But did anyone think it would be so quick?

Senator Obama made the clear and firm promise to Planned Parenthood that he would act swirftly to loosen (or remove) abortion limits if elected president.

So it was not surprising when human rights activists worried, just after the election, that abortions would increase and even be exported under his administration.

The United Nations is expected to aggressively promote abortions worldwide with Barack Obama as the new president of the United States. One of the top pro-life lobbyists at the United Nations says he worries the floodgates will come open to perhaps make abortion an international right…

“It is likely the new president will work almost immediately to correct what his ideological allies like CRR [Center for Reproductive Rights] view as multiple mistakes of the Bush administration with regard to international social policy,” [C-Fam president Austin] Ruse writes in the Friday Fax.

Which is exactly what the Obama transition team announced today.

President-elect Barack Obama is poised to move swiftly to reverse actions that President Bush took using executive authority, and his transition team is reviewing limits on stem cell research and the expansion of oil and gas drilling, among other issues, members of the team said Sunday.

As mentioned in the post below, one of those “other issues” is “reproductive rights”.

“There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for Congressional action, and I think we’ll see the president do that,” John D. Podesta, a top transition leader, said Sunday. “He feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set.”

But did Obama get “a real mandate” in Tuesday’s election? Weekend talk shows mulled that over and crunched numbers and poll data and pretty much concluded it was a referendum for change. But not a mandate.

And then there’s this overlooked reality:

Pro-abortion Democrat Barack Obama may have captured the presidency, but the pro-life group working within the party to change its pro-abortion position has a reason to celebrate. Democrats for Life of America backed several pro-life Democrats for Congress and five won their races Tuesday night.

Did you hear about this in even one major media outlet? Did you know that the ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats, the socially and fiscally conservative Democrats who put their party over the edge into the majority by winning their races in the ’06 elections on the basis of their conservative values…..have held their seats and increased their power?

“The pro-life Democratic Caucus will once again increase,” Kristen Day, the director of the group told LifeNews.com.

“This will be only the second time in 30 years that the number of pro-life Democrats increases instead of decreases,” she said. “The first time we made gains was in 2006 due to the work of pro-life Democrats all over this country advocating on behalf of the pro-life cause.”

Twenty-six pro-life incumbent members of Congress kept their seats on Tuesday night. They will be joined by five other pro-life Democrats.

They helped the party win the majority. But these are not their values. Pro-life Democrats have no voice in decisions that never make it to Congress. Executive authority is being invoked to loosen laws and commit federal funds for abortion – a restriction that goes back to the hard-fought-and-won Hyde Amendment – under the claim of popular “mandate”.

It’s unpopular enough with the American people to allow all the power to sit with one party. It’s not going to sit well with the people that the pro-life Democrats they elected have no say in expanding access to abortion, and the funding to pay for it. That crosses the line beyond what ‘pro-choice’ advocates even support. Once federal funds are spent on abortion, and even on foreign land (overturning the Mexico City policy, if it comes to that), taxpayers no longer have a choice. Or a say.

They’ve already spoken. But apparently, some don’t even know what they said….or how it’s being interpreted.