President Barack Obama today will lift restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad.

This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest and it shouldn’t surprise anyone else although I’m sure many ill-informed Christian voters will be wondering where this is coming from.

When the ban was in place, no U.S. government funding for family planning services could be given to clinics or groups that offer abortion services or counseling in other countries even if those clinics or groups claimed to pay for those activities through other funding sources.  With the lifting of the ban, our federal tax dollars will now be given to clinics and groups to help perform abortions on the unborn babies of poor women all across the world.

The President’s decision to make the lifting of the ban one of his first acts in office is considered a victory for advocates of abortion rights on an issue that in recent years has become a back and forth between Republican and Democratic Presidents. 

President Ronald Reagan first instituted the ban back in 1984.  It rescinded by Bill Clinton when he took office in January of 1993.  George W. Bush reinstated the ban when he took office in January 2001.

When he reinstated the ban in 2001, Bush said taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for or advocate abortions.  I wholeheartedly concur.

I find it not only morally reprehensible that my taxpayer dollars are being used for this purpose, but also fiscally irresponsible. 

In a day and age when our government is having to borrow trillions of dollars to keep themselves and our economy afloat, our government still somehow deems it necessary to spend more than $400 million on overseas family planning assistance each year.  Now this money will not only be sent overseas for “family planning” but will also be used to kill unborn babies. 

This is an outrageous insult to the American people!  How can this be justified by anyone?  Even if you agree that abortion should be legal in the United States, how can you possibly think that we, the taxpaying citizens of this nation, should have to send over $400 million of our money to other countries to allow their citizens to perform abortions?

There can be little doubt that this decision is based entirely on the furtherance of an ideological and political point of view and has nothing to do with what is best for this nation.  Obama is only a few days into his Presidency and he is already finding unnecessary and illogical ways to spend our money and offend the Christian citizens of this nation, a group to which he claims to belong. 

Is this the change you were looking for?