Life Advocacy Briefing

Calls Still Needed for Pitts-Hyde Amendment

CALLS ARE STILL NEEDED to Representatives in Congress, asking them to “Please support the Pitts/Hyde Amendment to the Indian Health Care bill, and if Pitts/Hyde is not considered, please vote against the bill.” Members may be reached via the Capitol switchboard at 1-202/224-3121. The Pitts Amendment would put the House into the same posture as the Senate, which in February adopted the Vitter/Hyde Amendment barring taxpayer funding of abortions in the Indian Health Service, funded through the Interior Department. The classic Hyde Amendment is attached each year to the spending bill for the Dept. of Health & Human Services, protecting taxpayers from subsidizing Medicaid abortions on indigent Americans. Pitts/Hyde/Vitter would not have to be renewed annually to safeguard the Indian population.

The baby-protection amendment is apparently the only “controversy” remaining in the IHS reauthorization measure, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) is believed to be planning to bring up HR-1328 on the “suspension calendar” in the full House; that procedure is normally reserved for non-controversial measures whose provisions have been worked out and should not be used for House consideration of HR-1328. Should the bill be brought up under “suspension” rules, its passage will require a two-thirds vote.

The only recourse for pro-life Members of Congress, in the event Mr. Hoyer pulls his maneuver, will be to vote “no” on the entire measure. With the abortion provision the only controversial question in the bill, Members’ votes on final passage will constitute a vote on abortion funding policy.

Title V Wins Consideration

TITLE V (FIVE) HAS BEEN INCLUDED in both Senate versions of the Medicare reauthorization measure in a major victory for the abstinence education movement.

Finance Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) has paired Title V with the Transitional Medical Assistance (TMA) program, a Medicaid provision that offers health coverage to indigent families. Opponents to abstinence education had sought to separate the two in order to drop the Title V abstinence grants. The Baucus bill extends both programs 18 months.

The committee’s Ranking Republican Sen. Charles Grassley (IA) is offering an alternative measure which also extends both programs but for just 15 months.

If neither bill receives the 60 votes needed to bring the measure to a vote, as is likely, negotiations are expected to work out differences in the two versions. Calls to Senators urging support for Title V abstinence education will continue to be helpful until the matter is resolved. The Capitol switchboard number is 1-202/224-3121.

Veto Coming on Michigan Partial-Birth Abortion Ban

GOV. JENNIFER GRANHOLM (D-MI) ANNOUNCED THURSDAY she will veto legislation outlawing partial-birth abortion.

Priests for Life director Fr. Frank Pavone responded by asking the Michigan legislature to pass the legislation again, over the governor’s veto.

“When the delivery process is used as a vehicle of killing,” said Fr. Pavone in a news release, “it is no longer clear whether a doctor is an instrument of life or of death. Michigan legislators have the opportunity to correct this mistake, and I urge them to do so. … The first purpose of government is the protection of human life,” he said. “This promised veto contradicts that purpose.”

Kansas Prosecutor to Seek Re-Election

JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS, PROSECUTOR PHILL KLINE HAS ANNOUNCED he will run for re-election, though he had earlier indicated he would take a pass. He faces a GOP primary contest Aug. 5, according to Tom Hess, writing for Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink, against Steve Howe, an assistant district attorney whom Mr. Kline “fired when he took office.”

Mr. Kline is seeking to press charges against Planned Parenthood in his Kansas City-area county on 107 counts of committing illegal abortions. He originally brought the charges while serving as Kansas’s attorney general, lost the 2006 election and was appointed to the district attorney post. By a complicated arrangement which a court has said was lawful, he was able to transfer the evidence to his local office out of his state office, which was assumed by an abortion advocate.

Planned Parenthood has dragged out the case with legal wrangling so long that the patient, persistent Mr. Kline now apparently believes he will not be able to complete the case before the end of his current term. He has prevailed on many of the motions which PP has used to stall him, and Kansas citizens know him as a determined prosecutor who will not give in voluntarily in his battle against the baby-killing outfit.

‘Legal’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Safe’

A PAIR OF CALIFORNIA ABORTIONISTS ARE FACING CHARGES for practicing “medicine” without a license.

Superior Court Judge Samuel Mayerson found earlier this month, reports LifeSiteNews.com, “that there is sufficient evidence to try Bertha Bugarin and her sister Raquel,” Bertha on 18 counts and Raquel on four.” The finding followed a three-day hearing and will lead to formal arraignment this Thursday.

Bertha Bugarin has at times owned the notorious “Clinica Medica Para La Mujer De Hoy” chain of abortuaries, according to LifeSiteNews citing Operation Rescue as source. The chain at one time operated 11 killing centers “in partnership,” reports LifeSiteNews, “with abortionist Nicholas Braemer, who lost his medical license in 2000.”

Ms. Bugarin evidently committed abortions when no trained abortionist was present and “continued participating in the chain of clinics,” reports LifeSiteNews, “even beyond the time of her arrest.” Another “troubled abortionist,” notes LifeSiteNews, “now claims to own the remaining five abortion mills.” His name is Nolan Jones.

Among other abortionists who have been associated with the Bugarin operation have been Mohamed Dia, Phillip Rand and Laurence Reich, whom LifeSiteNews identifies as “a convicted sexual predator.” All three have “lost their medical licenses,” reports the pro-life news service. Another Bugarin abortionist Steven Turnipseed “disappeared,” reports LifeSiteNews, “after Operation Rescue reported him to the Medical Board for practicing medicine without a license.” Evidently, though he was called “Doctor Steve” while working for Ms. Bugarin, he never had been licensed as a doctor.

Compassionate Justice

POLAND IS BEING ROCKED BY THE STORY of a 14-year-old being sheltered to protect her from abortion advocates hounding her to abort her baby.

After the young girl learned she was pregnant by her boyfriend, her family tragically “directed her to Planned Parenthood to arrange for legal permission for an abortion,” reports John-Henry Westen for LifeSiteNews.com. “Currently Polish law does not penalize abortion when the pregnancy is a result of crime; in such cases abortion is permitted till the 12th week of pregnancy.” Sexual intercourse under age 15 is a crime in Poland.

While Planned Parenthood was pursuing the necessary permission to kill the girl’s baby, the 14-year-old confided in a teacher that she did not wish to abort, and hospitals in her area refused to commit the abortion, “saying,” writes Mr. Westen, “that the girl seemed to be pressured into the abortion by her mother and abortion activists.”

Even after “a priest friend and some pro-life activists offered support to the girl,” writes Mr. Westen, “and all the help necessary to carry the baby to term, … [the young mother] was brought to a Warsaw hospital that agreed to abort her baby.”

Though a hospital child psychologist who interviewed her “advised doctors to give the girl some more time to think,” she was directed to prepare herself for abortion the next day.

But the pro-life community intervened with prayer, e-mails to the hospital and an official complaint to police against “the country’s most prominent abortion activist,” reports LifeSiteNews.com. That brought the matter to the attention of the media, and when a court in the girl’s hometown “issued an order to place her in the custody of a priest at a juvenile center,” she was protected from further harassment by abortion advocates.

The young mother “is now safe,” reports LifeSiteNews, “and offers of support are flowing in from all over Poland.”

The girl’s situation has raised in Poland a public discussion of the rape loophole in the country’s generally pro-life law.

“‘Why are we assuming that abortion is a solution for a pregnant woman in a crisis situation?’” asked pro-life women’s rights activist Inga Kaluzynska, quoted by LifeSiteNews. “‘Abortion is always against women,’ she said. ‘A victim of rape deserves our help, support and care, not another trauma. Besides,’” she said, quoted by Mr. Westen, “‘it is the criminal who should pay for the rape, not the innocent baby and its mother. To allow killing the baby conceived in rape is an act of utmost discrimination, based on the person’s parentage.’”

U.S. Steps Away from U.N. ‘Human Rights’ Council

June 10, 2008, report by John Jalsevac for LifeSiteNews.com

Sean McCormack, the US Asst. Secretary of State, told reporters in Washington that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice “has taken the decision that we will engage the Human Rights Council really only when we believe that there are matters of deep national interest before the council, and we feel compelled. …

“Our skepticism regarding the function of the council on human rights in terms of fulfilling its mandate and its mission is well known. It has a rather pathetic record in that regard,” McCormack said.

McCormack specifically attacked the council for failing to address serious human rights issues and instead focusing almost solely on the issue of Israel. “Instead of focusing on some of the real and deep human rights issues around the world, it has really turned into a forum that seems to be almost solely focused on bashing Israel,” McCormack said Friday. “And, as a result, we’re going to choose more selectively how and when we engage the council,” he said.

The 47-member council, which has a long history of anti-life and anti-family activism, was formed in 2006 after the UN’s previous human rights body, the Geneva-based Human Rights Commission, was disbanded amidst criticism that it had come under the control of a bloc of countries well known for serious human rights abuses.

The United States opposed the establishment of the Council from the beginning. At the time of its inception, [US] ambassador to the UN John Bolton said the US wanted stronger assurances that countries known for human rights violations would be barred. The UN General Assembly, however, then went on to elect [Red] China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Cuba and various other well-known human rights violators to sit on the new Human Rights Council [HRC].

Besides its coming under the control of countries with less-than-admirable records in terms of human rights, the Council has also frequently focused significant amounts of its energies on promoting an anti-life and anti-family agenda globally.

Only recently the HRC subjected the Catholic country of Poland to a grilling about its human rights record. At a meeting on April 14th, the Polish delegation was questioned by various members of the Council about its stance on abortion and homosexuality.

Norway said that Poland should “facilitate access to abortion for women who qualify for this under Polish law.” Slovenia, the United Kingdom and Sweden all pushed for sexual orientation to be one of the grounds for non-discrimination in the new equality law being debated in the Polish parliament. Slovenia recommended that Poland stop legislation “punishing anyone who promotes homosexuality in education.” Canada said that “those who campaign for equality and against discrimination based on perceived sexual orientation (should be) allowed to carry out their work in a secure environment.”

Louise Arbour, the former High Commissioner for Human Rights, who just announced her resignation from the position to the Council last week, was a vociferous supporter of so-called “reproductive rights” and homosexuality and used the HRC to push the anti-life agenda.

In 2006, Arbour gave the opening address at the international homosexual rights conference and encouraged conference-goers “to make greater use of the international human rights institutions, ultimately for the benefit of the greater number of rights-holders,” urging non-governmental organizations [NGOs] “to include sexual orientation and gender identity in their agenda and to partner with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered NGOs to advocate better protection of human rights for everyone.”

In 2007, a radical homosexual umbrella group released a homosexual rights document at the Council, authored by several UN human rights officials, that claimed even the youngest children are capable of discerning their sexual identity. It added that they should be given governmentally protected free rein to express that identity.

The document went on to demand revision of international and national laws to reflect these and other ideas on the far frontier of social policy.

In 2006, a coalition of NGOs presented a report to the Council entitled “Building the UN Human Rights Council and its Special Procedures: Notes for Sexual Rights & Reproductive Rights Advocates.” The report, funded by the Ford Foundation, laid out a strategy to “work together to develop a more balanced analysis of sexuality and sexual rights that will include but also move beyond issues of identity, violence and discrimination to allow for the consideration of positive claims such as the right to broader sexual freedom and a right to sexual expression and pleasure.”

The publication also commended [the now-replaced Commission on Human Rights] and HRC in “calling for the decriminalization of abortion, thus setting the stage for arguments that a right to abortion exists in international law.” There are countless other examples besides of the Council’s anti-life and anti-family activities.

The US holds observer status at the Council, having never put itself forward for election as a full-fledged member since its inception. As an observer, the superpower cannot vote in the Council but can only participate in debate. Even in that limited role, however, the US has already demonstrated the full extent to which it intends to remove itself from the activities [of] the Council, having refrained from participating in a debate on [Burma] on Friday.