Last week during his visit with Pope Benedict XVI, Barack Obama made the ludicrous claim that he “wants fewer abortions” and “would work to limit how many abortions take place each year in the United States”.  Now I suppose that the Pope doesn’t spend a lot of time paying attention to United States politics or he would have realized that Obama was telling a bald-faced lie, and Benedict would have whacked him with the papal scepter or pronounced anathema upon him.  As a card-carrying Calvinist Presbyterian myself, I’m not really sure how the Catholics deal with such things (and since Obama claims to be a Protestant himself, I suppose Catholic doctrine doesn’t apply to him anyway).  But at minimum, the Pope should have immediately called him on his lie.

Barack Obama is not only pro-abortion, but he has repeatedly proven himself to be an abortion extremist, and any claims that he wants “fewer abortions” are plainly disproven by his extensive track record that clearly demonstrates his fondness for pro-abortion policies.  In the forthcoming edition of the Weekly Standard, Marjorie Dannenfelser reminds us of Obama’s extremism:

But by now, nearly six months in, the bottom line for Barack Obama is clear. After making a few polite noises about finding “common ground” with pro-lifers, his administration has shown zero interest in doing so. Instead, the Obama agenda is to weave government-backed abortion into the fabric of American life and make it a far more integral part of domestic and foreign policy than ever before.

From virtually the day he stepped into the Oval Office, Obama has pushed every pro-abortion button possible.  Under a plethora of euphemisms such as “reproductive health,” the Obama administration has promoted public spending for infanticide, including those policies that fund abortions overseas.  Dannenfelser reminds us that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is complicit in this strategy:

This vision will be aggressively promoted abroad by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She recently testified that the administration is promoting “reproductive health,” which the secretary acknowledged includes “access to abortion.” Recently, the House passed the Foreign Affairs Authorization Act, which if agreed to by the Senate will establish an Office of Global Women’s Issues that will deal with “international women’s issues.” When New Jersey congressman Chris Smith offered an amendment to prohibit the new Office of Global Women’s Issues from promoting abortion, he was voted down in committee and the leadership refused to allow the House of Representatives to consider his amendment on the floor.

And Obama continues his anti-life crusade with his appointments.  While Sonia Sotomayor appears to have avoided abortion-related cases in her judicial life prior to her Supreme Court appointment, Obama’s Surgeon General nominee, Regina Benjamin, has not avoided the issue.  While the press’s attention is likely to be focused upon Benjamin’s family background and the tragedy that has befallen her mother, father and brother, they are less likely to focus on the fact that she has pressed for more doctors to be trained in performing abortions.  Lifenews.com reports:

Benjamin is also on the board of directors of Physicians for Human Rights, an organization which has spoken out against illegal abortions in many nations across the world. The group has relied on disputed statistics on maternal deaths from abortions to call for legalization.

The group also called on President Bush not to expand the Mexico City Policy, which President Obama overturned in January, that stops sending taxpayer dollars to groups that promote and perform abortions in other nations.

And it asked President Bush to ratify the CEDAW treaty that does not include abortion promotion but has been used by the United Nations to pressure numerous countries to legal abortion or expand abortions further.

President Obama had a lot of nerve to appear before the Pope in the first place, given his past history of anti-life policies.  But to make a claim that he desires fewer abortions is itself an abortion of the truth.