Posted on Jan 28, 2009

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Just a week into Barack Obama's presidency and we have several tragic reminders that we live in an increasingly anti-child culture, where too many adults ignore society's responsibility to protect children -- both born and unborn -- if it interferes with their adult "preferences" and "choices."

President Obama was the most radically pro-choice candidate of a major party in American history, and during his campaign he pledged to Planned Parenthood's supporters that he would never back down on this issue. Unfortunately, his Jan. 23 executive order overturning the Mexico City Policy may be just the first step in his fulfillment of that campaign pledge to his radical pro-abortion supporters.

By a stroke of his pen, American taxpayers' money once again will be used in part to fund abortions that end the lives of our fellow human beings in other countries.

A day earlier, in remarks on the 36th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, Obama reiterated his commitment to protect a "woman's right to choose."

More than 50 million babies have been aborted since the Supreme Court's decision in 1973, because at least one parent considered that child too expensive, too embarrassing, too disruptive, too much of a burden or just too inconvenient.

And it is not only the unborn that are being victimized. Even in the face of overwhelming bipartisan congressional action to protect our children from hardcore Internet pornography that corrupts their hearts and souls and steals their innocence, the U.S. Supreme Court declined Jan. 21 to review the Third Circuit Court's decision on the Child Online Protection Act, effectively killing this measure.

This Act merely put the same restrictions on protecting children from hardcore material on the Internet that are currently placed on so-called "adult" book and DVD stores, with customers having to prove they are at least 18 years of age to gain entry.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court concluded that an adult's supposed "right" to see anything he wants to see online without having to identify himself trumped society's obligation to protect children from corrosive exposure to such spiritual toxic waste. Untold human suffering will be the result of this incredibly wrong decision.

Since government has abdicated its responsibility, all reasonable adults must do everything they can to protect the children within their circle of influence from exposure to such spiritually and emotionally damaging material.
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Richard Land is president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.