President was advised to ‘eliminate’ the poor and illiterate
Does former U.S. president Bill Clinton, and elite elements within the Democratic Party – which has ostensibly identified itself as the party of the downtrodden working man – secretly despise poor people?
That was the impression given from the release of recently uncovered government documents and a report, “The Clinton RU-486 Files,” from American public interest group Judicial Watch.
In his first official act as president, Clinton ordered the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration to co-ordinate the marketing of abortion drug RU-486 on American soil.
Clinton had previously received advice from Ron Weddington, whose wife argued the pro-abortion side in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case. In a January 1992 letter supporting the legalization of RU-486, Weddington made a Brave New World-style pitch on socio-economic grounds, arguing: “Something’s got to be done very quickly. Twenty-six million food stamp recipients is more than the economy can stand.”
Weddington went on to write that the next president should “start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of the country,” as “our survival depends upon our developing a population where everyone contributes. We don’t need more cannon fodder. We don’t need more parishioners. We don’t need more cheap labour. We don’t need more babies.”
The report brings to light a number of disturbing revelations, including the use of official U.S. political, economic and diplomatic pressure that was used to persuade the RU-486 manufacturer, Roussel Uclaf, to make the drug available to American consumers. In one confidential memo, then-HHS Secretary Donna Shalala mentioned that she and then-FDA Commissioner David Kessler personally changed Roussel Uclaf’s position.
Interestingly, the documents also show that Roussel Uclaf offered to give the RU-486 patent to the U.S. government at no cost, in order to protect itself from legal liability in case anything went wrong.
Clinton obtained the patent by writing an official letter to Roussel Uclaf, saying the U.S. required “safe and effective medical treatment,” and thanking the company on behalf of “the women of America.”
According to Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton, the drug has claimed the lives of 560,000 children and at least six women in the United States, in part because the Clinton administration pressured the FDA to circumvent the usual requirements for certifying a drug as “safe and effective” in order to bring RU-486 to market. “This dangerous abortion pill needs to be pulled off the market immediately,” he said.
Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett recently told the media that the sped-up process used to approve RU-486 was “totally inappropriate,” as it is “used for drugs that treat disease by providing some hope for life where there isn’t any. Clearly, RU-486 is not that kind of drug.”
Clinton’s current spokesman, Jay Carson, responded to the Judicial Watch report with a statement claiming: “All of the Clinton administration’s actions on the issue were based on the science and what was best for American women.”
Judie Brown, the president of Virginia-based American Life League, told The Interim that she was not terribly surprised by the content of the Judicial Watch report. “The Clinton administration was effectively part of the abortion cartel from the moment president Clinton began his run of the highest office in the United States,” she said, adding that Clinton himself “was not the reason the drug advanced to the marketing stage,” as “initial research on the drug and clinical trials on the drug began under the presidency of Ronald Reagan and without his approval.”
By the time that Clinton won the presidency, “most of the groundwork had been done by the pro-abortion faction within the federal bureaucracy.”
Brown noted that prior to Clinton, “U.S. presidents had been ambivalent toward abortion” and that in spite of its pro-life rhetoric, the current Bush administration “has done nothing to stop this drug or turn back the approval or even request an investigation.”
Asked if the RU-486 files demonstrate that abortion is a clear dividing line between America’s two major parties, Brown expressed real skepticism. “Publicly, it may be perceived that abortion is a defining difference between the Democrats and Republicans, but in all honesty, I would have to say there isn’t much substantive difference at all.”
