By Dave Andrusko

Please send your comments and observations to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you'd like, follow me on http://twitter.com/daveha.

As I mentioned yesterday, this week's edition of TN&V will be composites--updates on several items of interest. Today we'll talk about three issues.

It might not seem at first to be important but trust me, it is. You can now go online and find the complete subject index for all the news stories that appeared in National Right to Life News in 2009. The URL is www.nrlc.org/news/09INDEX.htm. This is an invaluable--and very convenient--resource.

For instance, say you are doing a research paper, or looking for information that you can use as the basis for a letter to the editor, about RU486 or Post-Abortion Trauma or embryonic stem cell research or "Stopping the Obama Abortion Agenda." You just go to http://www.nrlc.org/news/09INDEX.htm and there they are. Better yet each story is hyperlinked so when you click on it, you are taken directly to the news item.

And best of all, NRL News is subject indexed all the way back to January 1990. You'll find all this at www.nrlc.org/news/index.html.

Second, as almost everyone knows, on Christmas Eve the Senate left a piece of coal in all our stockings--the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" (H.R. 3590). Sponsored by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-Nv.), the measure is rife with multiple provisions under which the federal government would subsidize insurance coverage of abortion and promote rationing of lifesaving medical treatments. NRLC strongly opposes the bill, which was approved on a series of party-line votes, with all 60 members of the Senate Democratic caucus (including two independents) voting to advance the legislation, and all Republicans opposing it.

As NRLC explains (at http://nrlactioncenter.com), "Congressional Democratic leaders, in consultation with the White House, will now seek to reconcile the Senate bill with the substantially different health care bill passed by the House of Representatives on November 7 (H.R. 3962). This process is expected to take a number of weeks, at least. The House of Representatives is currently in recess until January 12, 2010, and the Senate is in recess until January 20."

Please visit http://nrlactioncenter.com regularly both to keep up to speed with what's happening and to learn how you can make your opposition known to bills that contains provision that promote abortion and the rationing of lifesaving medical treatments.

Speaking of which, on Sunday ABC's Jake Tapper interviewed White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs off camera about the health care restructuring controversy. In discussing the interview on his blog, Tapper explained that "one big difference" between the House and Senate versions is abortion.

We've already discussed the flaws in the Senate version. By contrast, the House adopted the NRLC-backed Stupak-Pitts Amendment to remove subsidies for abortion before passing its health care bill. (In a statement issued on December 19, the prime sponsor of that amendment, Congressman Bart Stupak [D-Mi.], said that the abortion language contained in the Senate bill "is unacceptable.") Tapper described the House language as "tougher."

Tapper asked Gibbs "which health reform bill comes closer to President Barack Obama's goal, the House or the Senate version?" The proverbial man from Mars would think, if the goal was (as President Obama told Tapper it was in November) to "get to the point where we're not changing the status quo," that Gibbs would say Obama favored the House version.

But, of course, Obama's real goal is to overturn decades of federal policy on abortion. Thus when Tapper said to Gibbs, "So, does the Senate language come closer to what the president wants than the House language?" Gibbs responded "Yes."

Third, and finally, there is the conclusion of discoverynews.com that the 4th biggest discovery of the entire decade is "the finding of stem cells in new sources in 2007, when scientists from Kyoto University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, essentially turned back the clock for adult skin cells, allowing these mature cells, which were preprogrammed to become skin, to act like embryonic stem cells."

According to discoverynews.com, "These pluripotent adult cells solved two big problems. Ethical concerns and financial restrictions could be avoided, and doctors could ultimately use cells with a person's own DNA to grow replacement organs that a patient would be less likely to reject."

In case that's not completely clear, using stem cells from human embryos is out of date, unnecessary, and runs into major problems that ethically unobjectionable alternatives avoid altogether.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

Now is the Time to Give to National Right to Life

2009 was a whirlwind year, but 2010 promises to present even more challenges courtesy of the most pro-abortion President in our nation's history. At the top of the list is battling massive health care restructuring which would subsidize insurance coverage of abortion and promote rationing of lifesaving medical treatments.

At the top of the list of those defending unborn babies and the medically vulnerable is National Right to Life, the largest and most effective single-issue pro-life grassroots movement in the world. NRLC has been your voice in Washington, DC for 31 years.

Please take the time to make a donation to NRLC. You can make that donation by going to http://nrlc.org/donations.htm

Thank you for your faithfulness to the cause of unborn children.