The Long Road to Change: You Win Some, You Lose Some

As reported in Obama Ends Global Family Planning Restrictions by Julie Rovner (NPR), president Obama issued an executive order “rescinding a policy that since 2001 has barred U.S. financial aid to international family planning groups that “perform or promote” abortion.” That now-rescinded “global gag order” was also broadly used to funnel public funding to organizations whose primary measure in family planning was abstinence, with the expected scintillating results.[1] This is fantastic news, despite pro-life opponents deriding it as a “pro-abortion” policy. That epithet has always been a hideously unfair characterization of the views of people whose interest is in the well-being and safety of all concerned instead of a mindless obsession on preserving the newest and least-formed of all of the lives in a conception.[2]

On the other hand, Obama Sides With Bush in Spy Case by David Kravets (Wired) reports a major—though unsurprising—defeat on the civil liberties front. The Obama administration is fully in agreement with the Bush administration that warrantless wiretaps of American and foreign citizens is a power due a president in these trying times—the Constitution be damned. This is unsurprising as Obama supported legal immunity for the telecoms companies that abetted the Bush administration in their eavesdropping, which doubtless continues unabated today. Thank goodness we’ve got a constitutional scholar in the White House to defend our rights.[3]