredited feminist tropes, and then on the same day has the audacity to claim a concern for the life of “every child” as if their “life matters.” Well clearly President Obama’s words aren’t true when it comes to children in the womb. If he has to choose between limiting “reproductive freedom” and a regime that allows children to be torn limb from limb, he chooses the latter.

The President may not be able to bring himself to acknowledge the babies, but we should. Their lives matter whether the President recognizes it or not.

25 Comments

  • Chris Ryan

    He’s only being dishonest if he believes life begins at conception. There’s just no Biblical support for that idea, and its a notion that only became popular with us evangelicals with the election of Ronald Reagan…That being said, we’re all entitled to our beliefs, but a theological disagreement with the right wing doesn’t make him dishonest.

    • Seth Fuller

      >He’s only being dishonest if he believes life begins at conception.

      …or at any point afterwards while the child is in the womb. The facts are that Obama believes that life begins in the womb, but he does not believe that that life has the same rights as those who live outside of the womb. To him an unborn child is a “viable fetus,” meaning that the child has life, but is not to be considered as fully human, therefore they do not have the same rights as those outside the womb. In fact he has used the terms “fetus” and “child” interchangeably. So it is not a question about conception. It is a question about how he values life inside the womb, which, although he believes is a “child,” he considers that child to be subject to the will of the mother. So it is dishonest of Obama in the sense that, because he does consider life in the womb to be a child, to say that he wants “every child” to know their life matters and that he wants to improve their “life chances” is enormously hypocritical, because abortion laws, which he emphatically supports, *decrease* rather than increase a child’s chance to live.

      • Paul Reed

        Agreed, and the rights of the child to live are more important that a mother’s to control her own body. When men give up their bodily autonomy to serve in the military, they are entitled to veterans benefits for life. We need to force women to gestate babies in some circumstance to protect life, so perhaps they are entitled to some benefits as well.

    • Christiane Smith

      Hi CHRIS RYAN,
      I listened to that speech carefully, and what I heard was the President speak about how we could all celebrate that teen pregnancies and abortion numbers were DOWN. I’m sure that doesn’t please everyone, but I think it’s very good news for our country.
      I am encouraged and hopeful by this report, yes.

      • Mary Ripley

        Hi Christine, Unfortunately the lower abortion rate doesn’t mean less children are being aborted. Abortions by means of the morning after pill are no longer counted in the abortion tallies, so we don’t really know that abortions numbers have come down.

    • Paul Reed

      That’s true on abortion, but birth control of any form was almost universally thought wrong by all but a fringe until Margaret Sanger and some other groups came around in the 1920s and started saying otherwise. In 1900, you could walk inside in mainstream church in America, and virtually every one would agree that condom use is wrong. I think in the 1980s we tried to give them some scientific support, but to act like this is a new attitude among evangelicals is just flat out wrong. America’s views on birth control are such a wide deviation from normalcy, and we don’t even realize it.

    • Tim Elliott

      No, Chris, he is being dishonest. He supports the rights of so-called same-sex “parents” over the rights of the children every time. Every child has the right to both a mother and father.

      • James Stanton

        This is like saying every American has a right to affordable healthcare. Sure, we’d like every child to have a stable family structure with a father and mother present but it doesn’t work like that in the real world. A child growing up in a same-sex household is just someone else in need of the Gospel.

    • Christy Smith

      “There’s no biblical support for that idea”??? I’m sorry, but that statement is just so untrue. I cannot be held in the same “us” you speak of. Here are some Biblical supports:

      Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

      Psalm 139:13-16 “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

      Genesis 30:22 “Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb.”

      Genesis 25:21 “And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren. And the Lord granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived.”

      Luke 1:31-35 “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.”

      Luke 1:36 “And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren.”

      Luke 1:39-44 “In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

      Job 10:8-12 “Your hands fashioned and made me, and now you have destroyed me altogether. Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit.”

      Just to quote a few. So please, don’t place me in the same category as you who would choose to believe that conception is just a political idea. It is a Biblical truth!

    • Tom Winans

      Respectfully there is plenty of Biblical support for life beginning at conception … Jer 1.5: “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb.” Any argument to the contrary should not appeal to modern day evangelicals that created their own morality … God gets credit for such.

      In all fairness, however (and I did not hear or read the full transcript of Mr. Obama’s address) I would take care to not turn what was a statement scoped post-womb and make it in or pre-womb.

  • Christiane Smith

    I remember a time when one of the premiere children’s hospitals in Virginia came under the attack of a governor who withdrew needed funding . . . important because that particular hospital was a center for neonatal intensive care especially for preemies. That governor is now in prison for other reasons, but the point is that he was elected because he said that he supported ‘life’ and then the voters found out that he was capable of such a direct attack on a facility that actively keeps infants alive who, without support, would perish.

    I’m not sure about ‘politics’ anymore, or what we can ‘count on’ that politicians say in order to get our votes, but there is so much MORE to the ‘dignity of human life’ than any political party has yet to recognize. That is why the Church’s voice is so very needed.

    And the Church must be a voice for ‘life’ in all of its stages from conception to natural death. It is that ‘integrity’ that is so important.
    The voice of the Church MUST reflect the One of Whom it was said in the Holy Gospel of St. Matthew, this:
    “For He was teaching them as One having power, and not as the scribes and Pharisees.”

  • Daniel Moody

    Obama’s comment relates to the legal redefinition of parenthood, as achieved through redefining legal marriage. When he says ‘every child’ he means ‘not just our own children, but other people’s children too’. It is the State giving itself permission to interfere with your family.

  • James Harold Thomas

    “Government should not inject itself into decisions …”

    Funny how easily an ideology can change for whatever issue is at hand.

    • Ian Shaw

      Which is ironic because statistically speaking, African-Americans have a very large percentage of children born out of wedlock as well

  • Curt Day

    Even if he was just referring to those children who have been born, he was being dishonest in what he said.

    But we should expect such dishonesty. That is because theme of every State Of The Union Address is this: We must be praised!

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