LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Thursday, July 15, 2010
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Current Headlines
• Obama Admin First Defends Abortion $ in Health Care, Now Promises None
• New AUL Report Fully Details Elena Kagan's Partial-Birth Abortion Distortions
• More Senators Oppose, Support Pro-Abortion Supreme Court Pick Kagan
• Senate Republicans Respond to Berwick Appointment, Seek Hearing, Block Judges
• Planned Parenthood, NARAL Claim Obama Stopping Abortion $ in Health Care
• Tim Pawlenty Says Mitch Daniels Wrong on Abortion Truce, Wants HCR Repeal
• Texas Governor Race Has Pro-Life Rick Perry Leading Pro-Abortion Bill White
• Ohio Pro-Lifer Gets SBA List OK Over Democrat Who Backed ObamaCare
• UN Names Abortion Advocates to Millennium Development Goals Enforcement Org
• Abortion Advocates Use World Youth Conference in Mexico to Push Agenda
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Obama Admin First Defends Abortion $ in Health Care, Now Promises None
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Officials in the Obama administration are scrambling to respond to evidence showing the new health care law President Barack Obama signed will fund elective abortions in Pennsylvania and New Mexico -- and possibly in more states. The Obama administration promises that won't happen.
The National Right to Life Committee uncovered information showing a new Pennsylvania high risk health insurance plan will cover elective abortions.
Further evidence the pro-life group obtained showed a similar high risk health insurance pool in New Mexico will also fund elective abortions using federal taxpayer funds.
Now, Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman Jenny Backus has issued a response saying the abortion funding won't occur and officials in both states are revising their information that initially stated it would.
"Under the Affordable Care Act and the President's related Executive Order, federal funds made available to states for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan may not be used to fund abortion," Backus said intiially. "We will reiterate this policy in guidance to those running the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan at both the state and federal levels."
Later Wednesday, Backus backtracked and withdrew the first line of the statement after it was quickly proven false.
As NRLC legislative director Douglas Johnsojn tells LifeNews.com, "There is absolutely no language in the 'Affordable Care Act', and absolutely no language in the Obama executive order, that in any way restricts the use of funds in the 'Pre-Existing Condition Insurance' program for abortion. By late Wednesday, HHS had dropped that line and adopted a different approach." Full story at LifeNews.com
New AUL Report Fully Details Elena Kagan's Partial-Birth Abortion Distortions
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Americans United for Life, the pro-life legal group, has released a new comprehensive report detailing the manner in which Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan manipulated the statements of two medical organizations, resulting in keeping partial-birth abortions legal for several years more.
The report had been slated to be released during a press conference with Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but he was called away for a Senate vote.
The report contains new information regarding Elena Kagan s role, during her time in the Clinton Administration, in pressuring the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to change their policy statement on partial-birth abortion.
"Americans United for Life Action calls for a Senate investigation into the facts surrounding Elena Kagan s amendment to the Policy Statement of the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) on partial-birth abortion," the report, provided to LifeNews.com, reads.
The pro-life group wants the investigation to focus on "the discrepancies in Kagan s testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on June 30, 2010, and the distorting impact of Kagan s amendment on federal judicial and Supreme Court consideration of state and federal prohibitions on partial-birth abortion between 1997 and 2007."
"Kagan s actions have raised unresolved questions," AUL maintains -- and it had devastating consequences for abortion and the Supreme Court. Full story at LifeNews.com
More Senators Oppose, Support Pro-Abortion Supreme Court Pick Kagan
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- More members of the Senate are announcing their positions on the nomination of pro-abortion Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. President Barack Obama named her to replace retiring pro-abortion Justice John Paul Stevens and she would join the 5-4 pro-abortion majority.
Sen. John Cornyn, a pro-life Texas Republican and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced his opposition late Wednesday.
"Kagan s testimony before the Judiciary Committee did not assure me that she agrees with the traditional understanding of the proper role of a judge," he said. "Judges should strictly interpret the written Constitution, which means both enforcing written limitations on the scope of government power ... as well as not inventing new rights or imposing their own policy views on the American people."
"Kagan s testimony about her judicial philosophy was vague and open to multiple interpretations," Cornyn added. "She backed away from her previous conviction that judicial nominees should be forthright about the direction they would move the courts."
Cornyn also cited her lack of legal experience in addition to her judicial activism.
"Kagan lacks experience that could give us more insight into her judicial philosophy. As a lawyer, she has never tried a case to verdict. She only joined the Supreme Court bar in 2009, and she has never served as a judge," he said. Full story at LifeNews.com
Senate Republicans Respond to Berwick Appointment, Seek Hearing, Block Judges
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- If President Barack Obama thought he would get away with appointing rationing advocate Donald Berwick as the head of Medicare and Medicaid and not see a response from Senate Republicans, he should think again. They have responded aggressively by blocking judges and demanding a hearing.
Berwick is the new director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services who has praised British programs that ration care.
The position is important because it will oversee implementation of the massive government-run health care plan that pro-life advocates say will foster rationing and also contains taxpayer funding of abortions.
Senate Republican lawmakers are upset that Berwick never received a hearing or vote before Obama went around the Senate and used a recess appointment to allow him to head the agency through the end of next year.
In response, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a request Wednesday from Democrats to approve two Obama nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Also, Wednesday evening, Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee demanded a public hearing on Berwick and his controversial rationing views. Full story at LifeNews.com
Planned Parenthood, NARAL Claim Obama Stopping Abortion $ in Health Care
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Responding to the backtracking the Obama administration engaged in on Wednesday and Thursday after a pro-life group uncovered how it planned to use the new health care law to engage in abortion funding, pro-abortion groups are up in arms.
They claim Obama officials are putting in place a new ban on abortion funding and making false claims that it prohibits women from using their own money to pay for abortions.
They are reacting to a statement from a Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman who first claimed the new high risk insurance pools couldn't fund abortions but then said the Obama administration would make sure they did not after proven wrong about how the language of the law and Obama's executive order doesn't apply to them.
Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards released a statement Thursday saying the abortion business is "deeply disappointed that the administration has voluntarily and unnecessarily decided to impose limits on private funds used to purchase health insurance coverage for abortion care in the new high-risk insurance pools."
Richards claims the women in the pools are the ones who are more likely going to need an abortion for certain medical situations, even though there are no medical instances in which an abortion is beneficial for women. Full story at LifeNews.com
Tim Pawlenty Says Mitch Daniels Wrong on Abortion Truce, Wants HCR Repeal
St. Paul, MN (LifeNews.com) -- In a new interview with Real Clear Politics, Minnesota governor and potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty says a fellow governor was wrong. He specifically said Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was wrong to suggest an abortion truce is needed while the economy is addressed.
Daniels, himself a potential candidate to take on pro-abortion President Barack Obama next election, told the Weekly Standard the next president "would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues."
"We're going to just have to agree to get along for a little while," by casting social issues like abortion aside so the next president can focus on fixing the beleaguered economy.
But Pawlenty says that doesn't have to be the case and that the next president can easily focus on both social and fiscal issues from a conservative perspective.
"I'm not sure what Mitch had in mind there but there's a whole coalition of people and interests and issues that comprise the conservative movement and the conservative perspective," he said.
"I'm a fiscal conservative as well as a social conservative, so I don't think it's an either/or. I think it's both," Pawlenty told RCP. "And right now the economy is a pressing issue for the nation, and we're all primarily focused on that and jobs and the like, but that's not to say there isn't space to discuss other issues." Full story at LifeNews.com
Texas Governor Race Has Pro-Life Rick Perry Leading Pro-Abortion Bill White
Austin, TX (LifeNews.com) -- Governor Rick Perry of Texas holds a lead over his pro-abortion rival Bill White again this month in his bid for an unprecedented third term as governor of Texas. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the Lone Star State shows Perry with 50% support.
White, a former mayor of Houston, picks up 41% of the vote and two percent like some other candidate and seven percent remain undecided.
In mid-June, Perry held a 48% to 40% lead over White in the last Rasmussen poll, and he has increased and solidified his lead since then.
In match-ups since February, Perry s support has remained in the tight range of 47% to 51%. White has earned 38% to 44% of the vote in that same period. The two men ran closest in April when Perry held a narrow four-point lead, 48% to 44%, according to Rasmussen polls.
Pollster Scott Rasmussen talked about the race: "White faces a tough race in a state that trends conservative Republican. Perry has been highly critical of the federal government, increasingly so over the last couple of years, and what he views as its intrusion on states rights. This is likely to play well in a state where voters are more strongly critical than voters nationally of the new health care bill."
Fifty-five percent (55%) of Texas voters now approve of the job Perry is doing as governor, while 44% disapprove. These findings have remained steady for several months now. Full story at LifeNews.com
Ohio Pro-Lifer Gets SBA List OK Over Democrat Who Backed ObamaCare
Columbus, OH (LifeNews.com) -- The Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund has endorsed another pro-life congressional candidate over a Democrat who says she opposes abortion but supported the pro-abortion health care bill. SBA List is backing Rich Iott, candidate for U.S. Representative in Ohio's ninth congressional district.
Iott, a businessman, is taking on Marcy Kaptur, one of the Democrats who joined Rep. Bart Stupak to trade their votes for the pro-abortion health care bill for an executive order that pro-life groups say will not stop abortion funding.
Where Marcy Kaptur has dropped the ball on pro-life leadership, Rich Iott has picked it up to run with true advocacy for women and unborn children, said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life women's group. His commitment to rescind taxpayer funding of abortion in health care and in every aspect of federal spending is urgently needed in the coming Congress."
Ironically, Rich Iott represents women s real views and needs on the issue of abortion far better than does the female incumbent," Kaptur added.
Iott is a Colonel in the Ohio Military Reserve and a businessman who started working for the family business as a child. He eventually became CEO and has since started a number other successful companies. Full story at LifeNews.com
UN Names Abortion Advocates to Millennium Development Goals Enforcement Org
New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- For months, the international community has been preparing for the September review summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As part of the preparations, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently announced the formation of an MDG advocacy team composed of prominent politicos and philanthropists who will "build political will and mobilize action on the eight Goals."
The list, which includes noted population control supporters and abortion advocates, is causing concern.
At the announcement, Ban Ki-moon praised his advocacy team as "a collection of superheroes in fighting poverty." Co-chairing the superheroes are President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain. Group members, who are assigned to specific development goals, include former President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, cable billionaire Ted Turner and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
Feminists groups have been targeting the September meeting as an opportunity to push for abortion as part of MDG 5 to "improve maternal health" and some have expressed dismay over the gender composition of the advocacy team. Full story at LifeNews.com
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Abortion Advocates Use World Youth Conference in Mexico to Push Agenda
New York, NY (LifeNews.com/CFAM) -- Two recently released documents prepared in anticipation of an upcoming youth conference make unprecedented claims for new 'rights'for youth that experts say directly conflict with traditional norms and international law.
The draft declaration which will be considered by governmental participants at the World Youth Conference, to be held at the end of August in Leon, Mexico, calls for a comprehensive development of young people that includes: a humanist education to face ethical challenges and sexuality education.
There is also a call to guarantee the highest level of physical and mental health of the youth population taking into account diverse gender contexts, and for providing universal access to reproductive health, including through family planning as a method of reducing maternal mortality in adolescent girls and young women.
Contrary to the universally accepted right of parents to direct their children s upbringing, as stated in international documents such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the draft declaration requests that states invest resources in strengthening the social capital of young people with full respect for their autonomy. Although the draft declaration refers to many other documents it does not mention CRC. Additionally, there is no reference to parents or child. Full story at LifeNews.com
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