Washington, D.C. March 9, 2009 - The Obama administration recently announced the creation of a new foreign policy position to focus on women's issues to be headed by Melanne Verveer, who served as chief of staff to former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Following on the heels of the decisions to allow USAID to fund international organizations that promote or perform abortion and to fund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), this announcement adds to the evidence that both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are pursuing a global abortion agenda.

Melanne Verveer was nominated to the post based on her close ties to Clinton and her experience as co-founder of Vital Voices Global Leadership and will hold the rank of Ambassador-at-Large. Vital Voices was founded by Clinton and Verveer with assistance from Madeline Albright to reaffirm the population and development goals of the United Nations conference in Beijing in 1995.  

In 2005 while marking the ten year anniversary of Beijing, then Senator Clinton applauded the role of Vital Voices and spoke of the worldwide measures that still needed to be advanced. First and foremost, she spoke of the remaining need to advance legal abortion and for governments in developing countries to change policies and laws that prohibit or limit abortion.
 
She stated, "I think this issue, although it may in some quarters be controversial, lies at the very heart of women's empowerment. And the stories we are hearing about the denial of access to information and services for women to take control of their own reproductive health, because of interference, because of government policy, should spur us to take even greater action through governments and through NGOs to get this information and provide those services around the world."
 
Marie Smith, Director of Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues stated, "Once again we see that President Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton are pursuing a radical pro-abortion agenda that makes no attempt at common ground.  The change to pro-life laws and policies that Hillary Clinton and Vital Voices pursue will now be promoted by a US ambassador. This is blatant disregard for sovereign laws and policies of nations who respect the inherent worth and dignity of life and who treat the unborn child as a valued member of the family. It is tragic that the US will pursue a path of imposing an extremist view of abortion that 60% of the world's countries reject, while at the same time, women globally are in need of life-affirming measures to improve their and their families' lives." END