Life Advocacy Briefing

Military Abortion Mandate Under the Radar

WHENEVER YOU HEAR NEWS ABOUT THE ISSUE of “repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” (the statute which declares open homosexuality incompatible with military service), think “military abortions.”

Not much news coverage touches the military abortion issue, but the Obama Regime’s attempt to impose abortion on US military facilities – through the Burris Amendment adopted in the Senate Committee on Armed Services – is riding on the same Defense Authorization bill as the effort to impose homosexuality on our military services.

The key vote – if indeed these initiatives advance in the lameduck session – will be whether the Senate is to take up debate and a vote on the Defense Authorization proposal. If that vote falls short of the 60 votes needed, the measure – and the barnacles which it is wearing – will expire in early January. If the motion to proceed is adopted, a major fight will ensue over whether Senators will be offered any opportunity to advance amendments, such as one to strip the Burris Amendment from this measure.

Calls are needed now to urge Senators to vote “against cloture” on the Defense Authorization bill. Senators may be reached via the Capitol switchboard at 1-202/224-3121. And it should be noted, this bill is a policy bill, not a spending measure; thus its passage is not necessary in order to back our heroes in uniform.

Sometimes It Works Out

THE HOUSE LAST TUESDAY PASSED a Women Veterans Bill of Rights, HR-5953, but not before Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, sought and secured a critical amendment clarifying that the measure’s healthcare rights provisions do not pertain to abortion.

The exercise demonstrates once again the value of vigilance, as the issue rose too quickly for public response but was resolved through the intervention of a respected Member and the cooperation of a well-intended sponsor. The measure’s author, Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), acceded to Mr. Smith’s request that he amend his bill before Mr. Smith would have to generate controversy over a measure on which the two Members largely agreed.

Always ready to remind his colleagues about the true, horrifying nature of abortion, Rep. Smith included in his statement on the measure a blunt description of abortion and detailed report of the health consequences to aborted mothers and their subsequent children. We publish the abortion section of his speech at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing, retyped from the Congressional Record.

Chalk Up Another One

A TOO-CLOSE-TO-CALL CONGRESSIONAL RACE in New York’s 25th District has been resolved with the winner being declared Republican challenger Ann Marie Buerkle, a registered nurse and mother of six whose election the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) hailed last week in a news release as a “major upset” in a district “thought by many to be out of reach.” The loser is Rep. Dan Maffei (D), whose 111th Congressional voting record listed in Life Advocacy’s House Voting Record Index as “Solidly (100%) Anti-Life.”

Representative-elect Buerkle’s election, declared SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser, quoted in the news release, “affirms the wave of pro-life feminine leadership pouring into the 112th Congress. … As the first woman elected to Congress from NY-25,” said Mrs. Dannenfelser, Mrs. Buerkle “brings years of experience speaking out for Life and feminine leadership harkening back to its roots in authentic pro-life feminism.”

Mrs. Buerkle was one of the candidates backed by SBA List in the recent Congressional elections. Overall, according to the news release, “SBA List spent $2.3 million [in 2010] electing pro-life women to Congressional and statewide office, resulting in a 70% increase in the number of pro-life women in the US House of Representatives, an increase in the number of pro-life women governors from one to four and the election of the 112th Congress’s first pro-life woman Senator” (New Hampshire GOP Senator-elect Kelly Ayotte). Overall, the SBA List, according to the release, “spent $11 million during the 2010 midterm elections.”

Founded chiefly to counter the abortion lobby’s EMILY’s List, SBA List went head-to-head against E-List abortion-backing feminist candidates across the country. SBA List-backed candidates defeated E-List candidates in 83% of those contests in 2010.

Sham Hearing

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL) STAGED A ‘DOG-&-PONY SHOW’ HEARING last month on the UN Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Of six witnesses brought in for the “hearing,” only one opponent to ratification was permitted to testify, though the research vice president for the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) was permitted to file written comments by arrangement with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK). Her presentation related in part to the coercive campaigns staged by the CEDAW implementing committee to force signatory countries to decriminalize abortion.

Only Sen. Durbin sat in the place reserved for the committee, with one other Senator making a brief appearance. It was not one of the more stellar examples of Senatorial deliberation, though the treaty could become a major issue as the Obama Regime presses its pro-abortion agenda through every avenue, including the international arena.

Equipping the New Leaders

A SEA CHANGE SWEPT AMERICAN POLITICS in November – not just in the US House but also at the state level, where 1,700 new state lawmakers were elected in 2010, many of them pro-life.

That new political reality took Americans United for Life’s (AUL’s) government affairs vice president Daniel McConchie to the States & National Policy Summit last week hosted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the national association of conservative state legislators.

The AUL assignment: to offer state policymakers some 36 model legislative proposalsdeveloped by the respected pro-life non-profit law firm to limit abortions and regulate the industry. Among the model bills is a proposal through which states can opt out of the abortion mandate in ObamaCare as that mandate affects the individual states.

Citizens who wish to aid their state lawmakers in finding well-developed pro-life legislation drafts can turn to AUL’s Internet website at www.aul.org as a reliable resource or can refer their legislators to the AUL site. Those who wish to help their new lawmakers in advocating pro-life policies may invite them to call Life Advocacy at 1-888-344-LIFE to arrange a consultation.

Clear and Present Danger

AMONG THE STATES whose lawmakers are looking at Life as a top priority for the coming legislative sessions are Indiana and Iowa, where legislators and pro-life activist groups are gearing up to close the door to late-term abortionist Leroy Carhart, who appears to be ducking out of Nebraska because of the state’s new law protecting gestating babies who are old enough to experience pain.

The city council in Council Bluffs, Iowa, acted quickly to preclude – in perpetuity – any abortion business from using a building the city is in the process of selling. The action was taken when the city learned that Council Bluffs is a major target for Mr. Carhart’s wandering eye. Though Mr. Carhart told the council “everything was still on track for him to open a clinic in January,” reports Jon Leu for the Omaha World-Herald News Service, he also admitted he was “‘still waiting for financing’” and did not disclose the specific sites under consideration.

Meanwhile, the incoming speaker of the Iowa House, Rep. Kraig Paulsen (R), noted on Iowa Public Television Nov. 20 that the Carhart aspirations have prompted elevated interest in state legislative efforts to tighten Iowa’s state abortion laws.

Indiana Right to Life has cited Mr. Carhart’s announced intentions to open shop in their state to call on lawmakers there to copy Nebraska’s new law. Though Mr. Carhart has mentioned Indiana as a potential site for expansion of his dirty business, a specific location has yet to be identified.

But Operation Rescue is warning citizens of Maryland that Mr. Carhart appears to have joined in business with the Germantown Reproductive Health Services abortuary in Germantown, close to both Baltimore and Washington, DC. He plans, reports OR in a news release, “to begin late-term abortions at GRHS on Dec. 6;” that, sadly, is today.

Exit Polling

Nov. 3, 2010, statement by David Osteen PhD, executive director, National Right to Life Committee

Post-election polling has shown that pro-life issues played a major role in what happened at the polls [Nov. 2] and provided a margin sufficient to guarantee victory in many close races.

According to a national post-election poll conducted by the Polling Company, 22% said abortion affected their vote and that they voted for candidates that opposed abortion as opposed to only 8% who said that abortion affected their vote and that they voted for candidates who favored abortion.

The abortion issue was prevalent in the debate over the Obama Healthcare Law, and National Right to Life sought, but ultimately failed, to obtain language in the law to prevent abortion subsidies in all parts of the law. Numerous Democrats who voted for the law, including many who had previously voted pro-life, were defeated [Nov. 2]. Polling shows that the abortion component of the healthcare law played a major role in those defeats.

Twenty-seven percent of voters said abortion funding in the healthcare law affected their vote and they voted for candidates who opposed the healthcare law as opposed to only 4% who said abortion funding in the healthcare law affected their vote and they voted for candidates who favored the law.

National Right to Life has also repeatedly pointed out that the Obama Healthcare Law, if allowed to go into effect, will mean massive rationing of health care including the rationing of life-saving treatment. The public agrees and clearly showed … that they oppose rationing.

Forty-four percent of voters said rationing in the healthcare law affected their vote and they voted for candidates who opposed the healthcare law, while only 10% said rationing in the healthcare bill affected their vote and they voted for candidates who favored the Obama Healthcare Law.

Overall, 54% said they oppose the healthcare law (44% strongly) while only 39% favor it (26% strongly).

The poll also revealed that a majority continues to favor allowing abortion only in very rare circumstances. Fifty-three percent would allow abortion at most in cases to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape and incest, as opposed to 41% who would allow abortion regardless of the reason. However, 25% of those who gave a pro-abortion response would allow abortion only in the first three months, while the current policy under Roe v. Wade allows abortion essentially throughout pregnancy for any reason.

Abortion Is Not Health Care

Excerpt from remarks by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) in the Nov. 30, 2010, House debate on the Women Veterans Bill of Rights (HR-5953), retyped from the Congressional Record

… I am especially pleased that Chairman Filner’s bill – HR-5953 – makes absolutely clear that abortion is not health care under this bill and so-called abortion rights are not implied by any of the rights specified in the legislation. In addition to eliminating any legal grounds for implying a right to abortion access, abortion funding or any other abortion-related activity, the newly added Section 4 also neutralizes any legal effort to use the Women Veterans Bill of Rights as a basis to infer a right to other controversial services such as abortion counseling, IVF and gender alteration as well as spa or gym memberships, care for veterans in prison and unapproved drugs and devices.

Section 4 of HR-5953 states: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to establish a right to any service excluded under 38CFR17.18, as in effect on the date of enactment of this Act.”

Specifically the services listed as exclusions under 38CFR17.18 as of the date of enactment of HR-5953:

• Abortions and abortion counseling.

• In vitro fertilization.

• Drugs, biologicals and medical devices not approved by the Food & Drug Administration unless the treating medical facility is conducting formal clinical trials under an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) or an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, or the drugs, biological or medical devices are prescribed under a compassionate use exemption.

• Gender alterations.

• Hospital and outpatient care for a veteran who is either a patient or inmate in an institutional of another government agency if that agency has a duty to give the care or services.

• Membership in spas and health clubs.

Madame Speaker, VA hospitals and Community Based Outpatient Clinics are today extraordinary places of healing, recovery and recuperation. Abortion is not health care.

Because abortion methods dismember, decapitate, crush, poison, starve to death and induce premature labor, pro-life Members of Congress and according to every reputable poll, significant majorities of Americans want no complicity whatsoever in this violence.

Abortion hurts women’s health and puts future children subsequently born to women who aborted at significant risk. At least 102 studies show significant psychological harm, major depression and elevated suicide risk in women who abort.

Recently, the Times of London reported that, “Senior … psychiatrists say that new evidence has uncovered a clear link between abortion and mental illness in women with no previous history of psychological problems.” They found “that women who have had abortions have twice the level of psychological problems and three times the level of depression as women who have given birth or who have never been pregnant … .”

In 2006, a comprehensive New Zealand study found that 78.6% of the 15-18 year-olds who had abortions displayed symptoms of major depression as compared to 31% of their peers. The study also found that 27% of the 21-25 year-old women who had abortions had suicidal [ideations] compared to 8% of those who did not have an abortion.

At least 28 studies – including three in 2009 – show that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer by some 30-40% or more, yet the abortion industry has largely succeeded in suppressing these facts.

Abortion isn’t safe for subsequent children born to women who have had an abortion. At least 113 studies show a significant association between abortion and subsequent premature births. For example, a study by researchers Shah & Zoe showed a 36% increased risk for preterm birth after one abortion and a staggering 93% increased risk after two.

Similarly, the risk of subsequent children being born with low birth weight increases by 35% after one and 72% after two or more abortions. Another study shows the risk increases nine times after a woman has had three abortions.

What does this mean for her children? Preterm birth is the leading cause of infant mortality in the industrialized world after congenital anomalies. Preterm infants have a greater risk of suffering from chronic lung disease, sensory deficits, cerebral palsy, cognitive impairments and behavior problems. Low birth weight is similarly associated with neonatal mortality and morbidity.

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