The Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved pro-abortion Sen. John Kerry to replace outgoing pro-abortion Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The full Senate then voted 94-3 for his nomination.
Most members of the Senate traditionally vote for their Senate colleagues for nominations and all did with the exceptions of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.
Kerry is a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the committee. He didn’t attend the panel’s session on his nomination, according to news reports.
Obama chose the five-term Massachusetts senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate to succeed Clinton, who is stepped down after four years. Kerry has served on the Foreign Relations panel for 28 years and led the committee for the past four.
The nomination came after U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who supports abortion, withdrew her nomination for the position.
As a member of the Senate, Kerry has compiled only a 2% pro-life voting record since 1984, according to the National Right to Life Committee. Kerry has voted against every major piece of pro-life legislation in the Senate, including the partial-birth abortion ban, and Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and he supported a measure endorsing the Roe v. Wade decision that struck down laws banning abortions, and voted repeatedly against stopping abortion funding and funding of the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
The silver lining for pro-life advocates is Kerry’s nomination approval opens up a Senate seat that Republicans could win to loosen the stranglehold pro-abortion Democratic Leader Harry Reid has on the Senate. It could also pave the way for making it easier to capture the Senate outright in 2014.
If Kerry is approved, that will open up a special election for his Senate seat and Republican former Sen. Scott Brown, who lost in November, is expected to run again.
In her role as Secretary of State Clinton pressed for abortion on an international scale.
As recently as June, she was upset the document the United Nations adopted at its Rio+20 conference last week did not promote abortion by inserting terms like “reproductive rights” into he language of the text.
A diverse group of countries rallied together with the Holy See to successfully remove any mention of reproductive rights or population control from the final outcome document produced during the last round of UN negotiations at the Rio +20 conference. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA), along with Norway and Iceland, and Catholics for Choice and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, worked feverishly to take advantage of the Rio +20 conference on sustainable development in order to promote both an international right to abortion and population control.
However, nations like Nicaragua, Chile, Russia, Honduras, Syria, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Egypt all rejected the introductionof “reproductive rights” into the Rio +20 outcome document.
Responding to the resounding defeat, Clinton said she was disappointed, according to a CNS News report.
“While I am very pleased that this year’s outcome document endorses sexual and reproductive health and universal access to family planning, to reach our goals in sustainable development we also have to ensure women’s reproductive rights,” she said. “Women must be empowered to make decisions about whether and when to have children. And the United States will continue – the United States will continue to work to ensure that those rights are respected in international agreements.”
Last year, Clinton personally urged Obama to veto a State Department funding bill over cuts to groups that perform and promote abortions.
In 2010, she testified before a Congressional committee where two pro-life members of Congress presented her with a long lecture on abortion and how it hurts women.
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Congressmen Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, and Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican, both addressed pro-life issues during the hearing.
Smith, who had frequently led the fight against abortion on an international scale, made his full remarks with Clinton sitting as the lone witness at the witness table.
“Secretary Clinton, the most persecuted and at risk minority in the world today are unborn children,” Smith said. “Pregnancy is not a disease. The child in the womb is neither a tumor nor a parasite to be destroyed.”
Smith said he is troubled by President Barack Obama’s decision to overturn the Mexico City Policy and open the door forcing taxpayers to fund abortions in other nations.
“I am deeply concerned that with the elimination of the Mexico City Policy by executive order last year, NGO implementing partners may actively seek to integrate abortion with the many necessary and noble undertakings funded by the Global Health Initiative,” he said.
“I respectfully ask that the administration consider that for many of us, all abortion—legal or illegal—is violence against children and poses significant, often underappreciated risks to women and even to children later born to post-abortive women,” Smith added.
