LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Thursday, December 24, 2009
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Current Headlines
• Senate Ends Filibuster on Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill, Christmas Eve Vote
• Stupak: Obama Admin Bullying Me to Accept Abortion Funding in Health Care
• Health Care Bill May be Delayed After Senate Passage Over Abortion Funding
• Catholic Bishops Oppose Senate Health Care Bill Because of Abortion Funding
• House Pro-Abortion Caucus Co-Chair: Kill Senate Health Care Bill, Start Over
• Sarah Palin: Death Panels in Senate Health Care Bill Worse Than We Thought
• Obama Approval Hits New Low With Health Care, Worse Than Bush
• Pro-Life Group Launches Campaign to Defeat Senate Health Care Bill
• MSNBC's Rachel Maddow: Pro-Lifers Wish There Was Stoning for Abortion
• People as Pollution? Using Environment to Push Abortion-Population Control
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Senate Ends Filibuster on Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill, Sets Christmas Eve Vote
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Senate voted 60-39 along party lines on Wednesday to end the filibuster of the pro-abortion, government-run health care bill. The decision to end debate sets up the final vote on passage of the bill on Christmas Eve -- allowing the funding of abortions as millions of Christians prepare for Christmas.
With Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson providing the final vote, 60 Democratic senators signed off on the cloture motion while 39 Republicans, with pro-life Sen. Jim Bunning absent, voted against it.
The Senate also agreed to moving up the vote on the health care bill from the evening to 7:00 a.m. EST as Republicans decided to no longer postpone the inevitable. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the request came from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, but pro-abortion Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland let out a loud, exasperated groan when the presiding officer asked if anyone had any objections. The response led to laughter in the Senate, but no objection.
Sen. Pat Leahy, a pro-abortion Vermont Democrat, asked earlier if any Republicans would be open to voting on the bill today, but they forced Democrats to make good on their pledge to vote to fund perhaps hundreds of thousands of abortions on the day before Christmas.
Earlier this week, the Senate adopted the manager's amendment to the bill on the same party-line vote. Full story at LifeNews.com
Stupak: Obama Admin Bullying Me to Accept Abortion Funding in Health Care
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Congressman Bart Stupak, the pro-life Democrat who has been the consistent champion against abortion funding in the health care bill, says the Obama administration is trying to bully him. Stupak says in a new interview that he will not back down in the face of pressure from the White House.
Stupak told CNS News that the White House and top Congressional Democrats are attempting to twist his arm to accept the Reid-Nelson "compromise" language that still allows massive taxpayer financing of abortions.
They think I shouldn't be expressing my views on this bill until they get a chance to try to sell me the language, Stupak told CNSNews Tuesday.
Well, I don't need anyone to sell me the language. I can read it. I've seen it. I've worked with it. I know what it says. I don't need to have a conference with the White House. I have the legislation in front of me here," Stupak said defiantly.
Stupak said the White House specifically requested that he not talk about the Nelson sellout and the language that the Senate has approved via the Reid manager's amendment.
Stupak also Obama officials "asked me just to hold off for awhile and not to say anything about this language."
He told the conservative news outlet, "But as soon as the news broke that they had this [compromise], and they got the 60 votes, folks were asking me, and I'm not going to run from the issue I'm going to stand up and say, Look, here s my objections.' Here it s not just my objections but there s a number of my [colleagues] who feel strongly about this issue, and these are the parts that have to be fixed. Full story at LifeNews.com
Health Care Bill May be Delayed After Senate Passage Over Abortion Funding
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The divide over taxpayer funding of abortions in the congressional health care bill is so great that President Barack Obama plans to delay further consideration of it after the Senate approves the measure this week. Following approval, the next step is for a conference committee to resolve the differences.
Several political issues such as the public option, immigration and abortion are presenting concerns for getting the bill past the next step.
On abortion, Democrats are facing competing interests from three separate factions that threaten to derail House or Senate passage of the government-run health care bill. They each want a different outcome in the conference committee.
One group of pro-abortion House members wants to remove the Stupak amendment and believes the Senate language funding abortion is too weak. A second group of pro-abortion senators supports keeping the Senate language in the bill. And a third group is comprised of pro-life House Democrats who want the Stupak amendment kept in the final bill.
A Politico report today indicates White House officials are conceding that the abortion divide could keep any care bill from moving forward until after Obama's State of the Union address in late January. That would be a huge blow to Obama, who has pressured lawmakers to get the health care bill completed by his address.
However, Politico reports that Obama has been assured by top Democrats that House members will eventually accept the Senate language -- but that would appear to remove the Stupak amendment and set up a massive battle in the House. Full story at LifeNews.com
Catholic Bishops Oppose Senate Health Care Bill Because of Abortion Funding
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The nation's Catholic bishops have sent another letter to members of Congress following the deal struck between senators Harry Reid and Ben Nelson to fund abortions under the health care bill. The bishops say the current health care reform bill is "deficient" and should not move forward without "essential changes."
The chairmen of three committees of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the new letter to senators yesterday.
The legislative proposal now advancing violates the longstanding federal policy against the use of federal funds for elective abortions and health plans that include such abortions -- a policy upheld in all health programs covered by the Hyde Amendment as well as in the Children s Health Insurance Program, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program -- and now in the House-passed Affordable Health Care for America Act, the bishops said.
They said that the health care bill passed by the House of Representatives keeps in place the longstanding and widely supported federal policy against government funding of elective abortions and plans that include elective abortions and ensures that where federal funds are involved, people are not required to pay for other people s abortions.
But they noted the Senate bill does not maintain this commitment. Full story at LifeNews.com
House Pro-Abortion Caucus Co-Chair: Kill Senate Health Care Bill, Start Over
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In a shocking opinion column written today, the co-chair of the caucus of pro-abortion lawmakers in the House says the Senate should kill its health care bill and start over. Rep. Louise Slaughter is the co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus and a powerful Democrat.
As the head of the House Rules Committee, she is one of the top Democrats in the House, but she doesn't think her Senate colleagues have a good bill.
"The Senate health care bill is not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago," Slaughter wrote in an opinion piece on CNN's web page.
Slaughter admitted the House bill is far from perfect but said the Senate version of the government-run health care bill is so flawed that, even if passed this week, a conference committee will be unable to merge it with the House version. "Supporters of the weak Senate bill say 'just pass it -- any bill is better than no bill,' " Slaughter wrote. "I strongly disagree -- a conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills."
"It's time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board," she said. "The American people deserve at least that." Slaughter cites the Senate's elimination of the public option as one reason to oppose the bill. Full story at LifeNews.com
Sarah Palin: Death Panels in Senate Health Care Bill Worse Than We Thought
by Sarah Palin
Last weekend while you were preparing for the holidays with your family, Harry Reid s Senate was making shady backroom deals to ram through the Democrat health care take-over. The Senate ended debate on this bill without even reading it.
That and midnight-weekend votes seem to be standard operating procedures in D.C.
No one is certain of what s in the bill, but Senator Jim DeMint spotted one shocking revelation regarding the section in the bill describing the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (now called the Independent Payment Advisory Board), which is a panel of bureaucrats charged with cutting health care costs on the backs of patients also known as rationing.
Apparently Reid and friends have changed the rules of the Senate so that the section of the bill dealing with this board can't be repealed or amended without a 2/3 supermajority vote. Full story at LifeNews.com
Obama Approval Hits New Low With Pro-Abortion Health Care, Worse Than Bush
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- President Barack Obama's approval rating has hit yet another new low in conjunction with the Senate preparing to approve his pro-abortion health care bill. The polling data shows Americans give Obama a higher disapproval rating than they gave President George W. Bush at the end of his second term.
In a new poll of likely voters released today, Rasmussen shows that 45 percent of voters say they at least somewhat approve of Obama's performance while 55 percent now disapprove of his performance.
The trend is downward as Obama's overall approval has stayed between 44% and 46% every day for twelve days. Prior to that, it had stayed between 46% and 50% every day for more than two months.
The Rasmussen poll also measures what it calls its Presidential Rating Index -- a measurement of the most passionate views for or against Obama. The Rasmussen Reports daily presidential tracking poll for Wednesday shows that just 26% of the nation's voters strongly approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as while 44 percent strongly disapprove. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pro-Life Group Launches Last-Minute Campaign to Defeat Senate Health Care Bill
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Family Research Council is launching a last-minute phone calling campaign in an attempt to get at least one of the Democratic senators to change their mind and vote against the pro-abortion health care bill. The campaign features telephone calls to voters in six states.
As the Senate prepares for a Christmas Eve vote on Senator Reid's abortion-funding health care bill, Family Research Council Action tells LifeNews.com it will immediately begin a last minute phone call campaign in Nebraska, Arkansas Louisiana, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
The phone calls will ask voters to contact their Senators and tell them "don't trade the lives of children for political power."
FRC Action president Tony Perkins told LifeNews.com: "Isn't it a little ironic that as we celebrate Christmas and the birth of a baby in a manger that the health care bill hinges on unborn babies?" "The Senate is preparing to vote on a pro-abortion, pro-rationing, pro-tax, pro-death law fit for King Herod himself," he said. Full story at LifeNews.com
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Says Pro-Lifers Wish There Was Stoning for Abortion
by Tim Graham
Chuck Norris has drawn a lot of liberal fury for his latest column about abortion and the Christmas story. MSNBC s Rachel Maddow drew a wild analogy on her TV show Thursday night.
When Norris suggested people in the time of Christ might get abortions to avoid stoning, Maddow imagined that Norris and other pro-lifers wish that deadly punishment had never gone away: "I look at the whole crux -- the whole crux of his argument rests on the idea if only we still had stoning for abortion."
She then added, with delight: "It's beautiful. If we didn't have them, we'd make it up." She said this, despite the fact that she literally is making this up. Norris has been "Coburned" liberals are reading more into his commentary than actually existed. Here s the broader exchange between Maddow and her pop-culture correspondent Kent Jones. Full story at LifeNews.com
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People as Pollution? Using Environment to Push Pro-Abortion Population Control
by Mary McClusky
Pesticides, oil spills, litter everyone agrees that these pollute the environment. But what about babies?
Environmental groups have long argued that population growth causes a host of environmental problems, but many of these groups have traditionally avoided the controversial promotion of birth control as a solution.
Recently, though, a brazen new group of environmentalists has become more vocal in their promotion of birth control as the most efficient and cost effective means of reversing the degradation of the earth s resources, the pollution of our water and air, and even global warming. People are seen as the threats to the environment instead of stewards of creation.
A writer for Canada s Financial Post has been hailed for her candor in calling for a planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, [as] the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate and prevent the destruction of the world's other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere.
Earlier this year, the London School of Economics published a paper noting that, by breathing, human beings emit on average 2.3 pounds of carbon dioxide every day. Full story at LifeNews.com
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