Life Advocacy Briefing
February 25, 2013
Urgent Action Requested / Rubio Files C.I.A.N.A. / Backward
Another Threat to Conscientious Providers? / Not So Popular / Who Are the Children Here?
March for Life: Rep. Diane Black
Urgent Action Requested
WE JOIN FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL (F.R.C.) IN CALLING ON CITIZENS to “contact your Member of Congress and urge him or her to defend religious freedom by supporting conscience protection language in the Continuing Resolution,” likely to come before Congress by Friday (March 1) in order to fund the government.
FRC’s Tony Perkins, in his Feb. 19 Washington Update, notes the Continuing Resolution “is ‘must-pass legislation,’” which makes it an ideal vehicle for language “to pass legislation that protects the conscience rights of every American, from business owners to nurses in hospitals.”
The issue in question: Reversing the Health & Human Services Department’s mandate forcing “all employers, with very few exceptions” notes Mr. Perkins, to “cover sterilizations, abortion drugs and contraception – regardless of the employers’ or employees’ conscience objections.”
Members of Congress and the Senate may be contacted via the Capitol switchboard at 1-202/224-3121 with the message: Please vote “yes” on putting conscience protection language into the CR.”
Rubio Files C.I.A.N.A.
FLORIDA SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R) HAS FILED S-369 “to prohibit taking minors across state lines in circumvention of laws requiring the involvement of parents in abortion decisions.”
The bill has been assigned to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. It was introduced with 22 co-sponsors.
Readers are asked to contact their US Senators to thank them if they have signed onto the bill and to ask them to co-sponsor S-369 if they have not yet done so. Senators may be contacted via the Capitol switchboard at 1-202/224-3121.
Co-sponsoring the bill, as of this writing, are Senators John Boozman (AR), Saxby Chambliss (GA), James Risch (ID), Chuck Grassley (IA), Jerry Moran & Pat Roberts (KS), Mitch McConnell & Rand Paul (KY), David Vitter (LA), Roger Wicker (MS), Roy Blunt (MO), Deb Fischer & Mike Johanns (NE), Richard Burr (NC), Tom Coburn & James Inhofe (OK), Lindsey Graham (SC), Bob Corker (TN), John Cornyn & Ted Cruz (TX), Orrin Hatch (UT), Michael Enzi (WY). All are Republicans.
Backward
NEW YORK’s GOVERNOR HAS A DIFFERENT RESPONSE to the death in Maryland of a White Plains, New York, mother at the hands of late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart. Apparently, what Gov. Andrew Cuomo finds particularly distressing about the tragedy is that the 29-year-old kindergarten teacher had to cross state lines to procure an abortion after being told her baby bore fetal anomalies. He would rather welcome late-term abortionists to set up shop within his state’s borders.
The Democratic governor vowed in his recent State of the State address to rewrite New York’s late-term abortion law, which permits the killing of prenatal babies who have gestated more than 24 weeks “only,” notes Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times, “if the pregnant woman’s life is at risk. The law is not enforced,” he writes, “because it is superseded by federal court rulings [Roe v. Wade] that allow late-term abortions to protect a woman’s health, even if her life is not in jeopardy.”
One might think if the existing law is not enforceable, it is also not worth repealing or revising. But Gov. Cuomo – evidently competing with the President for the abortion industry’s best-friend award – is responding to “abortion rights advocates,” writes Mr. Kaplan, who “say the existence of the more restrictive state law has a chilling effect on some doctors and prompts some women to leave the state for late-term abortions.”
Besides extending late-term abortion legality to situations where a mother’s “health is in danger or the fetus is not viable,” in Mr. Kaplan’s words, the expected Cuomo proposal “would also clarify that licensed healthcare professionals – and not only physicians – can perform abortions. It would remove abortion from the state’s penal law and regulate it through the state’s public health law,” significant setbacks in protection for unborn children and mothers, should it proceed through the legislature.
Prospects for passage “are uncertain,” reports the Times. “The State Assembly is controlled by Democrats who support abortion rights,” writes Mr. Kaplan, but “the Senate is more difficult to predict, because this year it is controlled by a coalition of Republicans who have tended to oppose new abortion rights laws and breakaway Democrats who support abortion rights.”
New York’s Roman Catholic archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, wrote to the governor last month (reported by Mr. Kaplan in the Times story), “‘I am hard pressed to think of a piece of legislation that is less needed or more harmful than this one.’ … Referring to Albany lawmakers in a subsequent column, he added,” writes Mr. Kaplan, “‘It’s as though, in their minds, our state motto, “Excelsior” (Ever Upward), applies to the abortion rate.’”
The president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York had a different take, telling Mr. Kaplan, “‘For New York to be able to send a signal, a hopeful sign, a sense of the turning of the tide, we think is really important.’”
Another Threat to Conscientious Providers?
THE THREATENED CUOMO ABORTION EXPANSION BILL in New York State “could soon shut down Catholic and other healthcare providers for not offering or referring for abortions,” according to the New York Catholic Conference, reports Kirsten Andersen for LifeSiteNews.com.
Besides the ramifications we report above, “the act would declare that New York ‘shall not discriminate against the exercise of [abortion] rights in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services or information,’” Ms. Andersen writes. That provision, according to the Catholic Conference, she reports, “could ‘permit state regulators to require support for abortion from any agency or institution licensed or funded by the state.’” The same would apply even to medical professionals – nurses, doctors and others – who are subject to state licensure.
“New York could also deny [abortion-refusing] institutions Medicaid payments and other funding,” writes Ms. Andersen, “which many depend on for financial solvency.”
Not So Popular
A POLL OF 600 NEW YORK ‘LIKELY VOTERS’ OUGHT TO GIVE PAUSE to any Empire State legislator thinking about following Gov. Cuomo off the plank of his Abortion Expansion bill.
Commissioned by the New York-based Chiaroscuro Foundation, the survey was undertaken by the respected polling firm McLaughlin & Associates, which rates it accurate to +/- 4%, with a 95% confidence rating. The results are stunning.
The survey “tells us,” said Chiascuro spokesman Meg McDonnell, quoted by the McLaughlin firm on its Internet website at www.mclaughlinonline.com, “that women want and deserve more choices, not more abortions. … New York’s elected officials should take a close look at this data,” she said, “and work on making abortions rarer, not more commonplace and dangerous. Those pushing for this legislation are far out of the mainstream, and they need to be called on it.”
What did McLaughlin & Assoc. find among New York voters? Here are results taken from the research company’s website:
- 80% oppose unlimited abortion through the ninth month of pregnancy;
- 75% oppose changes in current law so that someone other than a doctor can perform an abortion;
- 78.8%, when they are informed of the number of abortions in New York, believe there is already sufficient access to abortion in New York State;
- 75% oppose changing the law so that someone other than a doctor can perform surgical abortions;
- 89% oppose abortions for reducing twins or triplets to a single child;
- 92% oppose late-term abortions for sex selection.
On the flip side, the survey found:
- 87% favor providing pregnant mothers information about options before they make a decision;
- 78% approve of a 24-hour waiting period;
- 76% approve parental notification when a minor seeks an abortion;
- 68% approve of providing free medical care to mothers carrying their pregnancy to term;
- 86% favor regulating abortion clinics as strictly as other medical facilities.
Who Are the Children Here?
A TEXAS JUDGE HAS GRANTED AN INJUNCTION to a 16-year-old expectant mother to block her parents from forcing her to abort their unborn grandchild. The injunction bars the couple, reports Kirsten Andersen for LifeSiteNews.com, “from coercing her to have an abortion for the entire duration of her pregnancy.”
“‘This is a tremendous victory, and another life has been saved,’ said Texas Center for Defense of Life attorney and president Greg Terra,” quoted by Ms. Andersen. TCDL has represented the young mother in the litigation. “‘Our victory today,’” he said, “‘stands for the principle that “choice” goes both ways. Under Roe v. Wade and post-Roe cases,’” he noted in the LifeSiteNews story, “‘a teenage girl has the absolute legal right to choose life, even over the strong objections, pressure and punishments of her parents.’”
In one of the most disturbing developments of the case, the plaintiff claimed, reports Ms. Andersen, “that her parents and grandparents conspired to slip her an abortion-inducing drug.”
She also told the court her parents had taken away her car and phone and, writes Ms. Andersen, had “kept her out of school as punishment for not aborting their grandchild. She said they threatened to take away her health insurance and permanently disown her if she had the baby.”
The court required her parents to promise not to threaten her with physical force, reports MyFoxHouston.com, and to return her car, pay her cellphone bill and pay half the premium for her health insurance.
The court further secured approval from her parents to marry her 16-year-old boyfriend, who told MyFoxHouston, “‘Emotionally and stressful it’s been tough. … We’ve had fights and arguments over all of this and what will happen next, because her parents are very unpredictable.’” The young father told the news outlet the couple are “hoping to get married soon and begin their lives as a new family.” The girl is currently living with her mother.
March for Life Speech: Rep. Diane Black
Delivered Jan. 25, 2013, at the March for Life on the National Mall in Washington, DC, transcribed by Life Advocacy; Rep. Black is a Republican, first elected in 2010; she represents the 6th District of Tennessee
Thank you so much, and I am so inspired by the crowd that is here today to fight for Life. You know, when the Supreme Court made their decision forty years ago, they certainly didn’t do us any favors. But they certainly didn’t do us any favors in doing it in January! Yet despite that – the threat of snow and ice did not keep you all away. Thank you so much for being here today.
On January the 22nd, 1973, the day the Supreme Court handed down the ruling on Roe v. Wade, I was working as a nurse in an emergency room in Baltimore, and this was a time when it was still not widely accepted for women to pursue a career outside the home or own a business or maybe even run for elected office. But despite those inroads we have made toward gender equality, abortion on demand continues to undermine the freedom and the justice that generations of women have fought for. You know the reality is, forty years ago, after Roe v Wade, one-third – one-third – of my daughters’ and granddaughters’ peers are not here today to benefit from the progress that we made and to share in the hopes and dreams of the future. As Martin Luther King, Jr., once said: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
For decades, pro-abortion activists have perpetrated many lies about abortion, particularly to women. Lie Number One: We have been told that abortion merely means – is merely a means of female liberation, justice and empowerment. But pitting mothers against the unborn is not liberating; it’s a horrible injustice that in the last forty years has resulted in fifty-five million aborted babies whose mothers have gone on to live in many cases with severe physical, emotional and mental and spiritual scars. Women who have had abortions are thirty percent more likely to face emotional and mental problems. They are forty percent more likely to have a premature birth and three times more likely to experience drug and alcohol problems during their lifetimes. Such lies cannot continue.
Lie Number Two: We’ve been told that abortion is about choice. But in reality abortion is a false choice. Abortion leads to death of a child, robbing society of its future mothers and fathers, nurses, doctors, teachers, scientists, and a choice to take what is not ours to take – life of another person – is not a choice at all. It is a mistake.
Lie Number Three: We have been told the lie that a fetus is not a life. But you know what? Medical advances have affirmed what many of us knew in our hearts when that decision was made so many years ago – that the fetus living inside a woman’s body is not a blob of tissue; it’s a human being. A living, breathing baby who has a right to life, just like you and me.
Today, forty years after Roe v. Wade, while I am still a registered nurse, my fight for life has shifted, from the emergency room to the Tennessee state capitol to the halls of Congress, and I am committed to using whatever opportunities and power and influence that my current position affords me to protect and defend the sanctity of life. And one way I have done – in my current effort is to defund the largest abortion provider in America, also known as Planned Parenthood. You all probably already know this but according to the most recent report Planned Parenthood put out, they have provided 300,000 abortions just in this last year. In other words, listen to this: one abortion every ninety-four seconds. And you know what? Taxpayers’ money has unwittingly helped foot the bill for this. Planned Parenthood receives more than one-half billion taxpayer dollars annually for what’s intended to be women’s health money. But it badly misuses this money to subsidize a big abortion business. And that is why, at the start of this new year, with the blessing of my good friend and your good friend Congressman Mike Pence, who is now the governor of Indiana – yes, he deserves a big round of applause – who has fought for so many years, has handed me over HR-217, the Title Ten Abortion Provider Prohibition Act. If signed into law, my bill would ensure that the Title Ten federal grants are used for their intended purpose of strengthening families and providing critical health services for women and would bar those dollars from going to organizations that provide abortion.
On this fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we remember those tens of millions of babies who will never be able to celebrate a birthday, who will not go to college; they won’t contribute their God-given talents to this world. And our thoughts and prayers are with those countless men and women whose lives have been forever changed by the violence of abortion. Today we press on for the fight for life and the hope that one day we will live in a country where each and every life – born and unborn – is respected, valued and given the opportunity to pursue their dreams. God bless your efforts. Thank you so much for what you do for the right to life.