Life Advocacy Briefing

March 16, 2009

 

Obama Drops Shoe – on the Littlest Ones / Next Stop: Capitol Hill / Putting Ideology Ahead of Patients / Dissing Docs, Too / Two More Moves / Ogden, Perrelli In at ‘Justice’ / Pennsylvania Peg to Challenge Sen. Specter / March for Life Speech / Senate Voting Records

Obama Drops Shoe – on the Little Ones

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME, and now he’s done it. The President of the United States last Monday – before a crowd of adoring fans (and fundees) – ceremoniously plunged the American taxpayer into complicity with killing embryonic human beings for Nazistic experimentation.

Of course he committed this immoral act with a mountain of moralizing, condemning his predecessor’s limits on the bloodthirsty, “oh-yes-we-can” Frankensteins at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as though Mr. Bush’s protecting US taxpayers from abetting the deliberate killing of human beings had been equivalent to putting the brakes on the development of electricity.

His remarks attendant to his deed were also marked by characteristic deception, denouncing, for example, “reproductive cloning” while actually creating incentives for scientists to clone embryonic human beings as raw material to be sacrificed for their experimentation. Bioethicist/commentator Wesley Smith predicts, in his Internet based column posted at www.wesleyjsmith.com, that Mr. Obama was prepared to promote and ultimately sign legislation “to explicitly legalize human Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer [SCNT] – the actual act of human cloning – as has been proposed for years,” writes Mr. Smith, “by my Senator, Dianne Feinstein [D-CA], and Utah’s Orrin Hatch [R].

“Human SCNT for research, if it can be done in humans,” explains Mr. Smith, “literally creates new human life for the purpose of destroying it – perhaps a first in history. Over time, should the technology become ‘safe,’ it will lead to reproductive cloning,” writes Mr. Smith. “But,” he adds, “that is years away. In the meantime, Pres. Obama and the rest of the brave-new-world crowd will redefine – or better stated, misdefine – cloning and outlaw their straw man so they can pretend that cloning has been made illegal when it has been explicitly legalized,” charges Mr. Smith, “on the way toward federal funding.”

Among the many experts who denounced the Obama move was Sam Casey, general counsel of Advocates International and an attorney who was involved in 2001 litigation which resulted in Pres. Bush’s order limiting embryo experimentation. “‘Pres. Obama’s decision is clearly unethical,’ [Mr.] Casey said” in a news release.

“‘Destroying one human life through human experimentation, even in order to possibly help other human beings, is always morally wrong,’” said Mr. Casey, “‘and should not be countenanced by any government, particularly in this case where it is not even necessary and the subject of the experimentation cannot possibly give his or her consent. It is also ethically wrong,’” Mr. Casey said, “‘to force taxpayers who do honor the dignity of every human being to help pay for research that they believe is an immoral taking of innocent human life.’”

Said Anthony Ozimic, political secretary of the British-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), “Pres. Obama’s decision comes at a time when researchers have started to conclude that embryonic stem cell research is scientifically flawed and that alternative forms of stem cell research, which don’t involve embryos, are far more successful. Yet he is ready to provide funds for scientists,” notes Mr. Ozimic, “who will create and destroy human embryos with no regard to their human status, their rights and their dignity as fellow members of the human family. By so doing, he reveals himself as a willing tool of a powerful lobby of vested interests among research companies and eugenicist academics. He promised a new approach in policy,” said Mr. Ozimic in SPUC’s news bulletin, “but embryonic stem cell research is yesterday’s bad idea, not tomorrow’s future.”

 

Next Stop: Capitol Hill

THE EMBRYO VIVISECTION ORDER COULD BE THE PRECURSOR, notes Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, to dismantling what Mr. Perkins calls “the one law that prevents Obama from using taxpayer dollars to fund the destruction of embryos directly … .

“The Dickey-Wicker Amendment, approved by Congress every year since 1996,” writes Mr. Perkins in his March 9 Washington Update, “bans the use of federal funds to create human embryos. Unfortunately,” he warns, “even that safeguard could be in jeopardy under the liberal majority [in Congress]. As with the other pro-life [appropriations] riders, Dickey-Wicker must survive the appropriations process,” writes Mr. Perkins, “a feat that could now be monumentally more difficult.”

Readers are asked to call their House Members and Senators now, in response to the Obama move, to request a commitment of support for the Dickey-Wicker Amendment when it arises during the appropriations process. Members can be reached through the Capitol switchboard at 1-202/224-3121.

 

Putting Ideology Ahead of Patients

WHILE RESCINDING the Aug. 9, 2001, executive order by which Pres. George W. Bush choked off federal funding for Frankensteinian scientists, Barack Obama also rescinded the June 20, 2007, Bush order directing National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers to push alternative stem cell research which shows actual promise, contrasted with embryo vivisection, which has yet to advance medical science toward a single cure, treatment or therapy.

“Of course, the Administration didn’t have the candor or courage to publicize this part of his nasty work,” writes Wesley Smith on his web-log at www.wesleyjsmith.com, “but the now dead [2007] order explicitly required funding for ‘alternative methods,’ such as the new Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, which offer so much promise without the ethical contentiousness. Alternative methods,” he writes, “are one of the few areas in which we can all row in the same direction, which I thought this President wanted to do.

“I can think of only two reasons for this action, for which I saw no advocacy either in the election [campaign] or during the first weeks of the Administration,” writes Mr. Smith. “First, vindictiveness against all things ‘Bush’ or policies considered by the Left to be ‘pro-life,’ and second, a desire to get the public to see unborn human life as a mere corn crop for the harvest. So much for taking the politics out of science!”

 

Dissing Docs, Too

THE PRESIDENT’s ATTACK ON CONSCIENTIOUS TAXPAYERS last week overshadowed, in media focus, his filing last Tuesday of a regulatory proposal to rescind the Bush Administration’s Medical Provider Conscience Rule. But his action could have far-reaching reverberations throughout our healthcare system and must be resisted. Though Conscience Protection legislation is still on the statute books, the Bush Administration put the regulation in place in order to provide an enforcement system for the law, which has been increasingly ignored in practice, starting with Illinois’s then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s executive order forcing pharmacists in his state to fill prescriptions for “the morning-after pill.”

A 30-day comment period gives us – as “the public” – an opportunity to respond officially to the Obama rescission of the Bush rule. Since the Obama order was published in the Federal Register last Tuesday, that gives you the reader until April 9 to file a response.

Public comments may be filed by electronic mail at “[email protected]”. The bureaucrats are seeking to prescribe the content of comments to fit into one of four limited categories, but we at Life Advocacy Briefing encourage respectful comments of your own opinion as to why the Dept. of Health & Human Services should not be rolling back the protections put in place after more than 18 months of rulemaking. One does not – and should not – need to be a lawyer or a bureaucrat in order to express an opinion to the US government!

 

Two More Moves

AS IF HE HADN’t DONE ENOUGH in rescinding Pres. Bush’s Medical Provider Conscience Protection rules and in opening the US Treasury to lethal experimentation on embryonic human beings, Pres. Obama last Wednesday signed an executive order creating a new White House Council on Women & Girls, to which he appointed senior adviser Valerie Jarrett as chairman, and, the same day, announced his intention to nominate abortion backer Melanne Verveer to a newly created post as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues.

Creation of the post had been sought by the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Reproductive Rights, Feminist Majority [sic], International Planned Parenthood Federation, according to Catholic News Agency (CNA), “and several others.” They had requested it in a joint letter dated Jan. 23, whose principal purpose was to praise their fellow traveler for his executive order overturning the Mexico City Policy by which IPPF and other abortionists had previously been disqualified from US taxpayer largesse.

Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, chastised Mr. Obama for inventing the new diplomatic post, “This is not a real ambassadorial position. It is yet another redundancy in Obama’s program that is designed to eradicate future generations of the beautiful people in developing countries. ‘No child left behind,’” said Fr. Euteneuer in a news release, “seems to mean something else entirely to this President.”

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) recently termed the Obama Regime’s hyper-spending spree as “whiplash.” Extreme as his economic policies are, the whiplash inflicted on Americans who cherish the right to life is even more painful. And as last week’s rat-tat-tat actions suggest, he has just begun.

 

Ogden, Perrelli In at ‘Justice’

THE SENATE THURSDAY VOTED 65 to 28 TO CONFIRM David Ogden as Deputy Attorney General of the United States. Though Mr. Ogden’s law career has focused largely on defense of the pornography industry, he has compiled an extensive record of advocacy for the abortion industry as well. Consequently, we are publishing the Senate Voting Record at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing and will include the vote in our Voting Record Index later this year. We’ll also publish the vote on Thomas Perrelli’s confirmation as Associate Atty. General; the controversial appointee, while working for the American Civil Liberties Union, fought efforts by the Schindler family in Florida four years ago to protect their daughter, Terri Schindler Schiavo, from court-ordered death by dehydration.

 

Pennsylvania Peg to Challenge Sen. Specter

PRO-LIFE CHAMPION PEG LUKSIK HAS FORMED A CAMPAIGN FUND and told Associated Press (AP) reporter Peter Jackson she plans to challenge Sen. Arlen Specter in the 2010 Republican primary. The 79-year-old liberal lawmaker, who has amassed a shameful voting record on Life issues, has said he will seek a sixth term.

Mrs. Luksik, 53, is a grassroots leader who left politics in 1998 to rear her six children, returning in 2008 as campaign manager for William Russell, last year’s GOP nominee challenging Rep. John Murtha (D). She has previously run statewide for governor in 1990, 1994 and 1998. She told Mr. Jackson her campaign would be “‘about giving families a voice in the US Senate.’”

 

March for Life Speech

Transcribed by Life Advocacy Briefing from live coverage Jan. 22, 2009, on EWTN

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ): I’m Congressman Trent Franks, and I say God bless every one of you for being here today. Many of you watched Barack Obama lay his land on the Lincoln Bible just behind us and take the oath of office. We need to remind Barack Obama that the reason we built that monument – that memorial to Abraham Lincoln at the end of this mall – is because he found within himself the humanity and the courage to embrace the child of God in a slave the Supreme Court said was not human. And we need to remind him that nothing could make him more different than Abraham Lincoln than completely ignoring the humanity of the unborn children that die every day in this country. And we need to remind ourselves that even in these difficult days, that somehow God has not forgotten these little children. We need to remind ourselves that this is the country that marched into Europe and arrested the Nazi Holocaust; this is the country that rejected slavery; and this is the country that some day will turn the tide of blood in the world. And we will some day come back and rescue these little unborn children. It will happen by the grace of God.

 

Senate Voting Records

On the nomination of abortion industry lawyer David Ogden to Deputy Attorney General – March 12, 2009 – Confirmed 65 to 28 (Democrats in italics; “Independents” marked “I”)

Voting “no” / pro-life: AL/Sessions & Shelby, AK/Murkowski, FL/Martinez, GA/Chambliss, ID/Crapo & Risch, IA/Grassley, KS/Brownback & Roberts, KY/Bunning & McConnell, LA/Vitter, MS/Cochran & Wicker, NV/Ensign, NC/Burr, OK/Coburn & Inhofe, PA/Casey, SC/DeMint, SD/Thune, TN/Corker, TX/Hutchison, UT/Bennett & Hatch, WY/Barrasso & Enzi

Voting “yes” / anti-life: AK/Begich, AZ/Kyl & McCain, AR/Lincoln & Pryor, CA/Boxer & Feinstein, CO/Bennet & Udall, CT/Dodd & Lieberman (I), DE/Carper & Kaufman, FL/Nelson, HI/Akaka & Inouye, IL/Burris & Durbin, IN/Lugar & Bayh, IA/Harkin, LA/Landrieu, ME/Collins & Snowe, MD/Cardin & Mikulski, MA/Kerry, MI/Levin & Stabenow, MN/Klobuchar, MO/Bond & McCaskill, MT/Baucus & Tester, NE/Nelson, NV/Reid, NH/Gregg & Shaheen, NJ/Lautenberg & Menendez, NM/Bingaman & Udall, NY/Gillibrand & Schumer, ND/Conrad & Dorgan, OH/Brown & Voinovich, OR/Merkley & Wyden, PA/Specter, RI/Reed & Whitehouse, SC/Graham, SD/Johnson, TN/Alexander, VT/Leahy & Sanders (I), VA/Warner & Webb, WA/Cantwell & Murray, WV/Rockefeller, WI/Feingold & Kohl

Not voting: GA/Isakson, MA/Kennedy, NE/Johanns, NC/Hagan, TX/Cornyn & WV/Byrd; Vacancy: Minnesota

On the nomination of ACLU anti-Life lawyer Thomas Perrelli to Assoc. Atty. General – March 12, 2009 – Confirmed 72 to 20 (Democrats in italics; “Independents” marked “I”)

Voting “no” / pro-life: AL/Shelby, GA/Chambliss, ID/Crapo & Risch, IA/Grassley, KS/Brownback & Roberts, KY/Bunning, LA/Vitter, MS/Cochran & Wicker, NV/Ensign, NC/Burr, OK/Coburn & Inhofe, SC/DeMint, SD/Thune, TX/Hutchison, WY/Barrasso & Enzi

Voting “yes” / anti-life: AL/Sessions, AK/Begich & Murkowski, AZ/Kyl & McCain, AR/Lincoln & Pryor, CA/Boxer & Feinstein, CO/Bennet & Udall, CT/Dodd & Lieberman (I), DE/Carper & Kaufman, FL/Nelson, HI/Akaka & Inouye, IL/Burris & Durbin, IN/Bayh & Lugar, IA/Harkin, KY/McConnell, LA/Landrieu, ME/Collins & Snowe, MD/Cardin & Mikulski, MA/Kerry, MI/Levin & Stabenow, MN/Klobuchar, MO/Bond & McCaskill, MT/Baucus & Tester, NE/Nelson, NV/Reid, NH/Gregg & Shaheen, NJ/Lautenberg & Menendez, NM/Bingaman & Udall, NY/Gillibrand & Schumer, ND/Conrad & Dorgan, OH/Brown & Voinovich, OR/Merkley & Wyden, PA/Casey & Specter, RI/Reed & Whitehouse, SC/Graham, SD/Johnson, TN/Alexander & Corker, UT/Bennett & Hatch, VT/Leahy & Sanders (I), VA/Warner & Webb, WA/Cantwell & Murray, WV/Rockefeller, WI/Feingold & Kohl

Not voting: FL/Martinez, GA/Isakson, MA/Kennedy, NE/Johanns, NC/Hagan, TX/Cornyn & WV/Byrd; Vacancy: Minnesota

 

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