Five Points

He That Lives By The Executive Order
Will Die By The Executive Order

The first week of the Obama Administration demonstrates, once again, the problem of setting major policy by executive order.

On Friday -- staying clear of the three-hundred-thousand-person March for Life which wound around the Capitol and the Supreme Court building Thursday on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade -- the President cancelled the "Mexico City Policy" which restricted federal support for overseas organizations that promote abortion.

The August 1984 executive order by President Reagan was first canceled by President Clinton in 1993, then reinstated and expanded by President George W. Bush in 2001. Now the next Democrat in the White House makes his statement on the matter. At this point it seems to be a tradition.

Regardless of who uses it, this is not the way to run a republic. In this country, a change of administration should not imply a change of law. The path of the Mexico City Policy is an example of that.

Footnotes

Title: The title, of course, alludes to the warning of Jesus to Peter, regarding the use of violence (Matthew 26:51-53). In this case, however, the title is not strictly correct: those infants whose lives had been saved by the Mexico City Policy are presumably alive today. Those who will die after the reversal of it have not had to chance to "live by the executive order".

a change of law: Although a historic reference, something that happens in absolutist regiemes, it's another allusion, this time to Hebrews 7:12, i.e. "For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law." Given the messianic adulation given to the candidate Obama, this is may be appropriate is a strange way of its own.

posted by Hal @ 6:40 AM