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Do not be deceived.  Obama, the President, is a wicked fool, blindly or otherwise (satanically) engaged in denigrating fertility and expanding the butchery of the innocent. -MBray

President Obama's Pro-Abortion Legal Counsel Pick Sees Pregnancy as Slavery

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor

February 23, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- With his appointment of Dawn Johnsen, a former NARAL attorney, as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of the Legal Counsel, pro-life advocates already know they are getting an abortion advocate in the position. But, Johnsen goes further and views pregnancy as slavery.

Johnsen is a professor at the Indiana University School of Law, but she is also a longtime abortion advocate and worked for one of the leading abortion advocacy groups.

Johnsen was the Legal Director for NARAL from 1988-1993.

In an article at National Review, Andrew McCarthy describes the importance of the Office of Legal Counsel.

"OLC, a critically important agency, is the administration’s lawyers’ lawyer," he says. "It authoritatively interprets the law for the attorney general and, in doing so, drives administration legal policy."

"OLC’s credibility is derived from its reputation for apolitical, academic discipline ­ its commitment to informing policymakers of what the law is, rather than what staffers believe the law should be. Johnsen is, for that reason, a poor fit: She is an ideologue, and an unabashed one," he explains.

McCarthy says that Johnsen's view of pregnancy as slavery wasn't just an off-the-cuff remark.

"It was her considered position in a 1989 brief filed in the Supreme Court," he explains, and the legal papers she filed concerned a Missouri law banning taxpayer funding of abortions.

In the papers, Johnsen said that any restriction that makes abortion less accessible is, in her view, tantamount to “involuntary servitude” because it “requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest [in the life of the unborn].”

In effect, a woman “is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not her own: the state has conscripted her body for its own ends.” Such “forced pregnancy,” she contends, violates the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibits slavery.

"The Court rejected this farcical theory, just as it has rejected other instantiations of Johnsen’s extremism," McCarthy explains in his National Review column.

"In reputable private law offices and U.S. attorney’s offices throughout the country, adult supervision would prevent such a lunatic analogy from finding its way into a letter to a lower-court judge, much less into a Supreme Court brief," he added. "Obama, however, is proposing that Johnsen be the adult supervision at Justice. He would fill a position calling for dispassionate rigor with a crusader for whom strident excess is habitual."

Johnsen goes further and she insisted in her legal papers that, without government-provided abortion counseling, a large number of women would be left without “proper information about contraception.” This, she claimed, would mean they “cannot be said to have a meaningful opportunity to avoid pregnancy.”

McCarthy responds: "The usual rejoinder to such reasoning is that nobody is forcing these women to have sex."

He also explains that, with Johnsen giving the president legal advice, she will surely tell him that any judicial pick -- from Supreme Court on down -- must adhere to a pro-abortion mantra.

"Moreover, as she declaimed in a 2006 op-ed opposing Samuel Alito’s confirmation, opposition to all restrictions on abortion ­ not just acceptance of Roe v. Wade ­ should be a litmus test for judicial nominees," McCarthy says.

Johnsen wrote: "The notion of legal restrictions as some kind of reasonable ‘compromise’ ­ perhaps to help make abortion ‘safe, legal, and rare proves nonsensical.”

Ultimately, McCarthy says he understands the attraction Johnsen has for Obama.

"Johnsen’s attraction for Obama is obvious. The principal target of her Webster brief was the settled principle that the Constitution’s recognition of various fundamental rights (and the judicial invention of such 'rights' as abortion) does not confer an entitlement to governmental aid to exercise those rights," he explains. "For Johnsen, this is anathema, the denial of 'economic justice' and thus of equal protection."

"In Dawn Johnsen’s dizzying jurisprudence, government has no business invading individual privacy and regulating abortion but is obliged to coerce taxpayers into underwriting abortions as a first step in what she unapologetically calls 'the progressive agenda' of 'universal health care,'" McCarthy adds.

Economic justice is a favorite phrase of Obama's and universal health care is one of his prime goals.
ACTION: Contact members of the Senate at http://www.senate.gov and urge strong opposition to Johnsen's appointment.

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White House Officials Admit Abortion, Tiller Holding Up Kathleen Sebelius Pick

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- White House officials have acknowledged that abortion and the controversy surrounding embattled late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller are holding up President Barack Obama's potential selection of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to become the next Health Secretary.


As LifeNews.com previously reported, White House aides told the New York Times last week that Obama had settled on naming the pro-abortion governor as his top health official.


Following the news, pro-life groups launched an all-out blitz to highlight Sebelius' extreme pro-abortion views and her cozy relationship with Tiller, one of the few to do abortions so late in pregnancy.


Yesterday, a district court judge dismissed an effort by Tiller's attorneys to throw out charges the state attorney general has filed against him for allegedly doing illegal abortions. Now, White House officials tell CBN News that abortion and the Tiller-Sebelius connection are causing pause when considering Sebelius for the Cabinet post.


CBN News White House correspondent David Brody indicates that a senior Obama administration official confirmed that "concerns voiced by pro-life groups about potential HHS Secretary Nominee Kathleen Sebelius have come up in high level White House discussions but it has not disqualified her from the job."


The official also admitted that "Tiller’s name has come up in discussions and acknowledges that if she’s picked there will be people gunning for her, but that ultimately the Kansas Governor is getting a bum rap on the abortion issue."

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House OKs Spending Bill With UNFPA-Forced Abortion Funds, Abstinence Cuts


Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The House of Representatives wasted little time in approving the Omnibus Appropriations Bill to fund government operations for the rest of the 2009 fiscal year.


The bill contains language restoring taxpayer funding of the United Nations Population Fund, which supports China's forced abortion program.


The measure, H.R. 1105, contains language that would restore the money President Bush withheld from the UNFPA because of its abortion activities.


Several investigations have shown the UNFPA to work hand-in-hand with the family planning officials in China that enforce its coercive one-child policy with forced abortions and sterilizations as well as other human rights abuses.


Every year during his presidency, President Bush withheld tens of millions in taxpayer funds from the UNFPA, but Congressional Democrats, with a friend in Barack Obama in the White House, have restored the funds.


The bill was brought to the House floor under a closed rule that prohibited pro-life Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, from submitting amendments to either stop funding the UNFPA or restore the Mexico City Policy that Obama rescinded. The House adopted the rule and then passed H.R. 1105 by a vote of 245-178.

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Senate Judiciary Committee Backs Pro-Abortion Obama Justice Pick David Ogden

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General.


The panel voted for the pro-abortion nominee President Barack Obama put forward even though pro-life groups opposed him because of his pro-abortion views.


The 14-5 vote saw all of the Democrats on the panel approve of Ogden's nomination while five pro-life Republicans joined together in opposition to him.


Those opposing Ogden were Republican Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, John Cornyn of Texas, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Jeff Sessions of Alabama.


"Mr. Ogden has consistently taken very liberal positions over a long period of time on issues that are very important to me," Hatch said about why he opposed the nominee. "The pattern here is so consistent and the record is so long that it does give me pause."


Sen. Arlen Specter voted for Ogden but admitted that the committee had received 11,000 phone calls, letters, and emails opposing his nomination.


The Senate has not yet scheduled a vote on the Ogden nomination, but that could come within a matter of days. When it does vote, Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, told LifeNews.com he hopes senators vote him down.

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