Life Advocacy Briefing

Keep Calling Against Six

THOUGH THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE DID NOT MEET on the controversial judicial nomination of Steve Six to the 10th Circuit Appellate Court last week, pro-life citizens cannot be complacent; the nomination is still pending, and an extra week of session, beginning tomorrow (Tuesday), has just been added to the schedule.

Building controversy under Mr. Six by sustained phoning to US Senators (Capitol switchboard: 1-202/224-3121) could undermine his nomination to the point of withdrawal. It’s worth a try. We urge our readers to call and continue calling to object to the President’s attempt to install a notorious Kansas abortion abettor into a lifetime judicial appointment.

Citing outspoken opposition to the appointment by both US Senators from Mr. Six’s home state, Operation Rescue president Troy Newman last week called on Pres. Obama to withdraw the nomination “to spare the nation a protracted and divisive battle over this nominee.”

D.C. Abortion Funding Bid Looming?

U.S. REP. BARBARA LEE (D-CA) SIGNALED INTENT in late June to mount an effort to lift the ban on abortions in the District of Columbia. The signal came in the form of an amendment she offered in the House Committee on Appropriations, an amendment which failed along party lines.

Capitol Hill observers expect she will introduce a similar amendment in mid-July when the full House considers the annual appropriation bill which includes spending for the nation’s capital district.

It is not too early for pro-life citizens to begin calling their respective US Representatives (Capitol switchboard: 1-202/224-3121) with the message: “No tax money for abortions in the District of Columbia.”

‘Common Sense’ Overrides Governor’s Veto

LAWMAKERS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE last week voted to override their governor’s veto of a long-sought parental notice law. The vote in the House was 266 to 102, reports Peter J. Smith for LifeSiteNews.com, who notes that the Senate’s override vote was 17 to 7.

New Hampshire’s previous parental notice bill, which had never been enforced, was repealed in 2007. Partisan changes in the state legislature resulting from last November’s election led to renewed efforts to reinstate the law, this time with language reflecting recent court rulings.

“‘Common sense … dictates,’” said Mary Spaulding Balch of National Right to Life Committee, quoted by Mr. Smith, “‘an adult male predator shouldn’t have more rights than parents.’”

Another State Defunds Planned Parenthood

NEW HAMPSHIRE HAS SUDDENLY JOINED THE DEFUND-PLANNED-PARENTHOOD campaign – not by the legislature and not by the governor but by action of the state’s Executive Council.

New Hampshire’s Executive Council, a body of five public officials, voted 3-to-2 last Wednesday, reports Paula Tracy for the New Hampshire Union Leader, “against funding a $1.8 million contract with Planned Parenthood of Northern New England,” which is based in Williston, Vermont. Most of the outfit’s shops, further, are located in Vermont.

“The council seemingly singled out Planned Parenthood,” writes Ms. Tracy, “after tabling action on 11 other contracts with community health service providers.” The action, she reports, followed “a lengthy discussion about condoms, family planning and abortion.”

One of the panel members, Councilor Dan St. Hilaire of Concord, led the battle to block renewal of Planned Parenthood’s contract, citing its out-of-state location but also, reports Ms. Tracy, noting that “the organization directly provides abortions [and that] its CEO earns in excess of $250,000 a year.”

After disposing of Planned Parenthood, the Council did approve contracts for an extensive list of family planning service providers, none of which commit abortions.

Planned Parenthood Fighting Back, Losing Ground

PLANNED PARENTHOOD HAS WON A PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION in its fight to extract tax funds from the state of Indiana. Charmaine Yoest and Denise Burke of Americans United for Life (AUL) report in the Wall Street Journal on the ruling by US District Judge Tanya Pratt.

(Planned Parenthood of Indiana, according to a report from LifeSiteNews.com, “immediately reopened its doors over the weekend” after the Friday court ruling.)

“In her 44-page opinion,” the AUL officers write, “the judge noted that ‘the public interest’ tilted in favor of Planned Parenthood at this time because ‘the federal government has threatened partial or total withholding of federal Medicaid dollars to the state of Indiana.’” The state has received a letter from Donald Berwick of the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services threatening to cut off all Medicaid monies to the state in retaliation for the new Indiana statute excluding abortion purveyors from Medicaid eligibility. The feds claim the state cannot disqualify providers even though state funds are also used for Medicaid recipients.

“Who here is really endangering women?” ask the AUL executives. “Clearly, Planned Parenthood and the Administration are willing to deny thousands of needy men, women and children health care in order to protect the bottom lines of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.”

The two commentators speculate that the Berwick threat was “intended to squelch the strong momentum in other states to defund Planned Parenthood and similar abortion providers.” But it does not appear to be working that way. Kansas diverted family planning funds from Planned Parenthood to other health care providers in May. In June, they note, “four other states acted to eliminate or limit funding to the abortion behemoth.

“First, Tennessee reallocated $335,000 in federal family-planning money to the state’s Metro Public Health Dept.,” write Mrs. Yoest and Ms. Burke, “taking the funds from Planned Parenthood.

“In a dramatic move,” they note, “North Carolina legislators overrode Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto and enacted a budget that prohibits the state from entering into contracts with or providing grants to Planned Parenthood.

“Wisconsin legislators passed a budget,” they write, “removing $1 million in federal family planning funds from Planned Parenthood,” a cut but not an elimination. And they go on to note the action of the Executive Council in New Hampshire, which we have reported elsewhere in this Life Advocacy Briefing.

Victory for Life in Indiana Case

THE JUDGE WHO TEMPORARILY RESTORED INDIANA MEDICAID FUNDING to Planned Parenthood made a second ruling which could have serious implications in the overall fight to protect mothers and their babies from abortion.

Judge Tanya Pratt denied a Planned Parenthood motion, reports the Thomas More Society pro bono pro-life law firm in a news release, “to block a provision of an Indiana law that requires doctors to tell women who are seeking abortions that ‘human physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm.’”

“Sensing the threat that this language poses to their business,” writes Family Research Council president Tony Perkins in his June 28 FRC Washington Update, “Planned Parenthood wanted that portion of the [law] struck down. [Judge] Pratt wouldn’t bite,” he writes. “‘[T]he mandated statement,’ she writes,” quoted by Mr. Perkins, “‘states only a biological fact relating to the development of the living organism; therefore,’” she concludes, “‘it may be reasonably read to provide accurate, non-misleading information to the patient.’”

Commented Thomas More president Tom Brejcha, “We are pleased that Judge Pratt has upheld the concept that life begins at conception.” The Thomas More Society had filed an amicus curiae brief helping Indiana legislators defend their law. The upheld provision is a section of the law by which Indiana this spring disqualified abortionists from payment under the state’s Medicaid program.

First Principles

In Congress, July 4, 1776, The unanimous Declaration of the independence of the thirteen united States of America

            When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. –

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. –

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. …

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. –

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

What Goes Around …

May 18, 2011, commentary by Peter Heck, reprinted from AmericanThinker.com

There’s an old African proverb that says, “Who knows whose womb carries the chief?” This simple truth has taken on a powerful meaning recently for every American paying attention.

According to recently secured documents from the Immigration & Naturalization Services, evidence has emerged that Pres. Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., apparently paid to send a young Kenyan girl he had impregnated in Massachusetts to London to have an abortion.

Doing the work that investigative journalists of the mainstream media used to do, author Jack Cashill reveals that the foreign press, unlike their American counterparts, are all over the story. Far from speculation, according to the INS documents, the high school-aged girl was in Massachusetts on an exchange program when she evidently became pregnant by the 29-year-old Obama. Asian News International notes that this incident occurred prior to 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision, meaning, “abortions were illegal in the US.”

One cannot help but wonder if such a revelation would not cause a man whose own wife describes the heinous butchery of partial-birth abortion as a “legitimate medical procedure” to consider: that could have easily been me.

Let me pause to acknowledge that I don’t typically like using these kinds of tactics when discussing the issue of abortion. The truth is it doesn’t matter whether the child being killed is the next Beethoven, Bach, Edison or Einstein. What makes human life valuable and worthy of protection is that it is human life, bearing the inviolable image of the Creator. Life is valuable because of what it is, not what it does – whether that’s making beautiful music or being tone deaf, inventing a light bulb and unlocking spectacular scientific mysteries or needing help tying shoelaces … or, yes, leading the most powerful nation in world history.

But this unfolding bombshell regarding Barack Obama’s family is highly instructive, given our President’s lifelong commitment to defending abortion. The simplest scenario arising from the story is this: Pres. Obama had a half-brother or half-sister who, rather than having the chance to thrive and succeed as he has, ended up in a dumpster in London. The more complex reality for the President to grapple with is that it is not that far of a stretch to assume, given the complexities of his relationship with mother Ann Dunham, that Barack Obama Sr. might have preferred the same end for our current President.

Such a scenario, beyond offering a brand new perspective on Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father, would provide the most pro-abortion President our country has ever known with the same chilling realization that so many of us born after the disastrous Roe decision encounter: had it not been for the strength and resolve of loving, pro-life mothers, we could have been legally slaughtered.

It was former President Ronald Reagan who is credited with having stated the obvious but enlightening fact that those fighting for abortion rights are those who have already been born. This disquieting account about his father allows our current President the chance to put himself where his half-brother or half-sister once was … where he once was … and reconsider his tragic position on life in the womb.

As I read the heartbreaking details of this story about a soul deprived of its unalienable right to breathe free, I’m taken back to Pres. Obama’s response to Rick Warren at the Saddleback Church presidential forum in the lead-up to the 2008 election. Asked when a baby gets human rights, Obama cowardly surrendered righteousness for convenience and politics, infamously asserting that “answering that question with specificity is above my pay grade.”

That embarrassing response shouldn’t have been a surprise, given that just a few months prior, Barack Obama addressed the issue of sex education on the campaign trail. Speaking specifically about his own daughters, the man who could have been aborted himself proclaimed, “I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

Like father, like son.