Canadians hosted hundreds of American air passengers whose planes were grounded on 9/11. They opened their hearts and their homes to us. During the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81, fearless Canadian diplomats in Tehran helped smuggle out of that maddened country endangered Americans.
None of that seemed to matter this week. Not content with putting an end to America’s historic “special relationship” with Britain, nor with bullying the U.S.’ only reliable ally in the Mideast, Israel, the Obama administration has launched an attack on our Northern neighbor, Canada. Their unguided missile landed squarely on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. It was Hillary.
Oh, my! Even the very liberal Toronto Globe and Mail felt the sting of Madam Secretary’s tongue-lashing. “It was the third time in a two-day visit to Canada that...Clinton gave Canadian hosts a headache,” writes Campbell Clark. Short work. But then, she was always capable of giving us three headaches in one day.
Clinton publicly rebuked the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Harper wants to make maternal health the centerpiece of Canada’s initiative at the next G8 summit.
What could be wrong with that? Canada famously cares about her role in international humanitarian efforts. Canadians race to be first on the scene at international disasters like the recent Haitian earthquake or the Asian tsunami of 2004. Canadians can be justly proud of their record.
But Madam Secretary wasted no time in kicking the props out from under the Harper humanitarian initiative. “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health,” she bluntly informed her Canadian hosts. “And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.”
Now, this is curious. When she was First Lady (ah, those were the days), Hillary Clinton said abortion is “wrong.” (Newsweek, October 31, 1994) Now that she is Secretary of State in the most avidly pro-abortion administration in U.S. history, she not only thinks America must have abortion-on-demand, paid for by U.S. taxpayers, but she also thinks the Canadians should be scolded in their own capital city if they fail to promote abortion throughout the world.
This is also interesting, isn’t it, as a reflection on the just-passed ObamaCare bill? A number of formerly pro-life Democrats fell for the offer of an Executive Order on taxpayer funding of abortion. President Obama was the most pro-abortion state senator in history, the most pro-abortion U.S. Senator in history.
Still, these credulous Members of Congress somehow thought he would give them a fig leaf so they could vote for his signature piece of legislation. Did they know that this administration believes “you cannot have maternal health...without abortion?” Were they prepared to deny coverage for maternal health? Of course not.
So, in her most undiplomatic diplomatic visit, Hillary Clinton gave the lie to the notion that ObamaCare does not include taxpayer funding for abortion. Not here. Not in Canada, not anywhere in the world.
“Abortion is central to everything in life and how we want to live it,” said the late liberal leader Lawrence Lader. Lader, along with Dr. Bernard Nathanson, founded NARAL, the abortion advocacy group. Nathanson famously repented, filmed “The Silent Scream,” and has become a devout pro-life Catholic. Lader never yielded an inch.
It used to be the case that major Democratic candidates were expected to visit Israel, Italy, and Ireland. The Three I’s, it was called. That was to undergird their appeal to large minorities in the U.S.--Jews, Italians, and Irish.
But now, liberals must go hat in hand to NARAL and Planned Parenthood. And if that causes trouble with our traditional allies on the international scene--allies as staunch and courageous as Canada, so be it. To be true to her mission to the North, Madam Secretary’s limo should have borne the flag she is actually serving--the Jolly Roger.
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