Vivek Murthy was appointed as the new US Surgeon General by Barack Obama earlier this month. The Senate confirmed the appointment by a narrow margin of 51 to 43. The 37-year-old doctor helped to pass the Affordable Care Act, ; he’s anti-gun, and he favors abortion (“family planning”) expansion. No wonder Planned Parenthood, the single largest abortion-committing organization in the country, loves him.
Murthy replaces former Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, a vociferous abortion proponent, and the Acting Surgeon General who filled the position between Benjamin and Murthy, Rear Admiral Boris D. Lushniak.
According to the White House, “[t]he Surgeon General is America’s doctor, responsible for providing Americans with the best scientific information on how to improve our collective well-being.” This statement, coupled with the entirety of Barack Obama’s terms to-date, demonstrates the President’s callous disregard for humanlife. Where might the preborn fit into the “collective” well-being of Americans? They have, instead, been excluded from consideration in both of Obama’s Surgeon General appointments, just as they have been excluded from his mandatory health agenda, and even his voting record as a senator.
Among the new Surgeon General’s recommendations for individual states are the strengthened delivery of “reproductive and sexual health services (e.g., family planning, HIV/STI testing),” and the implementation of “practices to prevent teen pregnancy and HIV/STIs and ensure that resources are targeted to communities at highest risk.” Unfortunately neither of these goals is a boon to women’s actual health, as we’ve seen that expansions in abortion on-demand have led to such travesties as non-physicians committing abortions in states like California, and that the “practices” that prevent teen pregnancy (aka, birth control) include laws that have made teen girls even more vulnerable to sexual predators.
The Surgeon General also recommends that businesses and employers, “[p]rovide health coverage and employee assistance programs that include family planning and reproductive health services.” In other words, that businesses like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood should include coverage of drugs and procedures even though they conscientiously object to taking part in the potential deaths of their employees’ preborn children.
The Surgeon General did make one recommendation we can all get behind: “Support pregnant women obtaining prenatal care in the first trimester (e.g., transportation services, patient navigators).” We will be watching to see how he puts this recommendation into action. Up until now, the Obama Administration has done little to nothing to improve the lives of students who choose Life. Rather, the initiatives of grassroots organizations like Students for Life of America– and student groups that work with Texas Right to Life– have been among the few groups making efforts to improve circumstances for pregnant and parenting students. By far and away, the Pro-Life movement currently dominates in this arena, and that is because thiscause that has been wholly neglected by government.
“Healthy reproductive and sexual practices can play a critical role in enabling people to remain healthy and actively contribute to their community,” says the new Surgeon General. But what constitutes “healthy” in regard to “reproductive and sexual practices” is what’s at issue. If the Surgeon General is aligned with the Obama agenda, that will mean unrestricted abortion and abortifacients on-demand, funded by you, the taxpayer.