Life Advocacy Briefing

Coming Up in Life Advocacy Briefing

THIS IS AN UNUSUAL MONTH FOR US, and our publishing schedule may be somewhat unpredictable as a result. Our editor is facing eye surgery, and we are uncertain of the short-term limitations that could result, so our promise can only be that we will do our best to stay on course – and we will need and appreciate the prayers of our readers. Thank you!

Of course, Christmas is also coming this month, and we do expect to suspend publication in honor of the most precious holiday. So we can predict we will not likely be offering a Life Advocacy Briefing for the week of December 28.

We are currently engaged in preparing our customary year-end Congressional Voting Record Index, but we cannot predict when we will actually be delivering that annual report, as the 2015 session of Congress is continuing, at this writing, and continues to involve Life-related roll calls. So stay tuned; we are doing our best to bring our readers timely news you can use in the cause of Life.

And, in this month of December, we take this early occasion to wish each of our readers blessings and peace and joy in this season of the most treasured Life of all.

Senate Passes ObamaCare Repeal, Planned Parenthood Defunding

THE SENATE SPENT MUCH OF LAST WEEK deliberating on HR-3762, the Reconciliation bill on which two major Life-impacting provisions depend. Though originally expected to focus on the Reconciliation bill as the House passed it in October, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) instead offered a substitute amendment which proved to be stronger than the language passed by the House.

The Senate voted Thursday – in the one measure – to disqualify Planned Parenthood from federal Medicaid or family planning funding and to dismantle the financial underpinnings of ObamaCare, all but repealing the federal takeover of medical insurance.

As defined by the Heritage Foundation’s Paul Winfree, the bill, whose Senate changes now must be considered by the House, “repeals most of the new spending programs, including the premium subsidies and Medicaid expansion, and most of the taxes” underpinning ObamaCare. “The bill also eliminates the individual and employer mandate penalties, repeals the ObamaCare risk corridor and reinsurance programs that can be used to bail out private insurers, and sets up a transition period for Congress and the next President to replace the healthcare law with a proposal that reduces costs for families and the federal government. Finally,” he adds, “the bill restricts Medicaid funding for abortion providers affiliated with Planned Parenthood Federation of America.”

Though the Senate roll calls on two pertinent amendments were available at our press deadline – and readers can find those two voting records at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing – we are unable to report until next week on the Senate’s final action on the Reconciliation measure, as the amendment process was still occupying the Senate when we concluded our writing for this week. Based on the defeat of the abortion-lobby amendments seeking to cripple the McConnell package, we are hopeful the bill is going to the House for agreement with the Senate’s actions.

Because the Senate employed the Reconciliation process for this reform, only 51 votes were needed to pass the measure, as the filibuster rule – which sets the threshold at 60 votes – cannot be applied to Reconciliation, a device which can be applied to budgetary matters and used only once a year. It was this process by which the then-controlling Democrats enacted ObamaCare in the first place at the close of 2010.

Nice Try, Senators

ONE SENATOR WHO STRONGLY RESISTED THE RECONCILIATION MEASURE was Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who sought to amend the proposal with the creation of a new fund called the “Women’s Health Care and Clinic Security & Safety Fund.”

The outrageous amendment would have offered $1 billion over a 10-year period to the abortion industry. It would also have imposed a new, punitive income tax on “high-income” taxpayers.

Having seen her colleague fail in her bid to boost the abortion industry, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) took up the cause with an amendment to strip the language disqualifying Planned Parenthood.

The Senate voted 54-to-46 to table the Murray Amendment and rejected the Collins Amendment by a vote of 52 to 48. We publish the voting records at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing, and we urge readers to contact those home-state Senators who voted “pro-life” on these two amendments in order to thank and encourage them; they will no doubt be hearing criticism from the abortion lobby. Senators may be reached via the Capitol switchboard at 1-202/224-3121 or at their in-state offices; home office contact information for each can be obtained via www.senate.gov or via the reference desk at any public library.

All Life Is Precious

Dec. 1, 2015, BreakPoint commentary by John Stonestreet, BreakPoint.org

The shooting in Colorado Springs was immediately used to further an agenda. But this doesn’t change our agenda at all.

Three lives were taken by a shooter at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic on Friday [Nov. 26]. The two civilians killed were both parents of young children, as was police officer Garret Swasey who, in performing his duty, ran into the line of fire to save lives. He was also an elder at Hope Chapel and, on Sunday, was lovingly remembered as a husband, father and church member.

Now much of the social media traffic surrounding this event, including by pro-abortion leaders around the country, implicated the entire pro-life movement in what was, from what we know of Robert Dear, the actions of a mentally unstable recluse who systematically chose violence in dealing with things he didn’t like, like neighbors, strangers and even animals.

As pro-abortion leaders try to make political hay with this act of evil, it’s important to remember at least three things. First, as my friend Kelly Rosati of Focus on the Family so eloquently wrote at Christianity Today, every person involved is made in the image of God. The victims and the shooter, the pro-lifers and abortion advocates, those for and against us on social media, the unborn and Planned Parenthood workers. As Kelly wrote, “Recognizing the image of God in everyone is much easier in theory than in reality.”

Second, habits of violence, when they go unchecked, breed further violence. We are, as Aristotle taught, shaped by those things we habitually choose. Our choices escalate and, if they go unchecked, take us down a slippery slope to their logical ends. This is true of the gunman, and it’s also true of us.

That’s why Eric Metaxas and I, and all of our Colson Center team, spend so much time reminding each other and our listeners of the Biblical command to choose hope over outrage. If we allow the name-calling and mud-slinging that’s been particularly intense over the last few days to shape our response on social media and otherwise, we’ll not be the people of hope Christ saved us and called us to be: thoughtful, patient, loving and shaped by the reality that Christ has come, defeated death and promises to make this broken world new again.

Finally, we know that Dear’s evil neither justifies nor alters the fact that on a daily basis, Planned Parenthood and abortion providers across the country and around the world facilitate the evil of taking unborn lives. Robert Dear robbed children of their parents. Abortion robs parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, and our community of children.

Just as we cannot allow this event or the name-calling around it to lead us to a spirit of revenge, neither can we allow it to lead us to fear or silence. Because the gunman may have uttered something about “baby parts” doesn’t change the fact that abortion takes innocent life.

So we must, as Chuck Colson called us to do, “stay at our posts and do our duty.” Throughout the history of Christianity, courageous men and women inspired by their faith confronted grave evils like slavery, infanticide, tyranny and, yes, abortion.

And so we, by God’s grace, must commit again to be the sort of people who overcome evil as Jesus taught us. We may not return evil for evil. We only overcome evil with good.

So don’t get sucked into the name-calling and social media wars, as I was tempted to do this weekend. Instead, look for people who need the love of Christ – the unborn, the women and men facing unplanned pregnancies, the reclusive individuals at risk for mental illness, and those who see us as their ideological enemies. Volunteer at your local pregnancy care center, learn to make the persuasive case for life and live a life, like Garret Swasey did, worthy of the calling of Christ Jesus.

And let me just say, I’m thankful how over the years Christians have become more strategic, more professional, thoughtful, courageous, and have remained non-violent as they have stood for life. Let’s take the cause forward, even if the days get darker.

Further reading and information: Make the persuasive case for life – all life, as John has urged. Do the good works Christ has called you to do. As the Apostle Peter said, “All of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted and humble in spirit; not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.” I Peter 3: 8 – 9

Raveling the Rhetoric

Nov. 30, 2015, commentary by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins in his Washington Update

Planned Parenthood has always been a grim place, but last Friday, its Colorado clinic was the scene of [a] different kind of tragedy. In a senseless shooting, one disgruntled man took the lives of three innocent people and wounded several more in a terrible atrocity that cast a somber shadow over the holiday period. Regardless of what the gunman’s motives may be (and the media [have] suggested several), we strongly condemned this violence. All of us at the Family Research Council join with the pro-life movement in praying for the injured officers and families who lost loved ones.

Unfortunately, FRC can strongly empathize with the victims at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado after a homosexual activist, Floyd Lee Corkins, walked into our lobby in 2012 with enough ammunition to kill the entire staff. Were it not for the heroic acts of Leo Johnson, Corkins’s act of domestic terrorism (which he admits was inspired by the Southern Poverty Law Center) would have been equally deadly.

Whatever this shooter’s intent, it’s only through peaceful means – not violence – that we can truly become a nation that once again values all human life, born and unborn. While police try to sort out the facts of this horrific rampage, many on the Left are using the tragedy as an excuse to indict the entire pro-life movement. “Politicians need to stop escalating the rhetoric against Planned Parenthood,” one abortion group insisted, “and that means by and large the Republican Party.” But this shooting isn’t the fault of politicians (many of whom are trying to uphold the same human dignity this gunman grossly violated) or [of] a movement driven by mercy and love.

“To the ridiculous (and vile) claim that the rhetoric of pro-life advocates is responsible for Robert Lewis Dear’s murderous rampage,” Princeton Professor Robbie George pointed out, “the answer can be stated in three words: Floyd Lee Corkins. If the pro-life movement is responsible for Robert Lewis Dear’s crimes, then the gay rights movement (and especially the Southern Poverty Law Center) is responsible for Floyd Lee Corkins’s. There must be one and only one standard, friends. Not two. For far too long, left-liberal hegemony in the media and other elite sectors of the culture has enabled a double standard to be maintained about issues of this sort. This. Must. End.”

Ed Morrissey was just as stunned at the Left’s hypocrisy. “So let’s get this straight. When a lunatic shoots up a Family Research Council office, it has nothing to do with its political opposition. … But when a lunatic shoots up an abortion clinic, it’s the fault of millions of Americans who oppose abortion and who argue peacefully for limits on the practice and better oversight of those who operate in the industry?”

Carly Fiorina, one of the many GOP Presidential candidates to denounce the attack, expressed her disgust – not just at the crime but at the insinuation that people who oppose Planned Parenthood’s gruesome business are to blame. “Any link between the shooting and anyone who opposes abortion or the sale of baby body parts … is typical left-wing tactics.” Once again, she said, liberals “immediately begin demonizing a messenger because they don’t agree with the message. The vast majority of Americans agree [that] what Planned Parenthood is doing is wrong.”

Already, some extremists are using the Colorado shooting as a reason to drop the investigations into Planned Parenthood’s baby organ harvesting ring. But the same compassion that drives us to condemn this violence also compels us to protect other innocents, including the unborn. Pro-lifers want to end all brutality – whether it happens in a clinic foyer or a mother’s womb.

In the meantime, the facts aren’t hate speech, as Ryan Bomberger explains. “Exposing the inner workings of Planned Parenthood in an undercover investigation isn’t ‘hateful rhetoric;’ it enables illuminating and civil discussion about inhumane barbarity.”

And it is that same inhumanity that Congress – and all of us – must strive to end.

Senate Voting Records

Motion to Table Murray Amendment to HR-3762 for “Women’s Health Centers Security” funding – Dec. 3, 2015 – Adopted – 54-46 (Democrats in italics; “Independents” marked “I”)

Voting “yes” / pro-Life: Sessions & Shelby/AL, Murkowski & Sullivan/AK, Flake & McCain/AZ, Boozman & Cotton/AR, Gardner/CO, Rubio/FL, Isaacson & Perdue/GA, Crapo & Risch/ID, Coats/IN, Ernst & Grassley/IA, Moran & Roberts/KS, McConnell & Paul/KY, Cassidy & Vitter/LA, Collins/ME, Cochran & Wicker/MS, Blunt/MO, Daines/MT, Fischer & Sasse/NE, Heller/NV, Ayotte/NH, Burr & Tillis/NC, Hoeven/ND, Portman/OH, Inhofe & Lankford/OK, Toomey/PA, Graham & Scott/SC, Rounds & Thune/SD, Alexander & Corker/TN, Cornyn & Cruz/TX, Hatch & Lee/UT, Capito & Manchin/WV, Johnson/WI, Barrasso & Enzi/WY.

Voting “no” / anti-Life: Boxer & Feinstein/CA, Bennet/CO, Blumenthal & Murphy/CT, Carper & Coons/DE, Nelson/FL, Hirono & Schatz/HI, Durbin & Kirk/IL, Donnelly/IN, King(I)/ME, Cardin & Mikulski/MD, Markey & Warren/MA, Peters & Stabenow/MI, Franken & Klobuchar/MN, McCaskill/MO, Tester/MT, Reid/NV, Shaheen/NH, Booker & Menendez/NJ, Heinrich & Udall/NM, Gillibrand & Schumer/NY, Heitkamp/ND, Brown/OH, Merkley & Wyden/OR, Casey/PA, Reed & Whitehouse/RI, Leahy & Sanders(I)/VT, Kaine & Warner/VA, Cantwell & Murray/WA, Baldwin/WI.

Collins Amendment to Delete Planned Parenthood Funding Disqualification from HR-3762 – Dec. 3, 2015 – Failed – 48-52 (Democrats in italics; “Independents” marked “I”)

Voting “no” / pro-Life: Sessions & Shelby/AL, Sullivan/AK, Flake & McCain/AZ, Boozman & Cotton/AR, Gardner/CO, Rubio/FL, Isaacson & Perdue/GA, Crapo & Risch/ID, Coats/IN, Ernst & Grassley/IA, Moran & Roberts/KS, McConnell & Paul/KY, Cassidy & Vitter/LA, Cochran & Wicker/MS, Blunt/MO, Daines/MT, Fischer & Sasse/NE, Heller/NV, Ayotte/NH, Burr & Tillis/NC, Hoeven/ND, Portman/OH, Inhofe & Lankford/OK, Toomey/PA, Graham & Scott/SC, Rounds & Thune/SD, Alexander & Corker/TN, Cornyn & Cruz/TX, Hatch & Lee/UT, Capito & Manchin/WV, Johnson/WI, Barrasso & Enzi/WY.

Voting “yes” / anti-Life: Murkowski/AK, Boxer & Feinstein/CA, Bennet/CO, Blumenthal & Murphy/CT, Carper & Coons/DE, Nelson/FL, Hirono & Schatz/HI, Durbin & Kirk/IL, Donnelly/IN, Collins & King(I)/ME, Cardin & Mikulski/MD, Markey & Warren/MA, Peters & Stabenow/MI, Franken & Klobuchar/MN, McCaskill/MO, Tester/MT, Reid/NV, Shaheen/NH, Booker & Menendez/NJ, Heinrich & Udall/NM, Gillibrand & Schumer/NY, Heitkamp/ND, Brown/OH, Merkley & Wyden/OR, Casey/PA, Reed & Whitehouse/RI, Leahy & Sanders(I)/VT, Kaine & Warner/VA, Cantwell & Murray/WA, Baldwin/WI.