By Dave Andrusko

Editor's note. Part Two is an inspirational speech delivered last week to graduates of the NRLC Academy. Please send your comments on either part to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

Members of the NRLC staff are working virtually non-stop to stay on top of the bills that have emerged out of House and Senate committees to restructure health care. Changes came fast and furious--and there will be many more. With many overlapping committee jurisdictions and competing objectives, the result is that an already monstrously complicated enterprise has become even more mind-numbingly complex.

Why do I mention that today? For several reasons. Over the next few weeks, your congressman and your two senators will be out on the hustings. (The House has gone into recess until after Labor Day. The Senate will join them on about August 7.) You need to hear what they have to say and to remind them of your concerns as a pro-life citizen.

We sometimes forget that legislators are keenly aware of the need to know what their constituents are thinking and saying. Conducting town hall meetings with constituents who know their stuff has the wonderful effect of focusing the legislator's mind.

Their first impulse might be to punt--to hide behind euphemisms and "assurances." Pin them down.

Another reason I bring this up today is because of the actions of what Weekly Standard publisher Bill Kristol calls the "besotten press corps." They are so in the tank for Obama that they are desperate to salvage the signature initiative of Obama's first year--health care "reform."

Increasingly this will take the form of bogus "fact-checking." Truth is, as the NRLC Legislative Department points out, the Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy and approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on a 13-10 party line vote, rejected all pro-life amendments.  "The Kennedy bill would result in the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade," said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. "It would result in federally mandated coverage of abortion by nearly all health plans, federally mandated recruitment of abortionists by local health networks, and nullification of many state abortion laws. It would also result in federal funding of abortion on a massive scale."

There are big problems on the House side as well. The White House is behind H.R. 3200, which has been approved by three different committees. All three 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.

The pro-abortion members of the committee voted down an NRLC-backed amendment offered by Reps. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.) and Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) to prohibit federal subsidies from going to plans that cover elective abortions.

"This is Condition Red for the pro-life movement," said Johnson. "Every pro-life American should communicate, loudly and clearly, his or her opposition to this Obama-backed bill, before it comes to the House floor in September."

But some of the stories you will read will tell you this just isn't so.

You will be assured that there is really no need to worry because either "things aren't clear" (but it is clear that all pro-life amendments have been rejected), or because pro-abortion President Barack Obama has said something the reporter believes signals that he doesn't want federal funding of abortion (which is to willfully misread what he has said).

For more, go to http://www.nrlactioncenter.com.

The August issue of National Right to Life News is packed with information about the various health care "reform" proposals. If you are not a subscriber, by all means call in and get signed up. The number is 202-626-8824.

Part Two