Pro-Life Group Upset with Bush's U.N. Funding Decision

President Bush is now accused of exhibiting conduct unbecoming of one professing to be pro-life.
by Bill Fancher and Rusty Pugh

(AgapePress) - Once again, President Bush's pro-life leanings are being questioned by one of the leading pro-life organizations in the country.

Judie Brown is president of American Life League. Since before President George W. Bush was elected, she has been challenging claims that he is pro-life. She points out the fact that he has compromised on pro-life issues such as stem-cell research and has appointed at least two national health agency leaders who are not "pro-life friendly." And now she says he has stabbed pro-lifers in the back again.

Brown is referring to Bush's recent decision to direct $34 million in government funds - earmarked originally for the United Nations Population Fund, an agency that has come under strong criticism for using taxpayer money to support abortion and sterilization policies in China - to the USAID Child Survival and Health Program Fund. That fund, according to Brown, provides what it describes as "contraceptive commodities ... necessary for reproductive health programs." Brown says that is a misleading.

"These 'contraceptive commodities' are nothing but abortion-inducing chemicals that kill the very children that the fund claims to help," Brown says. "What [Bush] has given to pro-lifers with one hand [by denying the funds to the U.N. agency], he has taken away with the other."

Brown says the situation with the president's supposed pro-life stance reminds her of some advice her mother handed out. "My mother said to me, 'Just remember, your children are not going to do what you say, they're going to do what they see you do.' And the same thing applies with the president," Brown says, "or anybody else who calls [himself] 'pro-life'."

"It isn't the words that are used, it's how do they act - and the man has never acted pro-life."

Brown is afraid that unless pressure is continually applied to the Bush Administration, what few pro-life actions it might take in the future are in doubt.

Obvious Results

While Brown and others are doubting the consistency of President Bush's pro-life stance, one Virginia pro-life activist has no doubt about one thing: when a Christian shows up in front of an abortion clinic, babies will be saved.

Dennis Green is director of Life and Liberty Ministries of Petersburg, Virginia. As an experienced sidewalk counselor, he says most young women entering an abortion clinic have never had anyone tell them that killing their child is wrong.

Green says the simple act of talking to these women often results in the saving of innocent lives.

"Some days you'll have two or three babies saved - some days you wonder if you've made a difference," Green says. "But the idea is to be here to offer that help and to say that it's not right to kill your child. And girls, when they come in, sometimes that's what they're waiting to hear - and when someone's willing to tell them that and say 'Hey, we'll be here for you,' they'll let the baby live."

Green says there is no hidden secret to saving babies from abortion. He just knows that when Christians show up, lives are save. As he puts it: "It's just a matter of the Church being the Church."

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