LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Sunday, May 1, 2011
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Current Headlines
Top Stories
• House Will Vote on Taxpayer-Funding of Abortion Ban Next Week
• New National Right to Life President: Overturn Roe, Obamacare
• DC Mayor Vincent Gray Wants No Black Child Left Unaborted
• Nebraska Panel Fails to Move Webcam Abortion Ban Forward
More Pro-Life News
• Robert George and Arthur Caplan Debate Dangers of Eugenics
• Minnesota Pro-Life Group Responds to UM Cloning Roundtable
• West Virginia Group: Tomblin, GOP Governor Candidates Pro-Life
• Oklahoma Senate Passes Bill to Limit Dangerous Abortion Drug
• Running for Life: Pro-Lifers Use Marathon to Fight Abortion
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House Will Vote on Taxpayer-Funding of Abortion Ban Next Week
The House of Representatives may vote as early as next week on legislation that would institute a government-wide ban on any direct taxpayer funding of abortions in any federal departments or programs.
The legislation enjoys the strong support of pro-life groups because it makes the ban federal law and pro-life lawmakers don t have to find annual battles to renew several pro-life provisions covering various programs where taxpayer funding of abortions could take place. At the end of March, a second House committee voted 22 to 14 to give approval to a companion bill to the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, HR 3, thereby setting up a vote on the House floor.
In February, the House Judiciary Committee approved the main bill on a mostly partisan 23-14 vote. The committee also removed a provision concerning forcible rape that abortion advocates had used to misconstrue the intent of the legislation.
The party-line vote saw Republicans on the panel supporting the measure and Democrats on the committee voting against it, with the exception of Puerto Rico Del. Pedro Pierluisi.
Although the House is expected to sign off on the pro-life legislation, the Senate will present problems since pro-abortion Democrats control the chamber. Pro-life senators may have to attempt to attach the language of the bill to another measure and would likely have to find 60 votes to cut off debate and end what would be a potential filibuster from abortion advocates.
National Right to Life Committee legislative director Douglas Johnson says the bill is a critical priority for pro-life advocates to avoid losing bans on taxpayer funding of abortion in certain circumstances every time Congress changes hands. Full story at LifeNews.com
New National Right to Life President: Overturn Roe, Obamacare
As LifeNews.com reported earlier this month, Carol Tobias has been elected the new president of the National Right to Life Committee, one of the leading pro-life voices in the nationwide battle against abortion, euthanasia and anti-life bioethics practices like human cloning and embryonic stem cell research.
Tobias sat down with Kathryn Lopez of National Review for a new interview, an excerprt of which appears below:
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: How does one wind up president of the National Right to Life Committee? I mean, beyond a board election?
CAROL TOBIAS: I basically grew up with National Right to Life. My parents helped to organize North Dakota Right to Life. When I was a young adult with time on my hands, I got involved as a volunteer with my local chapter; I then became executive director of North Dakota Right to Life and got to know NRLC staff, as well as leaders from other state affiliates. From 1991 to 2005, I served as National Right to Life s political director, working closely with all 50 state affiliates. So I know National Right to Life, and people involved with National Right to Life know me.
LOPEZ: What s the most important issue for the National Right to Life Committee right now?
TOBIAS: There are a lot of issues important to NRLC, but in addition to our long-term goal of reversing Roe v. Wade, our top priority is overturning President Obama s health-care law. The extensive reach of this program will enshrine abortion and rationing of health care in our society for generations to come, if we don t stop it. Full story at LifeNews.com
DC Mayor Vincent Gray Wants No Black Child Left Unaborted
The Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., Vincent Gray, distinguished himself last week by getting arrested in an act of civil disobedience reminiscent of the 60s.
The mayor, six council members and more than 40 other protesters were detained by Capitol police for blocking the street to oppose the congressional budget deal that deprived D.C. of federal funds for abortions.
They were also protesting a mandate under the same agreement that revives a popular school choice program, the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which allows poor children in failing schools an opportunity to attend schools they and their parents believe will give them the best possible education.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had pulled the plug on the Bush-era program after pressure from the teachers union which, in a reversal of Bush s No Child Left Behind, behaves as if no child in a failing school should be let out.
It s peculiar how the left embraces choice when it comes to aborting children, but opposes it for children languishing in failing public schools.
These substandard schools virtually guarantee their students a life of poverty, teen pregnancy, near illiteracy and welfare dependence.
Washington, D.C., a city that is 52.7 percent African-American, has one of the highest abortion rates in the country. There are 265 abortions for every 100 live births, according to Guttmacher Institute statistics published by The Movement for a Better America, a pro-life website. Full story at LifeNews.com
Nebraska Panel Fails to Move Webcam Abortion Ban Forward
Despite the Nebraska Legislature s Judiciary Committee failing to vote LB 521 to the floor today, Nebraska Right to Life officials say the group will continue to press to get the bill to the floor for passage this session.
Nebraska Right to Life is concerned that the Planned Parenthood abortion business will expand its webcam abortion process into Nebraska, potentially putting women s health at greater risk. The webcam, or telemed abortion, process has women going to Planned Parenthood for an RU 486 drug-induced abortion getting the drug from a nurse or other employee. The patient is denied an in-person consultation with a licensed physician the FDA suggests and she instead visits with the abortion practitioner via a webcam hookup.
The Planned Parenthood abortion business is beginning to use this process in Iowa and is thought to be considering expanding it to more rural and remote areas because of the expense and difficulty in recruiting abortion practitioners and getting them to all of the Planned Parenthood centers in a certain state.
Responding to the committee vote, Julie Schmit-Albin, the director of Nebraska Right to Life, told LifeNews: We thank Senators Steve Lathrop, Scott Lautenbaugh, Colby Coash and Tyson Larsen for their yes votes in today s Executive Committee session to pass LB 521 to the floor. We will continue to press for a meeting with Senator Burke Harr, who did not vote in today s session. Senator Harr has raised questions about LB 521 that our National Right to Life attorney and drafter of the bill, should be able to address to his satisfaction. Full story at LifeNews.com
Robert George and Arthur Caplan Debate Dangers of Eugenics
In December 2010, Sherif Girgis sat down with Arthur Caplan, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and unofficial dean of liberal bioethicists, and Robert P. George, a professor at Princeton University and a conservative member of President Bush s Council on Bioethics, to discuss the current state of bioethics in America.
People sometimes contrast those who go on evidence, facts, science, and reason, with those who politicize the science. But both of you seem to think that besides scientific findings, moral norms have to govern scientific inquiry and medical practice
AC: That s why Robby and I can get along. We re just fighting about the norms. But we both know that you have to have normativity. Bioethics without norms is completely blind!
and that those norms are not going to come from science.
RG: No. Bioethics is ethics, and ethics is about right and wrong. We know you can t go about figuring out what s right and wrong by scientific methods. So the norms have to come from somewhere else. And since we are a democratically constituted people, we are going to have to resolve by democratic procedures disputes about what the norms are, and how they apply in particular cases. Now that, I m afraid, is politics. Not in some pejorative sense rather in a good sense, in the democratic sense. Together, we deliberate, debate, and decide. So I think the juxtaposition that you mentioned is just phony. It s not a dispute between the people who believe in reason and evidence and people who are opposed to science. Full story at LifeNews.com
Minnesota Pro-Life Group Responds to UM Cloning Roundtable
A gathering of researchers and CEOs of startups at the University of Minnesota condemned legislaton that would ban the practice of human cloning in the state. They said the proposal would cost Minnesota tens of millions of dollars in medical technology jobs and development opportunities if it passed.
Supported by the Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the bill seeks to criminalize human cloning. It has no bearing on embryonic stem cell research and will not affect any research currently being pursued in the state, but speakers at the event believe it sets a dangerous precedent.
All of us are afraid collectively that it will be very hard to interpret and if it is hard to interpret it will wind up in court, said Doug Kohrs, CEO of Tornier, a French orthopedics company with U.S. headquarters in Edina. Courts will tell these guys at the Mayo and U what they can and cannot do.
MCCCL responded to the roundtable in a statement to LifeNews.com:
The University of Minnesota s roundtable event in support of human cloning will undoubtedly touch off another round of inaccurate stories in the media. Most of the reporting so far has consisted of wild claims about the loss of jobs and money for our state. This will supposedly happen if the University and the Mayo Clinic are not allowed to engage in a practice they are not even currently pursuing: the creation of new human organisms by cloning. Full story at LifeNews.com
West Virginia Group: Tomblin, GOP Governor Candidates Pro-Life
The statewide pro-life group in West Virginia says that each of the Republican candidates for governor is pro-life as is Democratic primary election candidate Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. The candidates are competing in party primary elections on May 14.
On the GOP side, West Virginians for Life says the Republican frontrunners are all pro-life, therefore the WVL PAC did not endorse in the Special Republican Primary for Governor.
According to the first independent poll conducted in the West Virginia gubernatorial race, released Tuesday by Public Policy Polling, former Secretary of State Betty Ireland has about a 2-1 lead over her Republican opponents. Ireland has 31 percent support over businessman Bill Maloney s 17 percent, according to the poll with State Sen. Clark Barnes and State Del. Mitch Carmichael at 8 percent, Putnam County Prosecutor Mark Sorsaia at 4 percent, former State Del. Larry Faircloth and professor Ralph William Clark at 2 percent, and former Westover mayor Cliff Ellis at 1 percent.
On the Democratic side, the West Virginians for Life Political Action Committee announced today its endorsement of Governor Tomblin. Full story at LifeNews.com
Oklahoma Senate Passes Bill to Limit Dangerous Abortion Drug
The Oklahoma Senate passed today a bill designed to protect women from the dangerous abortion drug RU 486 and abortion centers that fail to follow FDA guidelines when giving the abortion drug to women. The mifepristone abortion pill has already killed more than 13 women worldwide, including several women in the United States, and has injured 1,100 women in the U.S. alone as of 2006 FDA figures. Full story at LifeNews.com
Running for Life: Pro-Lifers Use Marathon to Fight Abortion
Many runners participate in races that support causes like a cure for cancer or diabetes, but one group has decided to stand behind a different plague of society abortion. The LIFE (Living In Faith Exchange) Runners group runs marathons and other races to raise awareness and fundraising for the pro-life cause. Full story at LifeNews.com
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