From National Right to Life:
In the House, three different committees voted down NRLC-backed amendments to prevent the bills from mandating coverage of abortions and to prevent federal subsidies for abortions, as only a few Democrats joined the minority Republican members in support of the amendments. On the third panel, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the pro-abortion side narrowly won adoption of a “phony compromise” amendment offered by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Ca.) (who has a zero percent career pro-life voting record) that would result in elective abortions being covered under the government-operated “public plan” the bill would create, and would allow federal subsidies to flow to private insurance plans that cover elective abortions.
During the August recess, please consider scheduling a meeting with your Congressional representative to talk about keeping abortion and medical rationing out of health care reform. For some helpful tips, along with background information, visit the National Right to Life Legislative Action Center here.
The latest issue of our newspaper, LifeLines, is now out. The edition is full of info about how you can help stop the abortion agenda steamrolling through Washington, as well as information about our exciting, don’t-miss conference in Scranton in October. If you’d like to become a subscriber to LifeLines, please visit http://www.paprolife.org/donate/index.html . If you’d prefer to read LifeLines online, visit http://www.paprolife.org/news/newsletter.html .
Pro-abortion forces are trying to deny that the White House-backed health care reform plans would result in the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade. But facts are facts. Unless abortion is specifically excluded from the health care reform proposal, your tax dollars would pay for abortion on demand. And it’s been proven that taxpayer funding of abortion results in a 30 percent increase in abortion totals. Call your Congressman now with this message: abortion needs to be specifically excluded from health care reform. You can find more information at the National Right to Life Legislative Action Center here.
A report by LifeNews.com notes that Congress’ current plan for overhauling the nation’s health care system promotes euthanasia. Two Congressional leaders confirm that the so-called reform plan leaves seniors vulnerable, according to the LifeNews.com story:
“Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care providers to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on ‘the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration’ and other end of life treatments,’” the pair say.
That section “may place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life directives they would not otherwise sign.”
“This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law. At a minimum this legislative language deserves a full and open public debate – the sort of debate that is impossible to have under the politically-driven deadlines Democratic leaders have arbitrarily set for enactment of a health care bill,” they state.
It is critical that senior citizens and others contact their Congressional Representatives now and let them know that health care reform should not include euthanasia or abortion. To send a message to your Congressman, click here.
More than 30,000 pro-lifers from all around the country took part last night in what is believed to be the largest pro-life webcast in history. The topic–Stopping the Abortion Mandate. Health care reform plans backed by the White House would lead to mandated coverage of abortion in health insurance plans, along with taxpayer funding of abortion.
Pro-life doctors could also be forced out of the medical profession, according to a Fox News report:
Catholic leaders who say they are for health care reform are worried that some provisions in the health care legislation making its way through Congress could put them out of business by mandating abortion services.
“If abortion becomes a basic benefit, if it gets mandated, then that means anyone who doesn’t provide abortions becomes a second-class citizen at the very least in the health care system,”said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities.
He and other Catholic leaders say they could be forced out of networks and referral systems they need in order to survive financially.
Last year alone, the nearly 1,000 Catholic hospitals and health care centers in the U.S. served 92 million patients.
Meanwhile, please do your part to stop the abortion mandate. Go to the National Right to Life Legislative Action Center here and send a message to Congress to vote against any health care reform plan that does not specifically exclude abortion. The lives of thousands of preborn children and the well-being of thousands of mothers depend on it!
The latest edition of our one-minute radio spots, Pro-Life Notes, is available here. In this batch of three, you’ll hear about a great way to stop Washington’s abortion agenda…a disturbing endorsement for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor…and why it’s a good time to contact your Congressman. If your local radio station would like to air Pro-Life Notes, have the program director e-mail us at lifelines@paprolife.org and we’d be happy to add the station to our distribution list.
President Barack Obama has told CBS News he would rather not wade into the issue of whether health care reform includes coverage for abortion. In a report on the CBS website, we learn:
The president told CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric that he is “not trying to micro-manage what benefits are covered.”
“I’m pro-choice, but I think we also have the tradition in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care,” he said, adding: “My main focus is making sure that people have options of high quality care at the lowest possible price.”
But the fact is that, unless abortion is specifically excluded from health care reform legislation, your tax dollars could end up paying for someone’s abortion as a method of birth control.
According to an Associated Press report:
Abortion is not mentioned in the 1,018-page bill that Democratic leaders hope will be approved by the last of three House committees this week. Supporters of the legislation say that means the bill is neutral.
But abortion opponents say the bill’s silence is precisely the problem.
Without an explicit prohibition on federal funding for abortion, it could be included in taxpayer-subsidized coverage offered through the health overhaul plan, abortion opponents say.
“We cannot support any health care reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan,” a group of 20 Democratic representatives said in a June 25 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
If you have not already done so, please go to the National Right to Life Legislative Action Center by clicking here. There, you can send a message to Senators Casey and Specter and your Congressman, urging them to oppose any health care reform plan that does not specifically exclude abortion. Please act now to protect pregnant women and their preborn children from harm!
If you haven’t already done so, please take some time now to call U.S. Senators Bob Casey and Arlen Specter and your local Congressional representative and urge them to vote against any health care reform plan that does not specifically exclude abortion. You can also send e-mail messages to Congress through the National Right to Life Legislative Action Center here. At the Action Center, National Right to Life has posted new information about the whole health care debacle–and what you can do to prevent the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade. Please act now! The lives of thousands of preborn children and their mothers depend on it!
Political scientist Dr. Michael New has a piece on National Review Online documenting the fact that restrictions on public funding of abortions do, indeed, reduce abortion totals:
The Guttmacher Institute recently released a literature review about the effects of restrictions on Medicaid funding for abortion. Overall, the results indicate that there is a very strong consensus among both public-health researchers and economists that public funding restrictions lower abortion rates. The Guttmacher literature review contains citations to 20 academic studies documenting this.
Meanwhile, even though he has preached about reducing abortion, President Barack Obama consistenly has pursued policies to expand taxpayer funding of abortion. As New observes:
All these developments should give serious pause to the dwindling number of pro-lifers who still believe that President Obama is actually serious about preventing abortions.
LifeNews.com is reporting that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor may have revealed a pro-abortion bias during her confirmation hearings:
During questioning on Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sonia Sotomayor was questioned again about her board membership on a pro-abortion Hispanic group that repeatedly urged the Supreme Court to allow unlimited abortions paid for at taxpayer expense.
As with a first set of questions about her role, Sotomayor essentially evaded scrutiny and said she did not participate in the legal briefs.
But the questioning led to a comment that pro-life advocates may seize on as proof that Sotomayor supports abortion.
Here’s the controversial comment:
“I did know that the fund had a health care docket that included challenges to certain limitations on a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy under certain circumstances,” Sotomayor responded.
The comment, without clarifying it as one that only represented the PRLDF, could easily leave Sotomayor open to accusations that she tipped her hand and exposed her pro-abortion viewpoint before the committee.
There is simply no right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution. The Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation remains hopeful that someday a majority on the High Court will recognize that fact.
National Right to Life has issued a “condition red” alert, urging pro-lifers to contact their U.S. Senators and Congressional members in an effort to keep abortion out of health care. You’ll find instructions for sending a message to Congress here. Please don’t delay. So-called health care reform could result in the greatest expansion of abortion since the tragic 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision known as Roe v. Wade.
The latest installment of the PA Pro-Life Online News is up and ready for viewing here. In this edition, you’ll learn about the greatest threat to innocent human life since Roe v. Wade, the latest on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and what you can do to stop Washington’s pro-abortion agenda. Happy reading!
More disturbing news out of Washington, where the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has rejected four pro-life amendments designed to remove abortion mandates from health care reform legislation. According to National Right to Life Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, “The health-care bills being pushed by the Obama White House would result in the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade. The pro-life movement needs to go to Threat-Level-Red status on this issue, because the peril is grave and the legislation is on a fast track, with a vote by the full House scheduled for around July 29.”
Please go to the National Right to Life Legislative Action Center now at http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/issues/alert/?alertid=13157881&type=CO and contact Senators Casey and Specter as well as your Congressional representative and urge them to oppose any health care reform bill that does not specifically exclude abortion. Your help is desperately needed to protect preborn children and their mothers from irreparable harm from an expansion of abortion.
Bills which would greatly expand abortion are moving their way through Congress, under the guise of health care reform. These bills represent the greatest threat to innocent human life since the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision back in 1973. To learn more about these sweeping efforts to expand taxpayer funding of abortion, click here.
Please contact your Congressional representative and Senators Casey and Specter now, urging them to vote against any health care reform plan that does not specifically exclude abortion.
Telephone Senators Casey and Specter and say you oppose Senator Ted Kennedy’s health care bill because it contains many pro-abortion mandates. Senator Casey’s number is 202-224-6324. Senator Specter’s number is 202-224-4254.
Then, telephone your Congressional representative and say that you are opposed to the House Democratic Leadership health care reform bill because it contains many pro-abortion mandates. You can reach your Congressional office by calling 202-225-3121.
Working together, we can keep abortion out of health care reform!
The Hill is reporting that the National Institutes of Health ignored the concerns of tens of thousands of Americans in drafting rules regarding taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research:
The agency received more than 49,000 comments from the public after issuing a draft of its guidelines in April. About 30,000 of them — many of which were form letters — debated whether the NIH should be funding embryonic stem cell research at all, (Raynard) Kington said.
The NIH disregarded all such comments, labeling them “unresponsive” to the guidelines it released. “We actually did not ask the public whether we should fund research on human embryonic stem cells. We asked the public how we should fund human embryonic stem cell research,” Kington said.
This is a flagrant example of the government ignoring the will of the people–obviously a dark episode in the life of our nation.
As LifeNews.com is reporting, confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor are set to begin next week.
But there are lingering questions about just where Sotomayor stands with respect to Roe v. Wade, the tragic Supreme Court ruling which brought us abortion on demand for any reason.
As LifeNews.com notes:
Senator Jim DeMint, a pro-life Republican from South Carolina, says he had a “good meeting” with the appeals court judge, but he came away with a telling comment.
“When I asked if an unborn child has any rights whatsoever, I was surprised that she said she had never thought about it,” he said. “This is not just a question about abortion, but about respect due to human life at all stages — and I hope this is cleared up in her hearings.”
Let us hope that Senators ask Sotomayor pointed questions about the worst Supreme Court decision of the 20th century. Future generations may depend on it.
National Right to Life says that we’re now facing the greatest threat to innocent human life since Roe v. Wade back in 1973. The Obama Administration is teaming up with pro-abortion members of Congress to make abortion mandates part of health care reform. That would mean an expansion of taxpayer-funded abortions, which could cause the abortion rate to skyrocket.
Please click here to find out what you can do to stop this legislative assault on preborn children and their mothers. We need to send an urgent message to Congress that we don’t want our tax dollars to pay for abortions.
Fox News is reporting that a California 7th grader and her family are suing her school because school officials would not allow her to wear a pro-life t-shirt:
One of the girl’s lawyers, Mark A. Thiel, said that the images on her shirt of a fetus in the womb were (the) same as those in her science textbooks. He said no student had complained about the shirt, and he said the girl’s parents were not called when the incident took place.
“This was a young girl, not even in high school. But they didn’t call,” he said.
One of the key questions in the case is whether the t-shirt displayed an inappropriate message. An attorney representing the family readily dismisses that concern:
First Amendment attorney William Becker, who represents (the mother), disagreed that the shirt could be seen as containing inappropriate messages.
“The message of the T-shirt is that life is sacred,” he said. “One would be very hard pressed to find anything wrong with that particular idea, except that some people do object to the political message.”
The latest installments of our one-minute radio commentaries, Pro-Life Notes, are now available here. The three newest spots deal with the importance of attending Pennsylvania’s pro-life event of the year, keeping abortion out of health care reform, and an adoption tale from a star of “Wicked.” If you’d like Pro-Life Notes to be sent to your local Pennsylvania Christian or Catholic radio station, e-mail lifelines@paprolife.org so that we can get the station on our distribution list.
LifeNews.com is reporting that pro-abortion groups are lobbying to have abortion included in health care reform, even though public opinion polls show that the majority of Americans do not want their tax dollars spent on abortion:
With flowery language claiming women would lose access to “reproductive health care,” Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards urged her troops to blast the Senate with calls and emails demanding abortion coverage and funding.
“We’ve feared all along that women and their reproductive health care could be the first to go when push comes to shove in health care reform,” she says.
As if pro-life lawmakers are somehow standing in the way of prenatal care, pap smears, or access to an OBGYN, Richards adds, “As I write this, the Republican leadership on the Senate Finance Committee is demanding health care reform language that will take away access to women’s comprehensive reproductive health services. We simply can’t let that happen.”
Richards never mentions abortion when she says, “At a time when our leaders should be focused on expanding health care coverage, they are talking about taking benefits away from women. The Republican leadership on the Senate Finance Committee is demanding a provision that will result in a drastic change to the benefits that many of us have now; and, of course, the hundreds of thousands of women who are not covered now will still be left out in the cold.”
Now is the time for pro-lifers to contact their Congressional representatives and U.S. Senators, urging them to keep abortion out of health care reform. You can send a message to Congress here.