Life Advocacy Briefing

Levine Confirmed

ANOTHER SLAP TO DECENT AMERICANS – especially those of us who cherish the Constitutional right to life of all human beings – was delivered by the US Senate last Wednesday with confirmation of a radical identified as Rachel Levine to be Assistant Secretary of Health & Human Services.

We publish the voting record at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing, both on confirmation and on the procedural roll call on bringing the nomination to a vote.

At least, unlike H.H.S. Secretary Xavier Becerra, this one does have some background in health care, though certainly not without controversy.

Quoting the Wikipedia entry for this now-confirmed high-level bureaucrat: “Rachel Levine is an American pediatrician who served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health from 2017 to 2021. She is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine, and previously served as the Pennsylvania physician general from 2015 to 2017. She is one of only a few openly transgender government officials in the United States.”

Dr. Levine was appointed to run Pennsylvania’s health department by one of the most virulent abortion-cartel fellow travelers in American government, Gov. Tom Wolf (D), whose background includes his “service” as a “clinic escort,” guiding abortion customers past pro-life sidewalk counselors into the death chambers.

The new HHS assistant secretary has a clear position favoring abortion, having, according to an FRC Action bulletin, “denounced a 2016 Pennsylvania bill that would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks (the current standard was 24 weeks), calling it a punishment for women. He also,” notes FRC Action, “supported a policy that used the pandemic as an excuse not to inspect abortion clinics.”

As Fox News reported at the time of this person’s nomination, “Biden Administration nominee Rachel Levine faced scrutiny last May after she moved her mother out of a personal care facility shortly after she implemented a policy directing Pennsylvania’s nursing homes and certain care facilities to admit recovered Covid-19 patients who were treated at nearby hospitals. Levine implemented the policy last March in her role as Pennsylvania’s health secretary.”

Join Us in Voting ‘No’ on E.R.A.: North Dakota

NORTH DAKOTA’s LEGISLATURE HAS A MESSAGE for the US Senate: Vote “No” on ERA!

GOP leaders moved to the top of the state’s House calendar March 19 a Senate-adopted resolution to rescind the state’s obsolete ratification of the long-dead “Equal Rights Amendment” to the US Constitution; the state’s House quickly voted to advance the resolution as a response to the March 16 action by the US House seeking to reinstate the moribund amendment by a vote to cancel the 1979 and 1982 ratification deadlines. (HRes-233 has yet to receive a vote in the US Senate.)

North Dakota’s legislature had ratified the ERA 46 years ago in 1975 during the early days of the so-called feminist movement’s push for the vague proposal.

In the US Senate, Maryland’s Sen. Ben Cardin (D) has filed Senate Joint Resolution-1 to remove the ERA ratification deadline. The resolution is residing in the Senate Committee on Judiciary and is co-sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

Trump Title X Rule Facing Rollback

THE U.S. DEPT. of HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES ANNOUNCED March 18 that it plans to undo the Trump Administration’s rule disqualifying Planned Parenthood and other abortion outfits from receiving federal funding under the Title X (Ten) “family planning” program.

“If the agency makes good on its goal of finalizing the [new] rules by fall,” writes Politico’s Alice Ollstein, “clinics pushed out of the program could reapply for funding by year’s end. …

“The announcement comes after the Supreme Court agreed to review the legality of the Trump policy change,” notes Ms. Ollstein. “Currently, the funding ban is in place everywhere but Maryland” because of what Ms. Ollstein calls a “legal patchwork” of lawsuits against the Trump rule, all but one of which has so far failed. “The Biden Justice Dept. last week,” she notes, “asked the high court to dismiss the case.” Apparently the Court declined the Biden-Harris plea.

“Since the Trump Administration’s rules were implemented,” mourns Ms. Ollstein, “the network of clinics serving the low-income Title X population has seen a mass exodus of providers who felt the ban on abortion referrals amounted to a ‘gag’ that hurt their ability to communicate with their patients. A full quarter of providers left the program, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights research organization, leaving six states with no Title X clinics at all and several others with only a handful of sites.”

Nothing in the US Constitution grants any person the “right” to expect the taxpayers to furnish contraception or even counseling, nor does it grant any corporation or organization the “right” to demand that taxpayers pay for its “services.” That is why the Biden-Harris regime cannot expect the Supreme Court to reinstate Planned Parenthood’s Title X cashflow.

Bring It On

SOUTH CAROLINA’s ‘HEARTBEAT ABORTION ACT’ HAS BEEN SUSPENDED under a preliminary injunction, as expected. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and the Center for Reproductive Rights are the plaintiffs seeking to block enforcement.

South Carolina’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, issued a statement soon after the two abortion outfits filed their lawsuit in February, declaring, reports Marcus Navarro in the Greenville News, “‘We believe the Heartbeat Law is constitutional and deserves a vigorous defense to the US Supreme Court if necessary.’” Indeed, litigation like this is necessary, ultimately, for the pro-life movement’s pursuit of a high court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

Stateside

• AN IDAHO SENATE COMMITTEE on March 17 advanced a Heartbeat Abortion Bill requiring abortionists to check for a fetal heartbeat and to forego the baby’s destruction if one is detected, provided the baby was not conceived during the commission of a reported sex crime or in seeking to prevent the death of the mother.

• AN ARIZONA STATE LAWMAKER HAS PULLED BACK A BIT from the controversy he generated when subjecting even the mother to criminal penalties for abortion. In a version not traditionally embraced by the pro-life movement, Arizona HB-2650 in its original form would have subjected the aborting mother to homicide charges, along with the abortionist. Most pro-life strategists long ago acknowledged that aborting mothers are often co-victims and recognized that, in any case, penalties against them are not politically sustainable. The Arizona sponsor, Rep. Walter Blakeman, “said HB-2650 would extend protections offered under the 14^th Amendment, which grants citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the US, to an unborn child,” reports Eryka Forquer for The State Press. And he said he “‘amended the bill to take the mother out of the equation when we’re talking about … consequences under the law.’”

Abetted Suicide Debate Underway in California

Feb. 11, 2021, National Review commentary by Wesley J. Smith

            Now that assisted suicide is well-ensconced in California culture, a bill has been filed that would destroy medical conscience for doctors who oppose assisted suicide. From SB-380 (new text in italics):

            (3) If a healthcare provider is unable or unwilling to carry out a qualified individual’s request under this part and the qualified individual transfers care to a new healthcare provider or healthcare facility, the individual’s medical records shall be provided to the individual and, upon the individual’s request, timely transferred with documentation of the date of the individual’s request for a prescription for aid-in-dying drug in the medical record, pursuant to law.

            (4) Failure to provide information about medical aid in dying to an individual who requests it, or failure to refer upon the individual’s request to another healthcare provider or healthcare facility that is willing to provide the information, is considered a failure to obtain informed consent for subsequent medical treatments.

            (5) Neither a healthcare provider nor a healthcare facility shall engage in false, misleading or deceptive practices relating to a willingness to qualify an individual or provide a prescription to a qualified individual under this part. Intentionally misleading an individual as to the willingness of a provider or facility to participate under this part constitutes coercion or undue influence.

            Here is what that would mean. A physician who refused to prescribe poison to a legally qualified patient – perhaps because of religious beliefs or wanting to simply follow the Hippocratic Oath – would be obliged upon the patient’s request to find another doctor he or she knows is willing to prescribe. In other words, finding the participating MD would be the doctor’s responsibility, not the patient’s.

            Refuse that complicity and the doctor could face being sued for malpractice or being subjected to professional discipline. If the patient claimed the doctor falsely asserted he would participate in assisted suicide, he or she could face an even more egregious penalty for engaging in “coercion or undue influence.”

            If this bill becomes law – and there is little reason to think it won’t, considering how radical California’s legislature has become – every doctor in California could be forced to be complicit in ending patient’s lives as a condition of continuing in their profession and/or being able to obtain malpractice insurance.

            Among other great harms, such a public policy could cause a serious brain drain. Think about it. Doctors with decades of experience treating the most serious illnesses might well decide to retire rather than be forced to engage in lethal activities they consider immoral, unethical and/or in violation of their religious beliefs.

            Assisted-suicide activists always pound their chests that their cause is about “choice.” But because many doctors oppose prescribing poison, the sponsors of this bill want to leave doctors no way out.

            The culture of death brooks no dissent.

For the Record

WE CONCLUDE THIS WEEK THE STRING OF HOUSE ROLL CALLS relating to passage of HR-5, “The Equality Act,” totaling four House voting records on the one measure. This one is a procedural motion, by which the “rule for consideration” of the bill was adopted, a necessary step toward advancement of the radical measure.

House Voting Record

HRes 147 – Rule for Consideration of HR-5 – The ‘Equality’ Act – Feb. 24, 2021 – Adopted 218 to 208 (Democrats in italics)

Voting “no”/pro-Life: Aderholt, Brooks, Carl, Moore, Palmer, Rogers/AL; Young/AK; Biggs, Gosar, Lesko, Schweikert/AZ; Crawford, Hill, Westerman, Womack/AR; Garcia, Issa, Kim, LaMalfa, McCarthy, McClintock, Nunes, Obernolte, Steel, Valadao/CA; Boebert, Buck, Lamborn/CO; Bilirakis, Buchanan, Cammack, Diaz-Balart, Donalds, Dunn, Franklin, Gaetz, Gimenez, Mast, Posey, Rutherford, Salazar, Steube, Waltz, Weber/FL; Allen, Carter, Clyde, Ferguson, Greene, Hice, Loudermilk, A. Scott/GA; Fulcher, Simpson/ID; Bost, Kinzinger, LaHood, Miller/IL; Baird, Banks, Barr, Bucshon, Hollingsworth, Pence, Spartz, Walorski/IN; Feenstra, Hinson, Miller-Meeks/IA; Estes, LaTurner, Mann/KS; Comer, Guthrie, Massie, Rogers/KY; Harris/MD; Graves, Higgins, Johnson, Scalise/LA; Bergman, Huizenga, McClain, Meijer, Moolenaar, Upton, Walberg/MI; Emmer, Fischbach, Hagedorn/MN; Guest, Kelly, Palazzo/MS; Graves, Hartzler, Long, Luetkemeyer, Smith, Walberg/MO; Rosendale/MT; Bacon, Fortenberry, Smith/NE; Amodei/NV; Herrell/NM; Smith, VanDrew/NJ; Garbarino, Jacobs, Katko, Malliotakis, Reed, Stefanik, Tenney, Zeldin/NY; Bishop, Budd, Cawthorn, Foxx, Hudson, McHenry, Murphy, Rouzer/NC; Armstrong/ND; Balderson, Chabot, Davidson, Gibbs, Gonzalez, Johnson, Jordan, Joyce, Latta, Stivers, Turner, Wenstrup/OH; Bice, Cole, Hern, Lucas, Mullin/OK; Bentz/OR; Fitzpatrick, Joyce, Keller, Kelly, Meuser, Perry, Reschenthaler, Smucker, Thompson/PA; Duncan, Mace, Norman, Rice, Timmons, Wilson/SC; Johnson/SD; Burchett, DesJarlais, Fleischmann, Green, Harshbarger, Kustoff, Rose/TN; Arrington, Babin, Brady, Burgess, Carter, Cloud, Crenshaw, Fallon, Gohmert, Gonzales, Gooden, Granger, Jackson, McCaul, Nehls, Pfluger, Roy, Sessions, Taylor, VanDuyne, Weber, Williams/TX; Curtis, Moore, Owens, Stewart/UT; Cline, Good, Griffith, Wittman/VA; Herrera-Beutler, Newhouse, Rodgers/WA; McKinley, Miller, Mooney/WV; Fitzgerald, Gallagher, Grothman, Steil, Tiffany/WI; Cheney/WY.

Voting “yes”/anti-Life: Sewell/AL; Gallego, Grijalva, Kirkpatrick, O’Halleran, Stanton/AZ; Aguilar, Barragan, Bass, Bera, Brownley, Carbajal, Cardenas, Chu, Correa, Costa, DeSaulnier, Eshoo, Garamendi, Gomez, Harder, Huffman, JACOBS, Khanna, Lee, Levin, Lieu, Lofgren, Lowenthal, McNerney, Napolitano, Panetta, Peters, Porter, Roybal-Allard, Ruiz, Sanchez, Schiff, Sherman, Speier, Swalwell, Takano, Thompson, Torres, Vargas, Waters/CA; Crow, DeGette, Neguse, Perlmutter/CO; Courtney, DeLauro, Hayes, Himes, Larson/CT; Blunt-Rochester/DE; Castor, Crist, Demings, Deutch, Frankel, Hastings, Lawson, Murphy, Soto, Wasserman-Schultz, Wilson/FL; Bishop, Bourdeaux, Johnson, McBath, D. Scott, Williams/GA; Case, Kahele/HI; Bustos, Casten, D.Davis, Foster, Garcia, Kelly, Krishnamoorthi, Newman, Quigley, Rush, Schakowsky, Schneider, Underwood/IL; Carson, Mrvan/IN; Axne/IA; Davids/KS; Yarmuth/KY; Golden, Pingree/ME; Brown, Hoyer, Mfume, Raskin, Ruppersberger, Sarbanes, Trone/MD; Auchincloss, Clark, Lynch, McGovern, Moulton, Neal, Pressley, Trahan/MA; Dingell, Kildee, Lawrence, Levin, Slotkin, Stevens, Tlaib/MI; Craig, McCollum, Omar, Phillips/MN; Thompson/MS;  Bush, Cleaver/MO; Horsford, Jones, Lee, Titus/NV; Kuster/NH; Gottheimer, Kim, Malinowski, Norcross, Pallone, Pappas, Pascrell, Payne, Sherrill, Sires, Watson-Coleman/NJ; Haaland, Leger-Fernandez/NM; Delgado, Espaillat, Higgins, Jeffries, C. Maloney, S. Maloney, Meeks, Meng, Morelle, Nadler, Ocasio-Cortez, Rice, Suozzi, Tonko, Torres, Velazquez/NY; Adams, Butterfield, Manning, Price, Ross/NC; Beatty, Fudge, Ryan/OH; Blumenauer, Bonamici, DeFazio, Schrader/OR; Bowman, Boyle, Cartwright, Dean, Doyle, Evans, Houlahan, Lamb, Scanlon, Wild/PA; Cicilline, Langevin/RI; Clyburn/SC; Cohen, Cooper/TN; Allred, Castro, Cuellar, Doggett, Escobar, Fletcher, Garcia, Gonzalez, Green, Jackson-Lee, Johnson, Veasey, Vela/TX; Welch/VT; Beyer, Connolly, Luria, McEachin, Scott, Spanberger, Wexton/VA; DelBene, Jayapal, Kilmer, Larsen, Schrier, Smith, Strickland/WA; Kind, Moore, Pocan/WI.

Not voting: Calvert & Matsui/CA; R. Davis/IL; Stauber/MN; Clarke/NY.

Senate Voting Record

Confirmation of Rachel Levine as Assistant Secretary of Health & Human Services – March 24, 2021 – Confirmed 52-48 (Democrats in italics; “Independent” marked “I”)

Voting “no”/pro-Life: Shelby & Tuberville/AL, Sullivan/AK; Boozman & Cotton/AR, Rubio & Scott/FL, Crapo & Risch/ID, Braun & Young/IN, Ernst & Grassley/IA, Marshall & Moran/KS, McConnell & Paul/KY, Cassidy & Kennedy/LA, Hyde-Smith & Wicker/MS, Blunt & Hawley/MO, Daines/MT, Fischer & Sasse/NE, Burr & Tillis/NC, Cramer & Hoeven/ND, Inhofe & Lankford/OK, Toomey/PA, Graham & Scott/SC, Rounds & Thune/SD, Blackburn & Hagerty/TN, Cornyn & Cruz/TX, Lee & Romney/UT, Capito/WV, Johnson/WI and Barrasso & Lummis/WY.

Voting “yes”/anti-Life: Murkowski/AK, Kelly & Sinema/AZ, Feinstein & Padilla/CA, Bennet & Hickenlooper/CO, Blumenthal & Murphy/CT, Carper & Coons/DE, Ossoff & Warnock/GA, Hirono & Schatz/HI, Duckworth & Durbin/IL, Collins & King (I)/ME, Cardin & VanHollen/MD, Markey & Warren/MA, Peters & Stabenow/MI, Klobuchar & Smith/MN, Tester/MT, Cortez-Masto & Rosen/NV, Hassan & Shaheen/NH, Booker & Menendez/NJ, Heinrich & Lujan/NM, Gillibrand & Schumer/NY, Brown/OH, Merkley & Wyden/OR, Casey/PA, Reed & Whitehouse/RI, Leahy & Sanders/VT, Kaine & Warner/VA, Cantwell & Murray/WA, Manchin/WV and Baldwin/WI.

Cloture motion to close debate on Levine nomination – March 24, 2021 – Adopted 52-48 (Democrats in italics; “Independent” marked “I”)

Voting “no”/pro-Life: Shelby & Tuberville/AL, Sullivan/AK, Boozman & Cotton/AR, Rubio & Scott/FL, Crapo & Risch/ID, Braun & Young/IN, Ernst & Grassley/IA, Marshall & Moran/KS, McConnell & Paul/KY, Cassidy & Kennedy/LA, Hyde-Smith & Wicker/MS, Blunt & Hawley/MO, Daines/MT, Fischer & Sasse/NE, Burr & Tillis/NC, Cramer & Hoeven/ND, Portman/OH, Inhofe & Lankford/OK, Toomey/PA, Graham & Scott/SC, Rounds & Thune/SD, Blackburn & Hagerty/TN, Cornyn & Cruz/TX, Lee & Romney/UT, Capito/WV, Johnson/WI and Barrasso & Lummis/WY.

Voting “yes”/anti-Life: Murkowski/AK; Kelly & Sinema/AZ, Feinstein & Padilla/CA, Bennet & Hickenlooper/CO, Blumenthal & Murphy/CT, Carper & Coons/DE, Ossoff & Warnock/GA, Hirono & Schatz/HI, Duckworth & Durbin/IL, Collins & King (I)/ME, Cardin & VanHollen/MD, Markey & Warren/MA, Peters & Stabenow/MI, Klobuchar & Smith/MN, Tester/MT, Cortez-Masto & Rosen/NV, Hassan & Shaheen/NH, Booker & Menendez/NJ, Heinrich & Lujan/NM, Gillibrand & Schumer/NY, Brown/OH, Merkley & Wyden/OR, Casey/PA, Reed & Whitehouse/RI, Leahy & Sanders/VT, Kaine & Warner/VA, Cantwell & Murray/WA, Manchin/WV and Baldwin/WI.