America's unholy export

Despite its rich Christian history, America is the world leader in exporting death . . .

The United States of America is the greatest country in the world. We lead the world in military and political strength, our economy is the largest in history and American cultural influence is everywhere.

God has richly blessed our nation with much to offer the rest of the world. Yet, America is also the progenitor and leading exporter of the culture of death. This can and must be changed. Perhaps Legatus members are just the ones to do something about it.

The export of the culture of death happens primarily through population control, a practice as old as Pharaoh in the book of Exodus who saw the proliferation of the Jews in his land as a threat. That’s usually what happens when prosperous nations grow old for lack of child bearing and try to protect their “good life” by suppressing the peoples who have filled the vacuum left by a decreasing native population.

In Egypt, this took the form of a systematic repression of the Jews through forced labor and the unjust slaughter of their male babies. This was repeated by King Herod in the New Testament when he sent his henchmen into the hill country of Judea to wipe out all the male boys under age two in Bethlehem and its environs. Herod’s own population control program operated according to the same principles of murder and mayhem against the innocent.

Modern programs are not much different, although they tend to be more subtle. American population control efforts began in the 1960s with the Rockefellers who set up the Population Council to monitor world population and make policy recommendations to the U.S. government about controlling the growth rates of the world’s poorer countries. Henry Kissinger authored the infamous National Security Study Memorandum 200 (the Kissinger Report for short) of the Nixon Administration just one year after Roe v. Wade. The population control dynamics were the same as in biblical times: When America decided to curtail population growth through abortion, pro-lifers feared that others would follow. Like it or not, the Kissinger Report became the template of population-control logic for all succeeding American administrations. No President has succeeded in fully stopping America’s unholy intrusion into the populations of other countries.

This fact becomes relevant to some modern-day policies and practices of our government. For one, the Mexico City Policy, which prohibited U.S. taxpayer dollars from going to international groups that promote abortion, was wiped out by President Obama’s executive order on his third day in office. It unleashed a torrent of U.S. funding for the export of abortion. A congressional omnibus funding bill last December authorized nearly $700 million taxpayer dollars for the most pernicious abortion-promoting groups in the world. These organizations are organizing the forces of death around the world to push abortion, contraception, pornographic sex education and sexual immorality in schools.

Pope John Paul II called packages of evil like this the “culture of death” and claimed that a “conspiracy against life” (Evangelium Vitae, #17) was being perpetrated on our world through powerful organizations with vested interests and lots of money.

Since the release of the U.S. funding for more population control, we have seen an emboldening of anti-life efforts at the United Nations and around the world. The exportation of the culture of death is alive and well:

• In March, the U.N. hosted 6,000 radical feminists for their first conference on women in a decade; all such efforts were stalled during President Bush’s tenure;
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently demanded that Brazil legalize abortion;
• The Spanish government voted to expand abortion, and the King of Spain signed the law in March;
• A U.N. committee ordered Ukraine to push more sex education in their schools; and
• The European Court of Human Rights demanded that Poland recognize homosexual “rights” contrary to their laws and values.

Sadly, Planned Parenthood is providing “reproductive health kits” for poor Haitians in their time of desperate need. The missionaries of death have millions of dollars at their disposal and always capitalize on humanitarian crises to promote their evil agenda.

Legates can be missionaries of life in these tough times. Businessmen can capitalize on the present economic crisis to deliver a sober message to our political leaders about the hard “bottom line” of wasted dollars on futile population control programs that produce nothing and inspire no true economic growth.

People who own stock in companies that support immoral practices can bring corporate resolutions to their stockholders to stop funding the culture of death. We can boycott companies that do business with Planned Parenthood and make it clear that we will not fund or support anything that harms our society and ultimately our souls.

America is still the greatest nation on earth. It’s great because we are free to fight the culture of death and promote the culture of life. As conscientious Catholics, let us embrace that freedom and honor God for blessing our country so abundantly.

Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer is president of Human Life International, the world’s largest pro-life organization with affiliates in 75 countries. Legatus presented him with the Cardinal John J. O’Connor Pro-Life Award in 2005.