Life Advocacy Briefing

Life Goes On

LIFE GOES ON – Our own lives and the cause of Life. Though Tuesday was disappointing on many fronts, we are pleased that most of the veteran pro-life Members will be returning to House and Senate, joined in the House by several new conservatives. We will be watching their voting records carefully over the months ahead, as we have these past 18 years. And we’ll report to our readers from a principled, strategic pro-life perspective. God bless America. God save us.

Top Priority

ONE OF THE CHIEF BATTLES PRO-LIFE CITIZENS MUST WAGE in the wake of the 2012 election is to stiffen the backbone of the House GOP Majority in defunding Planned Parenthood.

Nothing in the election results lessens the critical need to do that; indeed, Planned Parenthood’s involvement in the election ought to sharpen the desire of House Republicans to accomplish this critical goal. It is one of the critical goals the House Republicans were given the majority to achieve.

The President has already declared – in an election eve speech in Madison, Wisconsin – that he “will not pay the price” of defunding Planned Parenthood if that is what he needs to do for peace in DC. His specific quote, taken from a LifeSiteNews.com report by Johanna Dasteel: “ ‘If the price of peace in Washington is cutting deals to cut … get rid of funding to Planned Parenthood … I won’t pay that price,’ vowed Obama. ‘That’s not a deal I’ll take. That’s not bipartisanship. That’s not change. That’s surrender.’”

On that hill, then, the House Majority should stake its flag. Or is the House GOP Leadership afraid of being accused of promoting gridlock?

We are not suggesting that House adamancy should come suddenly but that House Republicans should build the case steadily in every possible venue – include Members’ in-district appearances – that funding Planned Parenthood is immoral and even a means of racist hegemony. The evidence is abundant. We suggest House Republicans – if they are serious about cutting spending and if they are serious about protecting innocent human life – take the evidence pro-life heroes like Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics and Lila Rose of Live Action have stacked up over the past decade.

Stop Planned Parenthood funding, Messrs. Boehner, Cantor and Ryan. You have it in your power. It is time to draw the line and not allow the bully in the White House to force Americans to pay ever more blood money in our taxes.

Standing Up for America

KANSAS GOV. SAM BROWNBACK (R) HAS ANNOUNCED HIS STATE WILL NOT cooperate with the Obama Regime in establishing a state insurance exchange to implement ObamaCare.

The Kansas Insurance Commissioner had prepared a grant application to establish such an entity but needed the governor’s endorsement of the application. Late Thursday, Gov. Brownback instead responded: “Kansans feel ObamaCare is an overreach by Washington and have rejected the state’s participation in this federal program. My administration,” asserted Mr. Brownback, “will not partner with the federal government to create a state-federal partnership insurance exchange because we will not benefit from it, and implementing it could cost Kansas taxpayers millions of dollars.”

He challenged the insurance commissioner instead to take the matter to the state’s legislature; of course, any proposed enactment by the legislature would still require his endorsement in order to become law.

Some conservative attorneys who have carefully studied the ObamaCare law believe the nation’s governors have it in their power to block implementation of the massive medical care takeover by refusing, as Gov. Brownback now has, to move forward with establishing “exchanges” in their states.

A Nov. 16 deadline to apply for a federal-state partnership will force the issue across America, and the mettle of America’s majority of Republican governors is now being tested. Americans can be thankful to Gov. Brownback for passing that test and standing in the way of ObamaCare; if he is joined by other governors and if their refusal to act precipitates a crisis in government, so be it. It is the President and the Reid/Pelosi Congress of the past who will have created the crisis by trampling the Constitution with their socialized medicine scheme. The American people still oppose it.

Not Credible

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID (D-NV) ISSUED A STATEMENT in the wake of Tuesday’s election sealing his party in the Senate Majority for another two years.

He was quoted in the Nov. 7 CQ/Roll Call Daily Briefing: “Now that the election is over, it’s time to put politics aside and work together to find solutions.”

Winning with Life: Sean Duffy Offers Fine Example

REP. SEAN DUFFY TOOK THE FIGHT TO HIS OPPONENT in a late-campaign debate Oct. 22, reported a few days later by Kirsten Andersen for LifeSiteNews.com.

“The Wisconsin Republican singled out Democratic challenger Pat Kreitlow,” reports Ms. Andersen, “over the latter’s endorsement by NARAL Pro-Choice America.

“‘Mr. Kreitlow,’ [Rep.] Duffy said,” writes Ms. Andersen, “during a heated exchange over abortion and federal funding, ‘you are supported by NARAL, which is the most radical pro-abortion group in the country. They support late-term abortions and partial-birth abortions.

“‘Frankly,’ he added, ‘I think that is disgusting.’”

Rep. Duffy, who won his second term last Tuesday, “said he believes that life begins at conception and ends at natural death,” writes Ms. Andersen, “and that government has a responsibility to ‘protect life at conception.’”

Nicely done, Rep. Duffy. Pro-life candidates have no reason to “defend” their stand; they have every reason to attack the opponent’s position, if that opponent is backed by the political arms of the abortion cartel. It is a simple matter of telling the truth and helping voters discern it; that is both a candidate’s opportunity and his or her responsibility.

Women? Which Women?

A VERY PUBLIC FIGHT IS RAGING, in the wake of the election, over the direction of the Republican Party.

Viewing women as a monolithic bloc of liberals, celebrated ponderer Peggy Noonan said on Fox News last Wednesday, reports Laura Bassett for Huffington Post, that “if Republicans hope to win in 2016, they are going to have to figure out how to reach out to women. … ‘You cannot dodge, I think,’” Ms. Noonan pontificated in Ms. Bassett’s HuffPost column, “‘the reality that the Republican Party has a woman problem. … Men are supportive, women are not. You’ve got to look at it. And I suspect as the party gets itself together, it will start to think, “Well, maybe as we consider that, we better have some women in the room.”’”

Fine, Ms. Noonan. We dispute your contention that “women are not [supportive].” But if women must be “in the room” when soul-searching turns to strategy, we can suggest three, as a start. First the most effective Republican woman leader in the country, the venerable Phyllis Schlafly. And with her, how about two women who are prominent enough for Ms. Bassett to have found for quotes in the same commentary as Ms. Noonan’s sober musings: Penny Nance, whom Ms. Bassett identifies as “president of the conservative Christian group Concerned Women for America,” and Marjorie Dannenfelser, labeled by the HuffPost piece as “president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List.”

Would the lip-pursing Ms. Noonan join us in commissioning these ladies to advise the bedeviled males who will be chewing over “how to handle a woman?”

Advice is already forthcoming from Mrs. Nance and Mrs. Dannenfelser, quoted in Ms. Bassett’s piece. First, Mrs. Dannenfelser said, reports Ms. Bassett, “polling showed that if the Romney campaign and its backers had been willing to attack Obama on his support for abortion rights and Planned Parenthood and his contraception mandate, it ‘could have changed the outcome of the election.’”

And from Mrs. Nance: “‘The Republicans’ insistence in unilaterally disarming on social issues means that only the Left is discussing abortion and marriage. … Refusing to discuss this important issue left their [GOP] candidates unprepared to intelligently engage on Life.’”

Re-read that last phrase: “left their candidates unprepared to intelligently engage on Life.”

Exactly right, Mrs. Nance. The party now blames a pair of GOP Senate nominees (Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana) for muffing their messages on Life. This is the same party whose consultants and seasoned advisers demand that their pro-life candidates minimize their commitment to Life as a mere label to toss and then run from. The party itself steadfastly and uniformly “le[aves] its candidates unprepared to intelligently engage on Life.”

Don’t blame the candidates, GOP, for not thinking through how to handle a critical issue which will arise, no matter how insistently their advisers have tried to divert them from their own stand. Blame yourselves for reflexively, unimaginatively failing to prepare them for the arena.

Pro-life candidates should not minimalize their stand for Life; they should think it through, use it proactively and be prepared always to contrast their principled stand with the merciless hedonism of their opponents.

Appeal to women? Cherish them in their most unique role – motherhood – and protect their children. Never cower before or yield to those who victimize them for the profit of the abortion cartel.

Thank you, Mrs. Nance and Mrs. Dannenfelser, for standing up for Life and common sense. And thank you, Mrs. Schlafly for founding the pro-woman pro-family movement, for pressing the cause for all these decades and for your incomparable leadership in writing and preserving the pro-life Republican Platform, which has so sharply drawn the distinctions that draw millions to the GOP.

Two Bright Spots

VOTERS IN MONTANA REBUKED THEIR ANTI-FAMILY GOVERNOR last Tuesday by voting 2-to-1 in favor of a ballot proposition, reports the Catholic News Agency (CNA), “which mandates that doctors notify a parent or legal guardian at least 48 hours” before committing an abortion on girls under 16.

“Physicians who perform an abortion in violation of this Act or who coerce a minor to have an abortion will now be subject,” reports CNA, “to criminal prosecution and civil liability.”

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) vetoed the parental notice of abortion measure when it first passed the legislature in 2011. But not only did he affix his signature to a veto; according to Moody Radio talk host Janet Parshall, he took the bill to the Capitol steps and publicly burned the document.

So the legislature this year passed the bill again – this time as a ballot proposition, leaving it to the voters not only to send the governor a loud message but also to enact a law that respects families and protects vulnerable girls and their progeny.

The second bright spot popped forth in Massachusetts, where voters narrowly rejected a proposal legalizing abetted suicide. The state’s Medical Society opposed the measure, as did the liberal Boston Globe.

Quoteworthy

Ben Stein in his Nov. 7, 2012, early a.m. on-line diary entry: “… It is the mark of a genuinely great campaign that Romney and Ryan did not back down one inch on the main moral issue of our time, the mass murders of the unborn. This is the primary evil of our era, and it may take years to make things better, but as the saying goes, that Dr. [Martin Luther] King used to say, ‘Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold holds the future and beyond that dark enclosure standeth God, within the shadow, keeping watch upon His own’ (paraphrased for this occasion). You can call it anything you want, but abortion is a wicked evil, and we will never be what we should be as long as we treat it as a right. No one has the right to choose to kill an innocent human being.”

Perkins Perspective

Excerpts from Nov. 7, 2012, FRC/Action Update by Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council Action

… On every level – Presidential, Congressional, social – it was a bruising day for our movement that no amount of spin can improve. Americans had a choice, and they made it. Is the outcome what we want? Obviously not. … But despite this election setback, there is no evidence to suggest that the transcendent values our nation has rested on for the last 237 years have been revoked or disproved of. … [W]e have never staked our future on political success. As Christians, we hold an eternal perspective – and that means standing for truth whether it’s winning or losing. … God’s Word and His purposes are not altered by what happens at the ballot box. Our call is to fight for truth in an increasingly dark and hostile world, no matter what the outcome. … Despite the devastation of these last 24 hours, there is no reason to apologize, back away from or rethink what we stand for. …

[Discussing the future direction of the Republican Party,] Matt Lewis … wrote a great column in the Daily Caller [titled] “The GOP needs modernization, not moderation.” [In it he writes:] “Make no mistake, the GOP faces serious challenges going forward. This wasn’t ‘just a loss.’ But that doesn’t mean the party should sell out its core values, either. In many cases, reinvention means drawing a clearer contrast with liberals. The GOP probably needs to reaffirm some values. For example, it would make no sense for the GOP to abandon its role as the party of Life. It would make no sense for the GOP to abandon its role as the party of individual liberty. But there must be some reevaluation.”

Hopefully, part of that reevaluation will include a renewed focus on the party’s conservative core. Most of Tuesday’s brightest spots were victories by principled, pro-family leaders like Senator-elect Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senator-elect Deb Fischer (R-NE), Congressman-elect Mark Meadows (R-NC), Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Steve King (R-IA) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) … . In two years, there will be a political opportunity to embolden and provide allies for these who stand for Life, marriage, religious liberty and limited government.

Until then, our mission is as critical as ever. It’s time to get up, dust ourselves off and trust in God’s ability to work in dire situations. … “Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord.” (Psalm 146:5) We do not serve victory; we serve God. And to Him, in these anxious times, we turn.

From the Book of Wisdom

Hebrews 10:32-38

… Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. You need to persevere so that you may do the will of God and receive what He has promised. For in just a very little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay, but My righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed but of those who have faith and are saved.