Life Advocacy Briefing

Dominoes Dropping?

THE SUPREME COURT DROPPED THE OTHER SHOE last Monday, following its release of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban with a directive to two federal appeals courts  to review their own rulings which invalidated state-level PBA bans enacted by Missouri and Virginia “in light of” the new pronouncement.

The 4th and 8th US Circuit Courts of Appeals had based their earlier rulings on the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision striking down Nebraska’s PBA Ban principally using the statute’s lack of a “health” loophole as its excuse. The 2007 ruling, in the federal law case cited as Gonzalez v. Carhart, however, “establishes,” writes Peter J. Smith for LifeSiteNews.com, “that laws restricting abortion do not necessarily require an exception for ‘health’ in order to pass constitutional muster.”

A spokesman for Virginia’s attorney general told Washington Post writer Jerry Markon “he is ‘confident that the 4th Circuit will follow the lead of the Supreme Court.  Atty. Gen. Robert McDonnell (R) “applauded the Supreme Court decision last week,” writes Mr. Markon, “and said it ‘recognizes the dignity of human life.’”

The Post reporter interviewed a professor of constitutional law at the University of North Carolina, Michael Gerhardt, who said the new “Supreme Court decision increases the chances of a 4th Circuit reversal but that it ‘may not definitively determine the outcome.’ He said the 4th Circuit could order a lower court to hold hearings,” writes Mr. Markon, “on how the Virginia law would be enforced. If the courts determine that the law imposes an ‘undue burden’ on a woman’s legal right to choose an abortion, [Prof.] Gerhardt said” writes the Post reporter, “the 4th Circuit could again throw out the Virginia law.”

In Missouri, Attorney General Jay Nixon “planned to file a motion on Monday,” reports LifeSite’s Mr. Smith, “asking the federal appeals court to lift the injunction against the state law, which would allow the ban on partial-birth abortion to take effect immediately.”

Though the federal law’s language applying it only in situations affecting interstate commerce is expected to be applied broadly to permit federal prosecution of abortionists who use the partial-birth method of child killing, state-level laws continue to be desirable, as local prosecutors in many jurisdictions are more likely to pursue cases.

Nancy Northup, president of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which competes with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for abortion industry litigation business and specifically represented the abortionist/plaintiffs in the Virginia case, expressed concern about the potential enforcement of the state-level laws. “If the Virginia ban takes effect, [Ms.] Northup said,” reports the Post, “‘it would put doctors under pressure from both state and federal prosecutors.’”

Desperate Response to Supreme Court Ruling

REP. JERROLD NADLER (D-NY) DREW JUST 71 CO-SPONSORS to HR-1964, the rehash of the old “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA), introduced April 19 and referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary, where Mr. Nadler chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, which is expected to hear the bill. In the Senate, notorious abortion backer Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced the bill as S-1173 along with 15 co-sponsors as of our deadline; the bill has been assigned to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. We publish lists of both bills’ sponsors at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing.

National Right to Life has already dubbed the radical bill the “Freedom for Partial-Birth Abortionists Act.” And rightly so. The intended effect of FOCA, writes NRL’s Legislation Dept., is “to nullify virtually all federal and state limitations on abortion.”

Even the timing of its introduction – the day after the Supreme Court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban – betrays the sponsors as seeking to empower and excuse those who partially deliver a baby for the purpose of killing the child, as well, of course, as preserving the overall abortion industry.

“The heart of the bill is a ban,” said NRL’s Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, “that would nullify all of the major types of pro-life laws that the Supreme Court has said are permissible under Roe v. Wade, including the ban on partial-birth abortions and bans on government funding of abortion,” as well as laws which have not yet been tested at the Supreme Court.

Quoting from the bill itself, NRL notes the bill “flatly invalidates any ‘statute, ordinance, regulation, administrative order, decision, policy, practice or other action’ of any federal, state or local government or governmental official (or any person acting under government authority) that would ‘deny or interfere with a woman’s right to choose’ abortion or that would ‘discriminate against the exercise of the right … in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services or information.’”

Planned Parenthood boasted last week on its Internet website that FOCA would invalidate parental involvement laws, waiting periods and tax-funding bans.

The sponsors “know they cannotenact anything like this,” said Mr. Johnson, “so long as a pro-life President is in the White House.” But he warned, “Those promoting this bill intend to use it as a litmus test for those who seek Congressional office or the White House and as a fundraising tool.”

If liberals want to use their support of mid-birth infanticide as an issue in their campaigns, we at Life Advocacy expect pro-life opponents would welcome such a battle.

Mexico City Falls to Abortion Lobby

MEXICO CITY LAWMAKERS RELAXED THE CITY’s ABORTION LIMITS in our southern neighbor’s capital city last Tuesday, legalizing the killing of babies up to 12 weeks’ gestational age. The 46-to-19 vote could produce a ripple effect through the rest of the country; when Mexico City recognized same-sex unions last year, other Mexican cities followed suit.

The vote came despite what Gudrun Schultz, reporting for LifeSiteNews.com, terms “massive opposition from church leaders in the predominantly Catholic country” and despite public demonstrations against the change. “City hospitals will be required to perform abortions on demand during the first trimester of pregnancy,” reports LifeSite, noting “the law will also pave the way for the opening of private abortion clinics.”

Mexican President Felipe Calderon “affirmed his commitment to the unborn,” reports Family Research Council in FRC’s Washington Update, “and vowed that while Mexico City ‘imposed [its] liberal views on the population,’ the country’s prevailing policy would continue to respect human life.”

One of Mr. Calderon’s party members, city lawmaker Paula Soto, told the Associated Press (AP), reports LifeSite, “‘We go to great lengths to protect (sea) turtle eggs. Lucky turtles! It appears they have more people willing to defend them than some unborn children.’”

Even if Pres. Calderon succeeds in preserving respect for prenatal life in the rest of Mexico, abortion-on-demand in Mexico City sets up the prospect of abortion tourism. Life Dynamics President Mark Crutcher told Jim Brown of OneNewsNow.com, the Internet website of American Family News service, “Abortion groups like Planned Parenthood have been strengthening their presence in Mexico, because they believe Roe v. Wade is on the brink of being overturned in the US. ‘If Mexico goes down this trail,’” Mr. Crutcher said, “‘Mexico is going to become known as the abortion capital of the western hemisphere.’”

Mr. Crutcher attributed the weakening of Mexican policy to outside influences pressuring the country’s lawmakers. “‘The American abortion industry is pouring money and manpower into that country,’” said Mr. Crutcher in Mr. Brown’s story. “‘The Mexican people need to rise up right now and see they are being played for fools.’”

And according to another pro-life leader, the abortion lobby will not stop with Mexico. Human Life International’s president, the Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, declared in an HLI news release: “Tuesday, April 24, 2007, is already being called ‘Black Tuesday’ in Mexico City. The imperialists of death, who are on the march in Latin America assaulting the Catholic values in those countries, can only draw strength from this.”

Licensed to Kill

THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT HAS ISSUED A LICENSE to an outfit called “Women on Waves” to operate a chemical abortion boat in international waters, “despite a massive national and international outcry,” writes Gudrun Schultz for LifeSiteNews.com citing The Times Online as source.

 “The boat has caused an uproar at home in the Netherlands and abroad,” reports LifeSite. “Condemned by governments and pro-life organizations as a propaganda tool for pro-abortion activists,” reports LifeSite, “the abortion boat has come under intense criticism for offering to perform abortions on women from countries where the procedure is illegal.”

The boat was tethered in 2004 by then-public health minister Clemence Ross, who forbade the boat from traveling beyond a 15.53-mile radius from a specific Amsterdam hospital. The Council of State overturned the ban last year, reports LifeSite, complaining that “[Minister] Ross had failed to adequately justify the decision to restrict the boat’s activities.”

The abortion fanatics from Women on Waves predictably complained about the terms of its license, which limits its customers to those whose babies are up to seven gestational weeks old. The boat operators seek permission “to abort babies throughout the full first trimester of pregnancy,” reports LifeSite. Ireland, Poland and Malta, all of which outlaw abortion, are the first announced targets for the rogue operation.

Merciless Euries

A FIGHT IS ENSUING WITHIN THE WORLD BANK over the powerful outfit’s use of financial incentives to impose depopulation strategies on developing countries.

The World Bank has for decades pursued a relentless policy of pressuring developing nations “into implementing population control,” writes John-Henry Westen for LifeSiteNews.com, “in order to qualify for receipt of loans. That program accelerated during the Clinton era in the 1990s,” writes Mr. Westen, “as the Bank, which is controlled by the United States [by far the largest contributor], more openly insisted countries wishing to receive funding permit abortion and institute ‘family planning’ programs.”

But under the current Administration, the Bank is managed, under US appointment, by a former Salvadoran finance minister, who has been implementing a new health strategy which, writes Mr. Westen, “sought to relax requirements that recipient countries implement population control ‘family planning’ policies as a condition of receiving loans.”

Enter the Bank’s European directors from Belgium, Switzerland, France, Germany and Norway, who have complained to the World Bank’s full board.

“Reuters [news service] and Agence France Presse are quoting sources from the Tuesday meeting,” writes Mr. Westen, “who say that talks broke down as the US tried to insert language in the health policy update which would distance it from forcing abortion on recipient countries.” Perhaps the Euries would like to ante up the lion’s share of World Bank funding. Or perhaps not.

More Snobbery From Eurie Radicals

A COLLECTION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION’s ‘PARLIAMENT’ MEMBERS are trying to dissuade the US Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees & Migration from attending a May meeting in Warsaw, Poland, of the World Congress of Families (WCF).

The 19 members of the EU’s Working Group on Separation of Religion & Politics “accused WCF organizers,” writes Samantha Singson in the April 19 Friday Fax from Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-Fam), “of holding ‘prejudiced attitudes toward foreigners, people from other religions, homosexuals and the inclusive vision of what represents a family unit that has been developed by the United Nations and the European Union.’”

The accusation came in a letter released to the Baltimore Sun by Catholics [sic] for a Free Choice. The letter, reports Ms. Singson, charges the participation of Ellen Sauerbrey in the WCF meeting “would be providing an ‘official US government stamp of approval to extreme and intolerant views’” and claims she would be “committing ‘a diplomatic faux pas’” by participating in a public gathering of a private organization whose views represent the traditional values of the American people. What nerve.

We at Life Advocacy Briefing celebrate the fact that the State Department actually has a high official in a critical post who represents traditional American values. And knowing Mrs. Sauerbrey, we are confident she will represent those values with dignity and persuasion. That, no doubt, is exactly what the Euries fear.

Sponsors of the Abortion Lobby’s ‘Freedom of Choice’ Act

US Senators Barbara Boxer & Dianne Feinstein (CA), Benjamin Cardin & Barbara Mikulski (MD), Debbie Stabenow (MI), Max Baucus & Jon Tester (MT), Jeff Bingaman (NM), Frank Lautenberg & Robert Menendez (NJ), Hillary Clinton & Charles Schumer (NY), Maria Cantwell & Patty Murray (WA), all Democrats. And “Independent Democratic” Senators Joseph Lieberman (CT) and “Independent” Senator Bernard Sanders (VT).

US Representatives Raul Grijalva (AZ); Howard Berman, Lois Capps, Susan Davis, Sam Farr, Bob Filner, Jane Harman, Michael Honda, Tom Lantos, Barbara Lee, Doris Matsui, Linda Sanchez, Hilda Solis, Fortney Stark, Mike Thompson, Diane Watson, Henry Waxman & Lynn Woolsey (CA); Kathy Castor, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz & Robert Wexler (FL); Neil Abercrombie & Mazie Hirono (HI); Danny Davis, Rahm Emanuel, Jesse Jackson Jr., Janice Schakowsky (IL); David Loebsack (IA); Thomas Allen (ME); Albert Wynn (MD); Barney Frank, James McGovern, John Olver (MA); John Conyers (MI); Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum (MN); William Clay (MO), all Democrats.

And Democratic Representatives Shelley Berkley (NV); Carol Shea-Porter (NH); Rush Holt, Donald Payne (NJ); Gary Ackerman, Michael Arcuri, Yvette Clarke, Steve Israel, Nita Lowey, Carolyn Maloney, Carolyn McCarthy, Charles Rangel, Louise Slaughter, Edolphus Towns, Anthony Weiner (NY); Brad Miller (NC); Dennis Kucinich & Betty Sutton (OH); Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio & David Wu (OR); Chaka Fattah (PA); Steve Cohen (TN); Gene Green, Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX); Rick Boucher & James Moran (VA); Jay Inslee, Rick Larsen, Jim McDermott (WA); Tammy Baldwin, Gwen Moore (WI). Also Democratic DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes-Norton and GOP Rep. Christopher Shays (CT).