I wrote earlier this week about how U.S. taxpayers are being forced to foot the bill to fund pro-abortion groups overseas to the tune of $700 million.
Now an investigation by the Government Accountability Office alleges that the Obama Administration illegally used $18 million to help force Kenya to adopt a pro-abortion Constitution:
The investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, shows at least one Obama grantee openly pushed to expand abortion in Kenya despite a long-standing, annually renewed law that prohibits U.S. tax dollars from being used to lobby for or against abortion in other countries (known as the Siljander Amendment).
The GAO report also reveals that a key Obama official stonewalled investigators and refused to cooperate with the GAO in its investigation of the activities initiated by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department during the 2010 constitutional referendum in Kenya. [LifeNews]
Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) deserves special credit for his untiring effort to bring this abuse to light. I know he’s been working on exposing this story for a long time. He said about the investigation:
“The Obama Administration basically hired surrogates to do its dirty work of abortion promotion in Kenya,” said Congressman Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who is the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights.
“U.S. policy on international constitutional reform is, by law, supposed to be abortion-neutral” Smith said. “This new report shows that at a minimum the Obama Administration ignored the prohibition with the end result being a new Kenyan constitution that vastly expands access to abortion in Kenya, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.”
The GAO probe also brought to light that the Obama administration spent an incredible $61.2 million on lobbying for the vote on the Kenyan constitution, of which $12.6 million went to directly lobbying the pro-abortion aspect of it. It just strikes me as so surprising that the administration would spend so much money on trying to influence how the Constitution of Kenya treats the unborn.
So far only Christian and pro-life news agencies are covering this important story, though I’m happy to see the ACLJ and FoxNews are beginning to talk about the story as well — but this glaring abuse of power by the White House (and this assault on the sovereignty of the people of Kenya) deserves far more attention and scrutiny.
I applaud the work of Congressman Smith and his allies in Congress and urge them to continue exposing the truth!
