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A time to ban

Earlier this week, the White House and House Republicans struck a compromise on how to deal with the financing of international abortions with taxpayer money, and deal with our responsibilities to the United Nations at the same time. We should be meeting our obligations to fund the U.N., and this agreement will allow us to do so with a clear conscience.

As you may know, the United States owes about a billion dollars in late dues to the United Nations. The United Nations has threatened to strip the United States of its seat and one vote in the General Assembly if it does not pay its dues by Dec. 31.

While the budget is still trying to be fully worked out by the Clinton administration and Congress, this serves as another fiscal issue to be dealt with. The Republicans, who have historically opposed the United Nations, are not in a hurry at all to allocate the one billion dollars to the them. In fact, House Republicans gave the president two options to deal with this U.N. situation.

First, the Republican-controlled Congress could allocate the one billion dollars to the United Nations to pay its dues, but money would only be allocated if the president would agree to sign a ban on U.S. funding to international organizations that promote abortion rights. Or the Congress could allocate the one billion dollars to the United Nations and pay the 12.5 million dollar fine that would also accompany the late dues, but the 12.5 million dollars would be subtracted out of the State Department's "Agency for International Development" which subsidizes many international abortion operations.

After some negotiations, the White House and the House Republicans struck a deal. The White House has opted to have the 12.5 million dollars subtracted from the "Agency for International Development" if the Congress will allocate the one billion dollars for the late U.N. dues.

It would have been preferable if the U.N. dues had been tied to the banning of U.S. financing of abortions overseas, but some progress on this issue is better than none. It is a travesty in this country that the moral and philosophical grounds upon which this great country was founded have been subverted. It is unfathomable that any of the men of great moral and intellectual character who have, throughout our history, helped to make this country great would have supported the use of hard earned tax dollars to support aborting children's' lives in foreign countries.

That the U.S. government is doing this is offensive and an anathema to civility. A country that so arrogantly exclaims its pre-eminence in human rights and freedom seems to be quite the hypocrite when it spends millions of dollars internationally to fund doctors in the abortion of human lives.

I am so proud to be an American. I am proud of the rights afforded to the people of this country and the opportunities that are afforded to us in such a society, but at the same time I am well aware of those shortcomings that cause me to be embarrassed and ashamed. I am ashamed by the fact that human life can be treated so trivially and I am even more ashamed that I have a president who supports this.

Hopefully, soon we can again have a president who can return pride to the hearts of Americans who believe that the common killing of children is wrong and indefensible. Perhaps we can be as proud as we were in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan delivered an executive order that banned any U.S. dollars from being used to directly promote and fund abortions overseas. That executive order was rescinded under the Clinton administration, but there may be hope.

Presidential front-runner George W. Bush has stated his strong support for "Mexico City," the name generally used to refer to Reagan's executive order which he announced while in Mexico City during a U.N. conference. In fact, Bush said that he would like to see that order re-issued.

Perhaps, our next president will be a man of integrity and moral character who will stand for what is right. A man who will recognize the value of human life and will protect it against those who would destroy it for personal convenience. A man who we could look at and feel pride because he stands for all those virtues that made this country great.