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"Too Hot to Handle"
Part Three of Five By Dave Andrusko It was a good week for the pro-life movement. Legislation is moving in a number of states and, as anticipated, House Republicans followed through on their promise to make abortion a priority item. ( See "NRLC Testifies on Behalf of Protect Life Act" at http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/Feb11/nv021011.html) No one expected pro-abortionists in the House to just sit on their hands as important pro-life initiatives were introduced such as the "The Protect Life Act" (H.R. 358), and the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" (H.R. 3). We would expect the usual demagoguery, only this time--with Republicans in control of the House--on steroids. Take the following from a Washington Post blog that ran yesterday ("Pelosi vows huge fight against GOP over abortion"): "Pelosi acknowledged that Dems could not stop Republicans from passing their anti-abortion agenda through the House. But she said it was crucial that pro-choice forces and Dems kick up enough noise to ensure that it dies in the Senate: 'We have to make this issue too hot to handle.'" By "too hot to handle," the House Minority Leader means portraying every initiative to cut off federal funding for the Abortion Industry as an aspersion on women, i.e., it "disrespects the judgment of American women," as the Post's Greg Sargent quotes Pelosi telling bloggers on a conference call. But Pelosi was just getting warmed up. "Pelosi added that the unreconcilable philosophical differences between Republicans and Dems on abortion left Dems no choice but to adopt a scorched-earth approach to the war ahead," Sargent writes. "'We don't have a set of shared values,' she said. 'We have to fight this out in the public domain, so when we move to the Senate it has no popular support.'" At least Pelosi has this right: there is a vast gulf between the parties. What she conveniently misses, however, is that the position of the pro-life Republicans on these funding issues-- not the position of the pro-abortion Democrats--that enjoy broad popular support. When NRLC Federal Legislative Director Douglas Johnson testified yesterday, he told subcommittee members, "We are confident that the great majority of Americans are in agreement with the policy goals embodied in your legislation [the Protect Life Act], and in the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." For example, Johnson cited a January 2010 Quinnipiac University poll that found that "67% of Americans are opposed to allowing public funds to pay for abortion through health care" (including 47% of Democrats). Johnson also pointed to a 2010 Zogby/O'Leary poll that found "76% of Americans said that federal funds should never pay for abortion or should pay only to save the life of the mother." In addition a September 2009 International Communications Research poll asked, "If the choice were up to you, would you want your own insurance policy to include abortion." Sixty-eight percent of respondents answered "no" to only 24% who answered "yes." Of course, while holding pro-lifers at bay is the number one, it is followed closely by the pro-abortion dream that the fight will be "a good way to drive home the reality of GOP extremism to women who were not energized last November, a key swing demographic," Sargent writes. Sargent begins his blog by characterizing Pelosi's conference call as a "a slashing attack on the House GOP's new anti-abortion push that may churn up emotions on both sides." Hardly. Our job is not to get angry, but to point out that the "extremist" position is the Democrats' insistence that the government can and must dip in the pocketbooks of the American people to feed the Abortion Industry. |