Life Advocacy Briefing

Waiting for Fulfillment

WE EXPECT OUR READERS WILL KNOW, by the time this edition of Life Advocacy Briefing is in the mail, whether the US Senate has moved forward on “repealing and replacing ObamaCare.” At the time of this writing, back-room efforts were reportedly proceeding toward a Senate version which could draw enough votes to attempt a roll call, after a week of deterioration of support for the Majority Leadership’s initial proposal.

We are encouraged by the lack of media attention to the Planned Parenthood defunding which Senate drafters maintained from the House-passed version. Though reports of demurrals by “moderate” Republicans persisted through the week, the Planned Parenthood provision was not the cited sticking point for Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who had earlier murmured about that particular reform. Seemingly, fidelity to Planned Parenthood is diminishing as an acceptable excuse.

Timing appears to have been perfect for release of the most explosive undercover Planned Parenthood expose video yet, which occurred just as the Senate was beginning to grapple with the urgency of its ObamaCare replacement proposal. And Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee’s articulate speech reporting on the video’s content on the Senate floor – which we reprinted last week – was well spoken and beautifully timed.

Beware the Petition Scam

A WEBSITE HAS BEEN LAUNCHED BY THE ABORTION LOBBY TO DECEIVE pro-life Americans via a supposed “petition” to defund Planned Parenthood, reports Claire Chretien for LifeSiteNews.com.

The deceptive website address is “defundpppetition.com,” and it “asks users to sign a petition defunding Planned Parenthood,” writes Ms. Chretien. “Users,” she notes, “are to select the ‘services you would like to defund.’

“‘But it’s actually a bait,’ explains Business Insider,” quoted by LifeSiteNews. “‘The website is designed to educate people about Planned Parenthood’s various offerings.’”

Explains Ms. Chretien, “Clicking on ‘defund abortion’” in answer to the message “‘select the services you would like to defund’” prompts the jeer: “‘NO government funding has gone towards abortions since 1976, so you can’t defund them.’” It fails to mention that some half-billion-dollars of taxpayer funds prop up the Planned Parenthood business empire every year, which is what “defund Planned Parenthood” is actually about.

As Ms. Chretien notes, “Sure, the federal money Planned Parenthood receives can’t technically fund most abortions. But it can keep the lights on. And help with overhead costs. And pay staff who do abortions. And pay,” writes the LifeSiteNews reporter, “for lots of other things that keep the abortion business afloat.

“Giving Planned Parenthood money that’s ‘not for abortions,’” writes the perceptive Ms. Chretien, “is like giving a heroin addict money for groceries – so he can spend his other grocery money on drugs.”

A genuine on-line petition seeking the defunding of Planned Parenthood appears on the Internet at https://lifepetitions.com/petition/no-more-selling-baby-body-parts-defund-planned-parenthood-petition. That website is controlled by LifeSiteNews.com, familiar to Life Advocacy Briefing readers as a legitimate, trustworthy source of pro-life news and commentary.

Attention, Gen. Sessions!

OPERATION RESCUE APPEALED TO THE JUSTICE DEPT. last week, according to an OR commentary by the group’s senior vice president Cheryl Sullenger, “to urgently investigate and prosecute suspected criminal conduct on the part of Planned Parenthood, three organ procurement companies and a Texas abortionist that were referred to the Dept. of Justice by the House Select Panel on Infant Lives and the Senate Judiciary Committee last December.”

Those Congressional panels “resubmitted the criminal referrals to [Jeff] Sessions,” Mrs. Sullenger writes, “once he became US Attorney General earlier this year. …

“‘Since the conduct alleged in the criminal referrals is so severe that it is literally placing lives at risk in some instances,’” said OR president Troy Newman, quoted in the Sullenger commentary, “‘we are urging Atty. Gen. Sessions to aggressively pursue these cases in the interest of justice and to protect the vulnerable from further harm.’”

Confident in the pro-life commitment of Mr. Sessions – demonstrated consistently in his long, perfect Senate voting record – we see the lack of action as one more example of the damage done to America by the Senate Minority’s continued drag on the confirmation process, one of the factors in Justice delays. We do, however, join Operation Rescue in urging immediate attention from those charged with executing our nation’s laws and protecting American lives.

Standing Up to the U.N.

AMERICA SENT A PRO-LIFE MESSAGE TO THE UNITED NATIONS late last month, reports Stephanie Nebehay for Reuters.

“‘We do not recognize abortion as a method of family planning, nor do we support abortion in our reproductive health assistance,’ said US First Secretary to the UN in Geneva Jason Mack,” writes Ms. Nebehay.

“The US ‘must dissociate from the consensus,’” said Mr. Mackon a resolution offered by Canada and, writes Claire Chretien for LifeSiteNews.com, “adopted by consensus” in a conference supposed to be focused on “violence against women.”

The American delegation said, reports LifeSiteNews, “they supported [the resolution] in ‘spirit,’ but not its call for ‘comprehensive sexual and healthcare services’ and ‘safe abortion where such services are permitted by national law.’”

School Assault Repulsed, for Now

PLANNED PARENTHOOD SEEMS TO HAVE LOST ROUND-ONE of a fight in Reading, Pennsylvania, where the abortion goliath has been seeking to plant a “sexual health counseling center” inside a public high school, reports Claire Chretien for LifeSiteNews.com.

A “massive outcry from pro-life students and activists,” writes Ms. Chretien, prompted the Reading school board to “pull a proposal” for the school-based Planned Parenthood operation proposed to the board by “the pro-abortion group AccessMatters.” The center, writes Ms. Chretien, citing the Reading Eagle as source, “would focus ‘primarily [on] counseling services and condoms,’ … and ‘Planned Parenthood Keystone would manage daily operations.’

“AccessMatters runs ‘community-based programs,’” reports LifeSiteNews, “that deal with issues like ‘teen pregnancy prevention and education’ and ‘LGBT health disparities.’ It admits,” writes Ms. Chretien, “that its in-school clinics funnel students to places where they can receive ‘sexual and reproductive health services,’ often a euphemism for abortion and contraception.”

The LifeSiteNews story quotes Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America (SLA): “‘If Planned Parenthood is allowed to be inside Reading High School, they are going to replicate this model in high schools – and likely middle schools – across the country.’” Added Mrs. Hawkins: “‘They cannot be allowed prime access to our children.’ …

“The Reading school board was scheduled to discuss the proposal on [June 21],” writes Ms. Chretien, “but it was pulled from the meeting’s agenda at the last minute without notice.”

One local pro-life activist thinks he knows why. “‘It had apparently been pulled [at the] last minute after seeing us,’ Michael Israel of Lehigh Valley Pro-Life Future, who was at the meeting, told LifeSiteNews.”

The local newspaper reported, according to Ms. Chretien, that “‘the proposal most likely will return for discussion and a subsequent vote in August. Board members did not publicly acknowledge their audience of roughly 40 pro-life activists,’” reports the Reading Eagle, quoted by Ms. Chretien, “‘many wearing bright blue shirts proclaiming, “I am the pro-life generation,” during the meeting.’” Such t-shirts are available on-line from SLA at http://studentsforlife.storenvy.com/?page=3.

The LifeSiteNews report further quotes the East Coast Regional Director for SLA, Michele Hendrickson: “‘We are so proud of the collaboration and unwavering dedication by Reading students, parents and community leaders. … We are hopeful that the delayed vote is a sign that the board members recognized Planned Parenthood’s damaged brand. Students know,’” she declared, “‘that they deserve better than Planned Parenthood, and we are calling on these board members to protect them from this disastrous proposal.’”

We at Life Advocacy urge our readers to monitor their own school boards for activity by AccessMatters or directly by Planned Parenthood. Reading is not the first place for such a proposal to appear; school-based “health clinics” – beyond the traditional nurse’s office – have been an abortion industry tactic for many years in many locations. We commend SLA and the Reading activists for blocking the scheme in their community so far; we urge them to persist and others to check out the “health” initiatives in their own public schools, truly a front line in the battle.

Peeling the ObamaCare Onion

June 27, 2017, Washington Update commentary by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins

            When Senate Republicans met for lunch today, the most important thing on the menu had nothing to do with food. With the clock counting down to the July 4th recess, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and special guest Mike Pence had their work cut out for them lobbying GOP holdouts on the newly released healthcare plan. Breaking bread wasn’t enough to bridge the divide between the various Republican factions, so leaders decided to postpone the vote until after the holiday, when more changes could be made.

            For some conservatives, the real indigestion started before the meal with the Congressional Budget Office’s score of the Senate bill. While plenty of the analysis was positive, leaders didn’t exactly get a helping hand from the liberal media, who seized on the suggestion that 22 million Americans (one million less than the House plan) would “lose” their health insurance under [Sen.] McConnell’s Better Care Reconciliation Act. At first glance, that’s a jarring number. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. Under the House and Senate bills, there’s no government-imposed mandate for people to buy insurance. And if they aren’t being fined for forgoing health care, more Americans will choose to be uninsured – almost half of that 22 million, CBO points out.

            And while both sides usually lean on the budget group to give them a ballpark estimate of how much their proposals will cost, these are educated guesses. Like most forecasters, the CBO isn’t always right – especially when they’re dealing with something as enormous as one-sixth of the US economy. As we found out with ObamaCare’s score (it was supposed to lower the deficit, remember?), there are just too many variables and outstanding factors to consider. In a bit of good news for Leader McConnell, the Senate version saves $188 billion more than the House bill and would carve almost twice as deeply into the federal deficit ($321 billion) over the same 10-year span.

            On the downside, Americans would notice a bump in premium prices in the short term until 2020, which is when they’d see a reduction in costs by about 30%. Of course, premiums have already skyrocketed an average of 105% under ObamaCare, with no relief in sight. Doing nothing is not an option for the GOP, which, from a political and practical standpoint, has to act. “As more and more people continue to lose coverage and face fewer healthcare choices, Pres. Trump is committed to repealing and replacing ObamaCare, which has failed the American people far too long,” the White House said in a statement. At least one insurance company – Anthem – told reporters that the GOP’s plan “will markedly improve the stability of the individual market and moderate premium increases.”

            For conservatives, the biggest concern isn’t the cost in dollars – but lives. Like the House measure, McConnell’s bill includes the most important carrot for pro-lifers: defunding Planned Parenthood (which was just caught on tape in St. Paul promising to “break the baby’s neck” if it’s born alive). This is not, as Forbes points out, “just a bar on receiving Medicaid funding for abortions, which is already precluded by the annual federal spending provision known as the Hyde Amendment. Rather, it is a total shutoff of Medicaid funding for all of Planned Parenthood’s work … .”

            The other non-negotiable for pro-lifers is language that would stop people from using the bill’s tax credits to buy plans that include abortion coverage. The House version included Hyde Amendment language that would prohibit the credits from being used for abortion. However, there is concern that the Senate parliamentarian may rule that the Hyde language is out of order on the reconciliation bill. That’s a major concern. But, thanks to some creative thinking, the lion’s share of the funding will funnel through a program called S-CHIP, which is subject to the Hyde Amendment. Family Research Council is working to insure that, whatever the mechanism, that taxpayers are not forced to fund abortion. …

Foundation for our Freedom

Excerpts from America’s Declaration of Independence, transcribed by the National Archives from the stone tablet which preserves the actual document

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

            When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands 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 shewn, 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. …

            [Here flows an extensive list of specific grievances against the then “King of Great Britain” … ]

            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.