NRLC's Congressional
Agenda For 1999

By Douglas Johnson, NRLC Federal Legislative Director

Some important decisions regarding legislative priorities will not be made for some time and therefore National Right to Life cannot yet lay out the complete pro-life agenda for the year. And of course, unanticipated issues may arise. With those caveats, what follows is a brief review of some of the legislative issues that NRLC expects to be addressed in Congress.

To be successful it will be crucial that grassroots pro-lifers and chapters contact their representatives and senators regularly and respond quickly to NRLC and state affiliate legislative alerts.

Protection of Living Human Embryos

Since 1995, Congress has explicitly banned the use of federal tax dollars to support medical experiments which involve the killing or harming of living human embryos. Already the Clinton-Gore Administration has taken the first step towards subverting that law by instigating the funding of research that utilizes " stem cells" or "master cells" that are harvested from living human embryos - - who are thereby killed.

Administration lawyers (including Marcy Wilder, the former legal director of the National Abortion Rights and Reproductive Rights Action League, now deputy general counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services) have concocted a legal theory that would nullify the ban if the embryos are killed by somebody other than the federally funded researcher, or perhaps even by the federally funded researcher while he has "punched out" for an hour.

NRLC will work with other pro-life organizations to urge Congress to resist the Administration's efforts to subvert the law, and to turn back legislative attacks on the law itself. There are alternative sources for stem cells that do not require the killing of human embryos, and it is these ethical alternatives that should be fostered through the allocation of federal resources.

[Further information on this issue appears in Richard Doerflinger's article on page 28.]

Health Care Reform

Involuntary denial of lifesaving treatment is a form of euthanasia. Therefore, NRLC will seek to prevent physicians from using federally licensed narcotics to deliberately kill their patients through legalized assisted suicide. We will seek to ensure that legislation to regulate HMOs does not have pro-abortion or pro-euthanasia effects, whether intended or unintended.

In the context of Medicare reform, National Right to Life will work to preserve the right of Americans to use their own financial resources to obtain lifesaving medical care, outside the constraints of government-imposed standards that ration on the basis of whether a given treatment is deemed to be worth the cost. This includes the right of older Americans to obtain unrationed, unmanaged fee-for-service health insurance if they wish, and to add their own funds to government Medicare payments if necessary to get it.

Partial-Birth Abortion

NRLC will renew the drive to enact the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The bill fell victim to Clinton-Gore vetoes in 1996 and again in 1997.

The fabricated explanations with which President Clinton originally justified his veto were entirely discredited by 1997, when the American Medical Association endorsed the ban and Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, admitted that partial-birth abortions are commonly performed on healthy babies of healthy mothers. Claims to the contrary, Fitzsimmons admitted, were a "party line" developed by pro-abortion advocacy groups.

President Clinton, Vice Presi-dent Gore, and many of their allies in Congress seek to obscure their defense of partial- birth abortions by endorsing counterfeit measures such as the Hoyer-Greenwood bill and the amendment proposed by Sen. Tom Daschle. Unfortunately, many members of the press have rather gullibly accepted endorsements of these bills as bona fide support for "banning late-term abortions." In reality, these bills are purely political constructs - - hollow bills concocted by pro-abortion politicians. They would not truly ban a single late- term abortion.

Even Congressman Steny Hoyer, the author of the House version of the "phony ban," has admitted on the record that his bill would allow third-trimester abortions for "mental health" and " psychological trauma." And Colorado abortionist Dr. Warren Hern, author of the standard textbook on late-term abortion procedures, stated (accurately) that the version promoted by Sen. Daschle would permit him to perform a third-trimester abortion on any pregnant woman, since even a completely normal pregnancy involves some tiny risk.

[Extensive further documentation on the "phony ban" bills, and on all facets of the partial-birth abortion issue, are available at the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org.]

Parental Involvement

NRLC will also renew the effort to enact the Child Custody Protection Act, which would make it a federal offense for a non-parent to take a minor girl across state lines for an abortion, if this circumvents a state law giving her parent a right to be involved in her abortion decision. This bill passed the House last July 15, 276-150, and we expect that the margin would be only slightly diminished this year. There is also a majority in the Senate for this legislation, so we are hopeful that it can be sent to the White House at the appropriate time.

The Clinton-Gore Administration continues to demand revisions to gut the bill. For example, one Administration-backed amendment would empower the mother-in-law of a parent to take that parent's child across state lines for an abortion, without the parent's knowledge or consent.

Alternatives to Abortion

NRLC will seek enactment of the Women and Children's Resources Act, sponsored by Congressman Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania. The bill would establish an $85 million formula grant program to support services required by pregnant women who are seeking alternatives to abortion. These grants would support crisis pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and adoption services, among other things. Despite the Clinton-Gore rhetoric about wanting to make abortion "rare," providers of alternative to abortion services currently receive virtually no federal support, nor has the Administration proposed any. If enacted, the Pitts bill would provide about half of the level of federal funding that is currently received by the nation's largest provider of abortion and abortion referrals, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA).

Free Speech about Congress

The right of groups of pro-life citizens and right to life chapters to freely and publicly discuss the positions and votes of members of Congress on the abortion issue is necessary in order to end abortion on demand. Therefore, National Right to Life will also maintain its active opposition to proposed restrictions on free speech about members of Congress and candidates for Congress - - proposals that are being pushed under the rubric of "campaign finance reform."

The McCain-Feingold and Shays-Meehan bills have been reintroduced. These bills represent attempts by many politicians to ration and restrict the right of American citizens to criticize them and to speak effectively to their constituents about their records on issues - - records that many officeholders may prefer to obscure, as just discussed with respect to many opponents of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

These bills contain multiple layers of restrictions on the right of citizen groups to comment on the positions and actions of those who hold or seek federal office, at any time of the year, in print and broadcast media.

Under the Shays-Meehan bill, for example, any incorporated advocacy group, national or local (other than a federal political action committee) would place itself at legal risk every time it disseminated a communication that expressed " support for" or "opposition to" - - whatever that means - - a member of Congress or other federal candidate, in print or broadcast form. Every such advocacy group, national or local, would place itself at legal risk every time it issued a communication to the public that might be perceived as being "for the purpose of influencing a federal election" - - whatever that means - - in print, or on the airwaves, at any time of the year. Under the McCain-Feingold bill, a communication may be illegal if it is merely deemed to be "of value" - - whatever that means - - to an officeholder or officeseeker. These and other restrictions would apply even to "legislative alert" communications dealing entirely with approaching votes in Congress.

One of the most prominent champions of restricting free speech about members of Congress and other federal politicians, Senator John McCain, apparently intends to seek the Republican presidential nomination. But in increasing numbers, grassroots pro-life activists recognize how seriously Senator McCain's proposals would mute the voices of local and national pro-life organizations, while at the same time greatly enhancing the already formidable political influence of the institutional news media, which would remain free to build up or tear down public figures at will.

[Detailed analyses of these bills, and explanations of the manner in which they would stifle freedom of expression, are found on the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org.]