The Daily Signal - #326: Western Nations Try to Achieve 'Ideological Supremacy' Over Africa By Promoting Abortion

Episode Date: October 25, 2018

The nations of Africa have a long memory of European colonialism, and those memories are not good. Colonialism left in the 1960s, but one pro-life activist says it’s back in the form of pro-abortion ideology. Today we sit down with Nigerian activist Obianuju Ekeocha to discuss how Western nations are importing socially liberal values into Africa.We also cover these stories:--More suspicious packages turned up in the mailboxes of prominent Democrats on Thursday.--President Trump tweeted about the caravan, “I am bringing out the military for this national emergency. They will be stopped!”--Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, asks the Justice Department to investigate Julie Swetnick, who brought forward accusations of inappropriate conduct against Brett Kavanaugh, and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, October 26th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, the nations of Africa have a long memory of European colonialism, and those memories are not good. Colonialism left in the 1960s, but one pro-life activist says it's back in the form of pro-abortion ideology. Today we'll sit down with Nigerian activist Obionju Ekaocha to discuss how Western nations are importing socially liberal value. into Africa. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. Well, more suspicious packages turned up in the mailboxes of prominent Democrats on Thursday. Former Vice President Joe Biden and actor Robert De Niro both received packages that contain devices

that are similar to the crude pipe bombs that were sent to others on Wednesday, including former President Obama, Hillary Clinton, CNN's office in New York, and the Office of California Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Investigators have seized those packages and are working to trace them to their source. President Trump tweeted Thursday about the caravan, quote, I am bringing out the military for this national emergency. They will be stopped. The Military Times citing an unnamed source reports that 800 active duty military members will be sent to the border.

Currently, there are 2,100 National Guard members there. Well, President Trump's move to put troops on the border hasn't stopped the migrants, and in fact, a second caravan now appears to be forming in Guatemala. The Wall Street Journal reports that thousands of Honduran migrants were gathering in a Guatemalan city near Honduras and were planning to make a trek north in the footsteps of the first caravan. Migrant charity workers say that these new caravans could signal a new method of travel, one that doesn't require migrants to hire human traffickers and smugglers. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, asked the Justice Department Thursday to

investigate Julie Swetnik, who brought forward accusations of inappropriate conduct against Brett Kavanaugh, and her lawyer, Michael Avanotti. In a statement, Grassley said, in the heat of partisan moments, some do try to knowingly mislead the committee. That's unfair to my colleagues, the nominees, and others providing information who are seeking the truth. He added, thankfully, the law prohibit such false statements to Congress in obstruction of congressional committee investigations. For the law to work, we can't just brush aside potential violations. I don't take lightly making a referral of this nature, but ignoring this behavior will just invite more of it in the future.

Avinotti, who is also the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, tweeted, It is ironic that Senator Grassley now is interested in investigations. He didn't care when it came to putting a man on the SCOTUS, meaning Supreme Court, for life. We welcome the investigation as now we can finally get to the bottom of Judge Kavanaugh's lies and conduct. Let the truth be known. Well, Saudi Arabia's story about Jamal Khashoggi keeps evolving. On Thursday, Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor suggested that the killing of the Saudi journalist

was, in fact, premeditated. That's a reversal from the Crown Prince's recent statement, which denounced the killing and said the perpetrators would be brought to justice. Keshogi, who was a columnist for the Washington Post, disappeared on October 2nd after entering the Saudi consulate in Turkey. So it looks like Megan Kelly is out at NBC after she made controversial comments about blackface on her show Tuesday. You still be able to dress like a moron. But what is racist? Because truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on black face on Halloween or a black person who puts on white face for Halloween. Like, back when I was a kid,

That was okay as long as you were dressing up as like a character. If somebody feels like something is offensive to them, then you should say it, and that's fair game. And you should be able to take it if you're going to dress up like that. Yeah, you've got to be able to take it. On Wednesday, Kelly started her show with an apology. And welcome to the show. I'm Megan Kelly. And I want to begin with two words. I'm sorry.

You may have heard that yesterday we had a discussion here about political correctness and Halloween costumes. And that conversation turned to whether it's ever okay for a person of one race to dress. up as another, a black person making their face lighter or a white person making theirs darker to make a costume complete. I defended the idea saying as long as it was respectful and part of a Halloween costume, it seemed okay. Well, I was wrong and I am sorry. One of the great parts of sitting in this chair each day is getting to discuss different

points of view. Sometimes I talk and sometimes I listen. And yesterday I learned. I learned that given the history of blackface being used in awful ways by racists in this country, it is not okay for that to be part of any costume, Halloween or otherwise. Now, different news outlets are reporting that Kelly is almost certainly out in NBC, with the only matter remaining being her compensation. Her original contract with NBC was for 69 million over three years.

Well, a new scientific study confirms that only six, subspecies of tigers remain in existence. Scientists hope that these findings will boost efforts to save the remaining free-range cats, of which there are only about 4,000 and three subspecies of tigers have already gone extinct. Key threats, loss of habitat, and poaching. This story really made me value the rule of law because if you look at a lot of the countries that have poaching, it's just sort of free rain poaching, and there's not enforcement. of law and rule of law there. So, you know, it's just something that you think about.

We really don't have in America, but in other parts of the world, people can't take that for granted. True. Although, I mean, if you force me to identify nine subspecies of tigers, I would not be able to. Well, up next, we'll talk to a pro-life activist about a new form of colonialism in Africa. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? Then subscribe to Scotus 101, a podcast breaking down.

the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. Okay, well, we're joined today by Obanuju Esheka, who is the founder and president of Culture of Life Africa. It's an initiative dedicated to the promotion and defense of the African values of the sanctity of life, beauty of marriage, blessings of motherhood, and the dignity of family life. Can you tell I pulled that from the website? But she was born in Nigeria, but now lives in Britain. Can you tell us about your organization and the work that you do? Yes, so culture of life Africa is actually a small initiative. And I deal more in research, provide an information, particularly about what is happening in Africa right now.

And what I mean by that is a lot of people know things about Africa, just what you see in media. People know all the inadequacies and things, all the problems Africa is having. But on the other hand, people don't realize what is going on between African countries and Western countries. within this sphere of foreign aid, what happens in those bilateral and multilateral relationships, very complex, but then it's really put in simple terms is what happens with aid and also how ideological agendas and propaganda

sometimes being put through through this relationship. So I'm right in that space. I am monitoring and watching and seeing what's going on in Africa, but as an influence or as being influenced by Western nations. And can you tell us a bit about what sort of ideological agendas Western nations tend to impose on African countries through foreign aid? Yeah, one of the most common ones is abortion and the language about abortion, how now they talk a lot about safe abortion.

And I say that, you know, in quotes, safe abortion. They're promoting abortion as if it's, you know, good health care as if it's a progress for women, as if it's empowerment for women. So imagine that most of the Western countries now have legalized abortion. They are moving this discussion global because even though abortion is legalized in most of these Western countries, but in African country, only four out of the 54 African countries have legalized abortion. So that means about, yeah, 80% of the African countries have all kinds of restrictions

and prohibitions against abortion. Again, that just means abortion is not legal in those territories. And people just don't want legal abortion anyway, at least from my experience, from what I've seen, from even what some research and surveys have shown, like peer research that was done in 2014, that showed people in these countries don't want legal abortion. So they're not agitating for it.

Their governments know that and they're responding accordingly by not legalizing abortion. But the pressure keeps coming from the way. Western countries who are giving aid and then who are at the same time criticizing African nations and blaming all our woes on the fact that we don't have legalized abortion. So increase maternal mortality rates. They are linking it to the fact that these countries don't have legalized abortion. But I am saying this, you know, as somebody who has studied the situation as a scientist myself, I work as a scientist in Europe. I'm saying this that a lot of our problems, say, for example,

maternal health care or maternal mortality is directly linked not to abortion, but it's directly linked to the gaps and the inadequacies we have in our systems, in our gynecology, and obstetric as well as prenatal postnatal care. So, but they're not admitting that and they would come out and criticize us and say it's because women don't have quote unquote safe abortion. So they move that ideology and they keep putting us on the pressure. That's only one out of many. Now, you've used the word neocolonialism to describe this. Tell us what you mean by that. So neocolonialism, I would link it to, you know, the obvious word within the term colonialism, right? So, you know, back a hundred years ago, most of the African countries, with the exception of Ethiopia,

were under the control of these powerful European countries who were leading us, who were making decisions for us. They were in charge. So, you know, in the 1960s, All of that ended. And African countries became sovereign, we became independent, we rejoiced at that. But we're seeing a new phenomenon that is happening, like in the last two decades, I'll say, whereby Western entities, Western nations, but not just limited to Western nations, sometimes Western organizations, Western private foundations. We've heard of some of these philanthropic organizations. They step in and they are almost in the exact same situation as our colonial masters, who's as, I'll see. say back in the days where they are taking, they're not just friends, they came in as friends,

but they have now become stakeholders in African countries. They have become decision makers. They are suggesting projects. They are suggesting, you know, all kinds of cultural and ideologically linked things. And I call that, within that relationship, I call it a neo-colonialism because it's so imbalanced. They're so much more powerful than us. They have money. They come in. They are suggesting things. They are, you know, they want to do a big, Family Planning Summit. It's their decision. They pick an African country where they want to do it. They are going into African schools, you know, teaching children ideas that are foreign to the African people that are even in many cases they're magically opposed to our own cultural views

and values, you know, on all these issues. So yes, I'll call it an ideological new colonialism because they're taking us over. They are annexing our, you know, our ways. They're annexing. and eroding our own culture in other to replace with their own ideas and their own ideologies. So, you know, you've lived in both Africa and Europe and you had mentioned that I had no idea abortion was still illegal in so much of Africa. What do you think it is about, I mean, this is grossly generalizing a whole continent, but why are African values? Where is the difference lie in that they haven't accepted abortion? How do you think they're different from Europe and the U.S., which do, of course, have legal abortion? Yeah, I'm glad you did make that little.

you know, disclaimer, if you like, where it's like, we're not generalizing it. Again, you know, if anyone will go to the internet and check, yes, there are abortions happening. Illegal abortions are happening in African countries and I always like to put that out first and foremost. But then there is a difference between people going clandestinely to do something and then governments completely removing the rights to life of the child in the womb. Now, the reason why, I suspect that the reason why a lot of the African countries, African cultures, are standing at this point where they are refusing that it can ever be legal, legal and acceptable to kill an unborn child in the womb via abortion

will be linked to something like cultural beliefs. A lot of the African tribes believe that human life begins at conception. We believe in bloodlines. We believe that a child in the womb, it's not just a child in the womb, is a carrier of bloodlines of ancestors past and it's, you know, is this child who is going to carry our bloodlines into the future. It's so important to the African customs when you get down to it as part of the heritage. And I don't honestly think that a culture that believes so strongly in bloodlines can coexist

at the exact same spot as a, you know, as a culture of abortion. It's impossible. It has so far, it's been really. difficult for those who have been pushing it because we haven't legalized abortion, not as the lack of efforts. There have been efforts made by people usually from the West, by money, usually from the West. But because of these strongly held beliefs and strongly held feelings about bloodlines and, you know, descendants and ancestors and the connections we have and just this preciousness of human life and also the precariousness of human life, because

We have hunger and drought and all these things that we've lost people, Ebola crisis, all of those things that we watch life as it goes so fast in African nations. I think that's where people stand in protecting every life that we can protect. And of course, that will begin with the child in the womb. So that's where the abortion proponents have come upon problems all the time. because for you to be able to bring in, legalize abortion and bring in this idea that it should be acceptable and it should be, you know, it's not morally wrong, you know, to choose to make this choice or to do this. It's at the point where it, where it's, where it's, where it's, where it's, where it's, uh, where they meet our cultural beliefs. And people won't budge in that.

Has most of the, you talk about aid, money coming in and a lot of this coming, coming through aid. Is that mostly through governments? And if so, has the United States been part of that? That's an excellent question. Because I was a few days ago invited to the United States Agency for International Development, which is the U.S. organization that is giving out an appropriating taxpayer dollars towards developing countries and towards development projects. Yes, the United States has been a part of amazing.

part of the monies that you know the foreign aid coming into African countries and other parts of the developing world and they are doing it through this agency that I named the United States Agency for International Development, the USAID. The United Kingdom has also been a major contributor to that. But other Western countries, the EU countries, they're actually called the DAC countries, the DAC countries, which is the development assistance community. and they come together, they are given money to development, and that's in many ways good. So I'm not disparaging anyone and even private citizens who want to help with some project in Uganda or some medical mission. I applaud people who honestly look at Africa's problems and think we should do something.

But then when one makes that decision, the next most important thing is to ensure that in doing it and in carrying out some of these development assistance projects, that you are not trampling on people's valleys, on people's cultures. You have to be culturally sensitive. If you come in to a culture where they believe that human life begins at conception, they believe that the child in the womb, the child in the womb is a, you know, is a carrier of just this very powerful bloodlines of families.

You don't come into that culture and begin to tell them about a woman's right to choose, you know, bodily autonomy, all of this amorphous language that has been wielded and formed in Western nations, you don't bring that in. You don't push it down their throats. And especially when you have money, sometimes people who come in to do foreign aid say, we're not forcing anyone. It's all voluntary.

It's all voluntary. But if you come in with $10 million, it no longer is voluntary because there's so much money in the world of the poor. With $10 million, you're like a god, you know, with a little G. And whatever you do holds so much power that you can trample upon the poor. But then again, back to your question.

It's not just nations that are doing this. It is also organizations, you know, for example, reproductive rights organizations like International Planned Parenthood Federation, which I know is a very recognizable name in this country, United States. The IPPF International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Marie Stopes International, which is a British abortion organization, the D.KT International, which again is another. international abortion organization. So there are several so-called reproductive rights organizations

who go into Africa and they say they're engaging in development work. But if you take a closer look at all their work, it's all ideological, it's all, you know, how to globalize this culture of abortion and the culture of population control, you know, all of that, they're doing it through their organizations. But then the third class of people who come in are private foundations. Again, another thing that is recognizable in the United States,

United States, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they're huge in Africa. They are working within this very space, but also another upcoming private foundation, I would say, is the Clinton Foundation. They are also standing within this space. They are trying to become major players in providing contraception in African countries, in, you know, leading these discussions towards so-called sexual and reproductive health and rights. So these are, you know, all the, all the, all the forms and all the identities that they come in as. But however they come in, whether they're coming as nations, whether they're coming as organizations,

whether they're coming as private foundations, their agenda seems to be the same. Their style seems to be the same. Their strategies seem to be the same. And what is most scary is that in many, many occasions, they come in in collaboration with one another that makes them all that bigger and all that more powerful. So a couple, I guess, of last question.

What did you think, you know, I think your last answer touched a bit upon this, but, you know, Emmanuel Macron was the latest Western leader to make comments about, you know, the size of the population in Africa, saying that a comment along the lines of no educated woman would have seven, eight, nine children, which I know a lot of women on Twitter have pointed out is not true. But also, you know, a lot of these programs are sold as we need to help women in Africa. And what do women in Africa actually want? Yeah, so that comment by President Macron is most unfortunate. I'd like to point out just the one thing about it that a lot of people did not realize when he said it,

which is only a couple of days or like a week ago or maybe 10 days ago. Now, he said it in a so-called goalkeeper's event. And what is goalkeeper's event? The goalkeeper's event is kind of a new initiative, like only about a year-old initiative that is being headlined by Bill and Melinda Gates. So it's all linked. He's standing in the event. He's keynoting.

He's giving a speech. And he makes this statement. And this is not the first time that we've heard this kind of comment. It's now becoming almost like a very stylized messaging towards the same people about the same people. So that's the one thing. Secondly, the comment in and of itself is terrible because it's quite condescending. It's condescending to African women, but not just.

to African women is condescending to all women around the world who want to have both a career as well as a large family. So that's a terrible thing for him to say. So that's one thing to point out. But then in reality, and this is, you know, to anybody who has that same mindset, that no educated woman can do this and have six, seven, eight, nine children. My mother had a full teaching career in Africa when we were being raised. I am one of seven. I lost one sister many, many, many, many years ago. So we are six children now. So my mother is a mother of six living children. She had a full career in Nigeria. Never was a stay-at-home mom for one single day in my life growing up, right? And she wasn't anything extraordinary. All her friends were like that. All her friends had six children, seven, eight, nine children. They were all teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers. We should bring all them on the show. So if President Macron says, show me, I'll say to President Macron, please come with me to

a wary of Nigeria where I grew up and I will show you so many women who achieved excellence within their careers, all their chosen careers, as well as having all these many children who are now, you know, we're second generation, third generation and we're serving in so many ways. We are all educated. We're all okay. We all turned out fine. So and what do I have to say about people who say we're trying to help women, we really feel sorry for African women. The one question people must ask and should ask when they come into a place to do something like family planning or to push this idea of family planning, I think the very first thing before even starting off with the program is to find out what this indices is in that area

and that indices is what is the desired fertility rate because there is the actual fertility rate, but then it's also very possible to measure very accurately the desired fertility rate of anywhere you go to. And how you find that out is by doing a survey asking women, how many children do you want to have? How many children do you desire? Women would say one, two, three, four, whatever.

Right, I have done research myself. I wrote a book called Target Africa and a lot of these data is within that book, target Africa. Now, if you went to African nations and you checked, we have the highest desired fertility rate in the world, higher than Latin America, higher than Asia. Because African women, depending from country to country, want children ranging from four to nine. You know, if you went to a country like Mali and Niger Republic, you're finding that the average desired fertility rate in the country is eight or nine children and you go to a country

like Nigeria, it might be five or six. You go to a country like Ghana, it might be four, right? And some of the Eastern African countries, but women usually want more than four children or at least four children in most of the African countries and that's, that's only natural. So imagine that you're coming in and you're coming to do aid work or foreign aid work and there is this thing already existing deep within culture that all the women in this town or all the women in this village really desire to have about four kids and above, right, ranging, depending on people's situations and what they want. And you completely ignore that and set up shop to give women contraception to reduce their fertility rate. So it is a conflict between

the desired fertility rate of African women and what the, what our doork owners think that our fertility rate should really be. It's their own project, you know, desired fertility in their minds versus the desired fertility of the people that they are coming to. And if you want to know where a lot of the money goes to so, so much money is appropriated and allocated to a contraception project, much of that money, a nice chunk of that money actually goes to what they call, you know, communication and mass media. And that will be like messaging, you know, putting up billboards, doing adverts on, on our televisions in Africa and radio stations and doing a lot of work with government.

So they're re-educating. So they first come in and they make a very concerted attempt to re-educate us and completely separate us or remove us from the desired fertility rate while establishing. their own desired for city rates. So I give us just a brief example of this. And Bena Republic, which is just neighboring to Nigeria, is to the west of Nigeria. In the capital, Kotonou, there is a huge billboard

that I found in the market, like in the market square, right in the middle of the city, huge billboard of family planning that was sponsored by IPPF, which is International Plan Parenthood Federation, and Peiba, which I think Peiabba, because it was in French, Paibe might be like the Netherlands, one of these Western countries in the EU. So this billboard is on family planning. But what you see on it is a beautiful family of a husband, a wife and two children, and that is all.

Then you have all the message on the side of what contraception, you know, look at all the contraception methods you can use. That, I think, is reeducation because you are doing this and showing how happy one. is with just two children in a country where the desired fertility rate is surely not two. So they spend much money and much efforts in re-education. And then on top of that, they bring in their contraceptive drugs and devices, which of course has all kinds of problems related to it that I wouldn't go into now. But these are all the things that you see going on between the West and African countries that you know it should not be ignored and people should be raising,

should be raising objections to it, especially at this point in time, when everyone is talking about, oh, racism and this, that and the other, and, you know, white supremacy, all of that. But I say, you see, what I see more of and what I think is much of a problem is ideological supremacy. And with ideological supremacy, they are getting the better of Africa and they keep doing it with impunity. Well, that's definitely sad to hear. I think if women want to have nine kids, they should go for it. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. I've had a great time being here. Well, thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google, Play, or SoundCloud. And please leave us a review or a rating on iTunes to give us any feedback.

Rob and Jenny will be with you on Monday. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Tranko and Daniel Davis. designed by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.