FR Kevin Ryan is quite laudatory of US President-elect Barack Obama (Real Life, CL 30/11/08).
He describes the incoming president as a practising Christian and implies that US foreign policy under Obama will be based upon social justice.
Unfortunately, Fr Ryan appears to be unaware that not even the domestic policy of the President-elect passes the most fundamental test of social justice.
Obama is not just a run-of-the-mill pro-abortionist. He is on record as having voted against allowing a baby, born alive in a late-term abortion, to be given any help whatsoever to survive.
It is common knowledge that he intends liberalising abortion rights, increasing funding for embryonic stem-cell research and granting US financial aid to international family planning to counsel women about the availability of abortion.
All of those activities are the subject of restrictive orders imposed by the administration of President George W Bush, but probably can and will be undone simply by new executive orders.
President-elect Obama and his anti-life policies will be ably supported by Vice-President-elect Joe Biden. Senator Biden claims to be a Catholic and to be personally against abortion.
However, he says he also believes that women have a right of choice.
What he fails to make clear is that the choice is really between giving birth to new life and deliberately killing that life prematurely.
Without a shadow of doubt, the future bodes increasingly ill for the unborn under the incoming US administration.
RICHARD CONGRAM
Carindale, Qld
