Life Advocacy Briefing

Greenlighting ObamaCare

IN A SATURDAY EVENING SESSION on Nov. 21, the US Senate voted 60-39 to advance Majority Leader Harry Reid’s massive ObamaCare proposal to consideration by the full Senate. Since the motion required 60 votes, every Senator voting “yes” can be said to have cast the deciding vote. We publish the roll call at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing.

Debate will begin this week, with the prospect of a substantial number of amendments; the Senate returns today (Monday) after a week-long recess to observe the Thanksgiving holiday.

Though dissenting Senators can still mount a filibuster to block Senate passage of the legislation, the adoption of this initial motion to proceed is seen by many as tantamount to passage, particularly with respect to the abortion subsidy issue, since it is doubtful that enough Senators will vote to add the Stupak/Pitts/Hyde Amendment to the Senate version. (The Senate measure as presented would force Americans to subsidize abortions with their tax money and, as House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio has noted, would tax every participant in the proposed government-run medical plan via a monthly “abortion premium.”)

Further, the pressure brought to bear on Senators – particularly on Democrats – by the White House and Senate leadership to win the green light for proceeding was palpable and bore fruit. Regardless of any public statements some Democratic Senators had made to suggest they would oppose the measure, every one of them fell into step on the motion to proceed.

Nevertheless, the battle must be fought, and we urge citizens to begin now to call their own two Senators and insist that abortion be explicitly excluded via a Hyde-style amendment. Senators may be reached via the Capitol switchboard at 1-202/224-3121, via electronic mail dispatched through the Internet website at www.senate.gov, and/or by calling their in-state offices, usually located in the state’s largest city. In-state contact information may be obtained on the Senate website or by contacting the reference desk at public libraries.

Calls are especially critical today, as the abortion lobby is planning to swoop up Capitol Hill this week in an effort to block Stupak/Pitts/Hyde.

This is ‘Serving’?

SERVING OUR COMMUNITIES IS A NOBLE GOAL, right? Be careful whom you entrust with spending tax money to promote it, is the lesson we are being taught by the Obama Regime.

Using our tax money for the Obama “Serve.gov” Internet website, the regime has recruited volunteers for ACORN, and it’s also been serving Planned Parenthood. The “needs” for which PP has put out the call? In the words of Lisa Stauber, writing for the Houston Conservative Examiner, “Make sure pro-life protesters don’t speak or give any information to women seeking abortions at the [PP] clinic” in Houston.

The “Opportunity Sign-Up” posting on “Serve.gov” was titled “Protect Access to Women’s Health During 40 Days (9-23-09 – 11-1-09).” Those were the dates designated by 40 Days of Life for its sustained prayer campaign to visit the abortion shop operated by Planned Parenthood of Houston & Southeast Texas.

Here’s part of the pitch published on the taxpayer-funded website: “During 40 days, people that oppose birth control and comprehensive reproductive health care will be at our health center with one mission. They want to deceive our clients with misinformation and lies, then prevent them from entering our health center for care. We need your help with a very simple but honorable job. Walk our clients to and from our parking lot by escorting.” Etc.

Using our tax dollars to recruit volunteer deathscorts for the nation’s wealthiest, most ubiquitous abortion chain; that’s the Obama Regime’s definition of community service.

(Our thanks to pro-life Internet blogger Jill Stanek [www.jillstanek.com] for bringing this outrage to our notice, and we thank her for posting today the Proverbs 29: 10 and 27 passages from the God’s Word translation of the Holy Bible: “Bloodthirsty people hate an innocent person, but decent people seek to protect his life. … An unjust person is disgusting to righteous people. A decent person is disgusting to wicked people.”)

Not Safe for Anyone

A NEW STUDY OUT OF FINLAND HIGHLIGHTS RISKS involved in ingesting RU-486, the abortion pill. Published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, the study “‘shows that at least 20% of the women that use RU-486,’” warns Dr. Randall O’Bannon of National Right to Life Committee, quoted by Charlie Butts for OneNewsNow, news service of the American Family Assn., “‘suffer from at least one significant complication and in many cases from two complications.’”

Some “15.6% of those undergoing this [RU-486] form of abortion hemorrhaged,” writes Mr. Butts, “while 1.7% encountered infection and 6.7% experienced incomplete abortions.” These three most common complications are also “the same troubles patients face in surgical abortions,” reports Mr. Butts, undercutting abortion industry claims that the RU chemical is a “safe” method of killing one’s child.

Stunning New Tool

PRIESTS FOR LIFE IS DISTRIBUTING A ‘BREAKTHROUGH VIDEO,’ reports James Tillman for LifeSiteNews.com, showing pictures of prenatal boys and girls via embryoscopy, which Mr. Tillman defines as “a rare technique involving a tiny camera the size of a pen tip, [by which] scientists were able to get breathtaking, real footage of the unborn, which shows how preborn babies have a heartbeat at three weeks, make spontaneous movements at six weeks and have 90% of the anatomical structures found in adults at eight weeks.”

The breathtaking photography is “light years beyond ultrasound,” says Priests for Life director Fr. Frank Pavone, “and will make you practically fall off your chair when you see it.”

Priests for Life is making the video available for purchase at $20 via its Internet website at www.priestsforlife.org. An opportunity is also offered to donate toward distribution of the video through pregnancy centers, schools and churches.

Quoteworthy

Charles Colson on his BreakPoint radio broadcast, Nov. 12, 2009: “A government that decides who lives and who dies is no longer a government of the people and by the people. And it’s certainly not a government for the people.”

Signing On

NEARLY 200,000 PEOPLE HAVE ‘SIGNED’ THE MANHATTAN DECLARATION by submitting their names on the Internet website www.ManhattanDeclaration.org, demonstrating support for the document put together and released Nov. 20 by evangelical leader Charles Colson, Christianity Today senior editor Dr. Timothy George and Princeton University Prof. Robert George.

More than 125 prominent Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Orthodox church leaders subscribed to the document before its release. Not meant to be a bid for ecumenism in religious doctrine, the Declaration is intended to express solidarity on the causes of Life, marriage and religious liberty, including the right to conscience. The document is summarized in “A Call of Christian Conscience,” which we publish below.

The full 4,700-word document may be read at the above-cited website, where citizens can add their own names as signers. Among the remarkable assertions in the document: “We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.”

A Call of Christian Conscience

Introduction to The Manhattan Declaration

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

• the sanctity of human life
• the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
• the rights of conscience and religious liberty

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Warning from Rick Santorum

Oct. 16, 2009, report by Peter J. Smith for LifeSiteNews.com

Both the family and the Church stand in the way of socialism’s triumph, former US Sen. Rick Santorum told Christians gathered for the 17th Int’l Week of Prayer & Fasting [in October]. The pro-life champion warned attendees, however, that both institutions are under heavy attack from Obama Administration policies.

“We are under a great assault, maybe even greater assault, on the foundational issue of the family,” Santorum told those gathered for the Oct. 11 dinner at the Omni Shoreham Hotel [in Washington, DC].

Santorum said that the Left’s policies, especially those policies aggressively set forward by the Obama Administration, target the family and Christian churches for “destruction,” because these institutions provide local social networks and support for individuals that take away the need for total dependence on central government. To eliminate these social networks means the triumph of socialism, and that means attacking marriage and Christian churches.

“There will be an assault on the institution of marriage,” Santorum promised his audience. “Why? Because the Left knows that they can’t really have government come in and take control of everything unless they destroy the family. Unless you destroy the family and destroy the Church, they cannot ultimately be successful in getting socialism to be accepted in this country, and that’s what their objective is.”

Santorum asked everyone to pray in these times for those in public office, for those discerning whether to run for office in 2010, as well as “for those who are out protesting and understand that there is something foundationally wrong with what’s been going on here.”

But Santorum added that Christians must pray hard for the United States in the current battle over health care, because the proposed reform has grave problems that go beyond the “major issues” of abortion coverage and the lack of conscience protection clauses.

“There is another huge issue out there, and that’s just the whole concept of socialized medicine,” said Santorum. Santorum argued that Obama’s reforms will transform health care into “an account in the federal government” in which “accountants” or Congress will determine how much health care an individual gets “as part of our budgetary process.”

Once the health care of individuals is totally dependent on the central government, the Left has secured power, Santorum explained. … [T]he former Pennsylvania Senator concluded that the individual – when covered by government insurance – loses real health care, the treatment he needs, in the name of cutting costs.

Santorum pointed out that the course of socialized medicine in Europe – and the Netherlands in particular – give an opportunity to “see what happens to the value of human life in those countries.”

“These people, their lives are not valued,” stated Santorum. “Why? Because of agencies that determine how much money is spent and based on how long you’re going to live or the quality of life you are going to live. That’s how accountants do these things. That’s how Members of Congress will have to do these things. Is this a good expenditure of our money or not? This happens every day in Europe.”

Santorum explained that Americans need to wake up to the fact that nothing in the American DNA insulates them from committing the same moral evils as the Europeans.

The Netherlands, “the most liberal country in Europe” today, Santorum said, is the only country that “did not go along with the Nazi doctors in doing sterilizations and abortions” and suffered persecution for it. “And yet, within two generations, as a result of socialized medicine and the government’s attempt to contain costs, doctors were turned into accountants,” said Santorum. Now in the name of cutting costs, Dutch doctors counsel assisted suicide, deny care to premature-born babies under 25 weeks and euthanize children born disabled.

“This is the custom and practice in socialized medicine countries, who have limits on budgets. It is simply too expensive to do it any other way,” reiterated Santorum. …

Santorum is no stranger to fighting for the right to Life and for these rights in health care, both on political and personal levels. Last year, he and his wife welcomed into their family their now 17-month-old daughter Bella, who was born with Trisomy 18, a genetic disorder which is fatal before birth in 90% of cases. Along the way, the Santorums fought to guarantee Bella’s health care against healthcare providers hostile to her right to Life because she was born with a disability.

Santorum was asked recently if he would consider seriously a run for US President in 2012. Santorum revealed that while he was indeed “thinking about it,” he was “not sure” and asked for continued prayers while he discerns.

Senate Voting Record

Motion to Proceed to HR-3590, vehicle for Reid/Obama Healthcare Takeover bill – Nov. 21, 2009 – Adopted – 60-39 (Democrats in italics; “Independents” marked “I”)

Voting “no” / pro-life: AL/Sessions & Shelby, AK/Murkowski, AZ/Kyl & McCain, FL/LeMieux, GA/Chambliss & Isakson, ID/Crapo & Risch, IN/Lugar, IA/Grassley, KS/Brownback & Roberts, KY/Bunning & McConnell, LA/Vitter, ME/Collins & Snowe, MS/Cochran & Wicker, MO/Bond, NE/Johanns, NV/Ensign, NH/Gregg, NC/Burr, OK/Coburn & Inhofe, SC/DeMint & Graham, SD/Thune, TN/Alexander & Corker, TX/Corker & Hutchison, UT/Bennett & Hatch, WY/Barrasso & Enzi.

Voting “yes” / pro-abortion: AK/Begich, AR/Lincoln & Pryor, CA/Boxer & Feinstein, CO/Bennet & Udall, CT/Dodd & Lieberman(I), DE/Carper & Kaufman, HI/Akaka & Inouye, IL/Burris & Durbin, IN/Bayh, FL/Nelson, IA/Harkin, LA/Landrieu, MD/Cardin & Mikulski, MA/Kerry & Kirk, MI/Levin & Stabenow, MN/Franken & Klobuchar, MO/McCaskill, MT/Baucus & Tester, NE/Nelson, NV/Reid, NJ/Lautenberg  & Menendez, NM/Bingaman & Udall, NH/Shaheen, NY/Gillibrand & Schumer, NC/Hagan, ND/Conrad & Dorgan, OH/Brown, OR/Merkley & Wyden, PA/Casey & Specter, RI/Reed & Whitehouse, SD/Johnson, VA/Warner & Webb, VT/Leahy & Sanders (I), WA/Cantwell & Murray, WV/Byrd & Rockefeller, WI/Feingold & Kohl.

Not voting: OH/Voinovich.

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