Pompeo Prays Every Day at the State Department

By | October 8, 2020

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

WASHINGTON D.C., October 9 (C-Fam) U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touted the Trump administration’s record on international life issues and religious freedom at a virtual dinner in Florida last week. He also described praying every day when he enters the State Department.

Speaking remotely to the annual dinner of the Florida Family Policy Institute, Pompeo said the American founders knew “God himself grants all human beings an essential dignity.” He said the United States uses “our foreign policy power to honor that dignity, when so many countries choose to execute their power and use their power in far different way.”

Pompeo took specific aim at China. “One million or more Uyghurs and other Muslims are held in internment camps that rival the worst abuses that happened a century ago in Europe,” he said. This is part of a growing intense war of words between the U.S. and China at the United Nations.

Speaking to an influential group of Christian social conservatives, Pompeo was most proud of how the United States is advancing the fight against abortion at the United Nations and around the world. He cited the expansion of Mexico City policy, an executive order instituted by Republican presidents and struck down in turn by Democrats. It forbids U.S. money from going to abortion groups overseas. Trump and Pompeo expanded the program from the relatively small family planning budget to the entire foreign health budget.

Pompeo said, “We are using every element of federal law to prohibit the use of the State Department funds to lobby on behalf of abortion.” It should be pointed out that almost all of the U.S. contribution to the United Nations goes to agencies that promote abortion, funding that remains intact.

Pompeo also touted how he and Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services, spearheaded a joint statement of 20 countries condemning pro-abortion language in UN documents, an issue pro-life groups have worked on for a quarter century

“We said clearly; ‘There is no international right to abortion.’ None. That different; it’s special. It’s what President Trump’s leadership demands.”

An African pro-life leader said, “Never did I think that America — that America would use its great power to speak for the protection of the unborn in the most unambiguous and unapologetic terms.”

As a comparison, it was during the George W. Bush administration that abortion language entered into a hard law treaty for the first time. The Trump State Department has ordered all U. S. delegations to fight against all abortion language in UN documents, including such euphemisms as “reproductive health.”

The speech did not come without criticism. Don Fox, a former bureaucrat connected to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, suggested Pompeo had violated “a provision in federal regulations that prohibits executive branch employees from misusing their office for private gain, and that includes the private gain of any other entity to include a non for profit.” Fox also wondered how the Florida Family Policy Council could have an interest in U.S. foreign policy.

Pompeo has also come under criticism for private dinners at the State Department he holds for interested stakeholders. They accuse him of playing politics for his own future political gain.

Social conservatives, however, uniformly praise Pompeo as perhaps the most pro-life and pro-family Secretary of State in U.S. history.

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