Pro-choice is too kind a word for Obama’s latest nominee
Get Ken Blackwell Feed
Dawn Johnsen is President Obama’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It’s arguably the most important office at DoJ. OLC sets policy for the entire federal government.
When not serving in government, Dawn Johnsen spent her career promoting abortion-on-demand. She denies there is even such a thing as partial-birth abortion. Even the term, she maintains, is “intentionally provocative.” She does not think that “progressives”—that’s PC-speak for liberal—should suggest that abortion is ever a tragedy.
Dawn Johnsen even rejects Bill Clinton’s slippery formulation: “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.” Dismiss for the moment that Bill and Hillary Clinton did everything they could in their eight years to promote abortion world-wide. The only places they made abortion rare were on the Moon and in Antarctica.
Even the Clintons’ basic premise was flawed. If abortion is “a fundamental constitutional right,” as they said in every official document, then why should it be rare? Is there any other fundamental constitutional right we want to be rare?
Hillary once said abortion is “wrong.” (Newsweek, Oct. 31, 1994). Only once. But she pressed governments around the world to legalize it. That’s an odd way to deal with something you think is wrong.
Dawn Johnsen doesn’t think abortion is wrong at all. She is all for it. She drafted the five lethal Executive Orders, which Bill Clinton signed within hours of taking the oath as president, to promote easier access to abortion. Clinton struck down Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City Doctrine, allowing U.S. funds to go to Planned Parenthood and the UN Fund for Population. This order sluiced money to abortionists worldwide and even, as in China, to those who force women to have abortions.
Bill Clinton struck down Reagan’s order to Planned Parenthood to separate their so-called family planning activities from their abortion facilities. Under Bill Clinton—and up until the current day—teens can take devices and pills out one door and, when these fail, they are hustled back into the revolving door to the abortion center.
Johnsen goes much further in her pro-abortion militancy than even the Clintons; than even President Obama. She worked for years to strip the Catholic Church of its tax-exempt status. Why? Because the Catholic Church has never wavered in its outspoken defense of unborn children. Dawn Johnsen was part of the Abortion Rights Mobilization (ARM ) that fought a legal battle for eight years in the courts.
ARM’s assault on religious liberty and free speech was the brainchild of Lawrence Lader, the co-founder of NARAL, for whom Johnsen also worked. Lader said “abortion is central to everything in life and how we want to live it.” Johnsen’s record puts her very much in that camp. She has even likened pregnancy to slavery.
The Catholic Church would not be the only target if Johnsen is confirmed. Many Protestant churches and associations take pro-life stances. These include the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), and The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). All of these church bodies could find themselves in the cross-hairs if Dawn Johnsen is confirmed.
We are very close to seeing a nationalized health care bill pass through Congress and sent to President Obama for signature. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) has signaled us that the final bill that is being “ping-ponged” back and forth between Speaker Pelosi’s office and Sen. Harry Reid’s likely will include federal funding for abortion on demand. That’s bad enough. But we can see that if churches object to funding for killing the unborn, they could be targeted by Dawn Johnsen at the Office of Legal Counsel.
Chief Justice John Marshall famously said in McCullough v. Maryland that “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” That’s what Dawn Johnsen tried to do for eight years to the Catholic Church in America. That’s what she could do to your church if she is confirmed by the Senate.
Fear of losing their tax-exempt status has for too long kept Christian pastors from speaking out on the grave moral issues of the day. It shouldn’t be, but it is so.
Because of Dawn Johnsen’s pro-abortion extremism, because she has sought to impose a “chilling effect” on religious free speech, because she has tried to destroy churches, this ACLU lawyer should be rejected by the U.S. Senate.
Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. He serves on the board of directors of the Club for Growth, National Taxpayers Union and National Rifle Association.
(8 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
Loading ...
Thanks for your excellent article, very eye-opening.
The first four comments above are immensely revealing. All negative, with whiffs of racism. It’s like they’re personally offended a black person could be conservative, and drawn to Mr. Blackwell’s post like flies.
Exactly.
That’s because he’s a clown and anyone who’s old enough to remember the 2004 election wants to see what nonsense he’s spewing. (I get a sense that most of the commenters here were in diapers then) There’s nothing conservative about Ken Blackwell. Never mind his (most UNconservative) involvement in ‘04 election shenanigans in Ohio (and every position he has acquired since is a direct reward for THAT gift to W), since when does forcing a woman to carry child to term, even when the fetus is deceased or her life is in danger conservative?
It seems the college Republicans have no idea what “conservative” means. A true conservative would not give a goddamn about a woman’s right to choose; a true conservative would forbid any discussion of it in a political forum. Because it’s not a political issue, it’s a privacy issue and a medical issue. A true fiscal conservative would never consider restricting abortion because it’s cost-effective. Unwanted children become wards of the state; in the long run it’s way cheaper to let the woman abort the unwanted fetus in the first place.
Live and let live, right? Get out of my bedroom, get out of my doctor’s office, get out of my church/synagogue/mosque. The founders separated church and state for a reason, and all you people who are so afraid of progress, and apparently see no problem with paying billions so that our poor brown kids can go to the other side of the globe to kill some other poor brown kids, are chipping away at one of the cornerstones of our constitution.
A lot of these comments have focused on religion. Once again, a true conservative would not allow any utterance of religion whatsoever in a policy discussion. It’s in the constitution; love it or leave it.
You forgot the LGBT plot to destroy America as we know it in your list of fantasy conspiracies.
the exemption of taxes is one of the important ways to keep a separation of church and state.although liberals would argue the point,churches do much more good for the less fortunate of our country than that same money could do when given to the government by taxation.it cost the government four dollars to give away one dollar.let the churches keep their money and do the good that they do,god bless ‘em,and while churches as a whole should refrain from political stances,their members as individuals have every right to express their views even at the polls
Liberals practice their politics as a religion. Note how the most passionate far left progressives are the ones who reject organized religion. They have not rejected God, they have replaced him. Telling a global warming alarmist that you doubt his faith is tantamount to heresy, which is why they cling to their beliefs so strongly despite evidence to the contrary.
Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. He serves on the board of directors of the Club for Growth, National Taxpayers Union and National Rifle Association.
Now why do I get the impression that your politics has become your religion?
“Now why do I get the impression that your politics has become your religion?”
I don’t know why you would…except that you’re clueless Lefty wingnut. Just sayin’…
Hey look, it’s the other black republican!
Wow Ken, you made sure Ohio went to Bush in ‘04 and all you got was this lousy column?
Nothing infuriates a white liberal more than a person of color who doesn’t do what he/she is told…by white liberals. So sorry if Ken Blackwell disrupts the Lefty worldview. How sad and pathetic of you to place the race card. But since you dealt it I don’t have a problem calling your bluff, Ace.
Since she’s soooooo Pro-Infanticide, it’s a crying shame that her mother wasn’t as strong in that view and had just gone ahead and aborted HER.
While I am pro-life I also do not think any religion or church should be tax exempt.