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NRL News 2007 Congressional Session Ends with All Pro-Life Policies Intact WASHINGTON (December 26, 2007)—At the end of a full year with pro-abortion Democrats controlling Congress, pro-life forces have succeeded in blocking all attempts to weaken or repeal pre-existing pro-life policies. The anti-life side was able to muster majorities on some issues in both the House and the Senate. But they were unable to overcome a vow by President Bush that he would veto any bill that contained language to weaken an existing pro-life policy—a threat that most Republicans in each house, joined by a small number of Democrats, were willing to back up. Many pro-abortion activists had high expectations when Democrats won House and Senate majorities in the November 2006 congressional elections, which resulted in pro-abortion Democrats taking over most of the key leadership offices in Congress. Hard-core pro-abortion Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco became Speaker of the House. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who had played a key role in obstructing pro-life legislative priorities for years, became majority leader in the Senate. Most of the new chairmen of key House and Senate committees were also pro-abortion. Various pro-abortion advocacy groups called for the new Democratic leadership to roll back the pro-life policies that had been adopted in earlier years. Among their targets were policies that depended on provisions—sometimes called “riders”—that are included in appropriations bills, which must be renewed annually. The best-known of these pro-life appropriations “riders” is the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits funding abortions (except to save the life of the mother, or in cases of rape or incest) from funds appropriated in the annual Health and Human Services appropriations bills. Early in the year, a coalition of pro-abortion groups began a campaign they called “30 Years is Enough,” calling for repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which was first passed in 1976. There are about a dozen other pro-life policies that also depend on language that must be renewed annually on appropriations bills. On May 3, President Bush made it clear that he would use his full powers to defend all of these existing pro-life policies. In identical letters to Reid and Pelosi, the President said flatly, “I will veto any legislation that weakens current Federal policies and laws on abortion, or that encourages the destruction of human life at any stage.” Congressional pro-life leaders, including Senator Sam Brownback (R-Ks.), Congressman Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), and Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), aided by NRLC and other pro-life advocacy groups, arranged for letters to be sent to the President, signed by more than one-third of the members of each house, vowing to vote to sustain any such pro-life vetoes. These warnings apparently played a role in persuading key congressional Democratic leaders that wholesale attacks on pro-life policies would accomplish little, except to tie up the appropriations process and impede their ability to advance their top budgetary priorities. Thus, the new crop of appropriations bills which emerged from the House Appropriations Committee, which were approved by the House during the summer, extended the Hyde Amendment and the other pro-life policy provisions that had been enacted in past years. Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. David Obey (D-Wi.) fended off criticism from militant pro-abortion advocates, saying, “I’m on the left.... But there’s another team on the field, and you know what? They’ve got blockers and tacklers, too. We want to get things done.” Overseas Abortion Programs The pro-abortion side ended up focusing most of their energies on attempting to enact new language to gut President Bush’s so-called “Mexico City Policy,” which is an executive order denying federal “family planning” funds to private organizations that promote abortion in foreign nations. Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY), the new chairwoman of the House subcommittee that writes the annual foreign aid bill, included new language in the bill to require a resumption of some forms of tax-supported assistance to groups that promote abortion in foreign nations. When the bill reached the House floor on June 21, Congressmen Chris Smith and Bart Stupak (D-Mi.), who are the co-chairmen of the House Pro-Life Caucus, offered an NRLC-backed amendment to remove the Lowey provision, but the amendment failed, 205–218. The outcome was even worse in the Senate, which on September 6 adopted (53-41) an amendment offered by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) that would have completely nullified the Mexico City Policy. The Senate also included the narrower Lowey provision in its version of the bill. (On the bright side, however, the Senate approved, 48–45, an amendment offered by Senator Brownback to preserve a long-standing prohibition on the funding of organizations that support programs of coercive abortion in foreign nations—the so-called Kemp-Kasten law.) [Note: Congressional roll call votes on key pro-life issues were published throughout the year in National Right to Life News. The key votes for all of 2007 are collected in the annual congressional “scorecards” that can be viewed on the NRLC website at http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/home] Between September and December, various pro-abortion lobbying groups agitated for either the Boxer or the Lowey language to be retained in the final funding bill. But the White House reiterated that any bill that contained any language weakening the Mexico City Policy would draw a veto. Finally, at the very end of the year’s session in mid-December, the top Democratic leadership reluctantly bowed to the President’s demand and dropped the pro-abortion language from a massive wrap-up funding bill. Speaker Pelosi said that the language was dropped to order to obtain “a bill that will be signed by the President.” Amy Coen of Population Action International said that the President’s “persistent threat to veto” had “doomed” the provision, and called his action “unconscionable.” NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson commented, “2007 could have been a very bad year, if President Bush had not drawn a bright line in defense of pro-life policies. Congressional Republican leaders Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Roy Blunt also played key roles in deterring the pro-abortion side throughout the year.” Embryo-Killing Research During 2007, the anti-life side engaged in a sustained attack on President Bush’s ban on federal funding of the kind of stem cell research that requires the killing of human embryos—but here too, at year’s end it was the President’s position that had prevailed. The new congressional Democratic leadership made funding of embryonic stem cell research a top priority. A bill (H.R. 3) to mandate federal funding of embryo-killing stem cell research was one of the first bills brought up in the new Congress by Speaker Pelosi. The legislation, opposed by NRLC, passed the House on January 11, 2007, by a vote of 253–174. On April 11, the Senate passed similar legislation (S. 5) by a vote of 63–34. The House agreed to the Senate version and sent it to the President, who vetoed it on June 20. Although Senate Majority Leader Reid vowed that he would try to override the veto, he has repeatedly postponed the vote, and the 2007 session ended with no override attempt. It is expected that the Senate will vote on the override sometime during 2008, but based on past votes, most observers believe that the attempt will fall slightly short of the two-thirds margin that would be required to override. Even if the Senate voted to override, it seems clear that the veto would be sustained in the House. On a related issue, NRLC-supported bills to ban all human cloning, introduced by Senator Brownback (S. 1036) and Congressman Dave Weldon (H.R. 2564), gathered many cosponsors during 2007, but they were not scheduled for action by congressional Democratic leaders. Those Democratic leaders did try to ram through, on a fast-track procedure, a bill (H.R. 2560) proposed by Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Co.), which would have enshrined a policy of allowing the creation of human embryos by cloning for research purposes. This “clone and kill” bill was brought to the floor on June 6, less than one day after it was introduced—but NRLC and other allied pro-life groups got wind of the plan and were able to muster sufficient opposition to kill the bill, 204–213. Other Anti-Life Proposals Pro-life morale was bolstered on April 18, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which had been signed into law by President Bush in 2003. It was the first time since Roe v. Wade that the high court had upheld a ban on any type of abortion, albeit on a 5–4 vote. Pro-abortion leaders in Congress harshly criticized the Court majority, and immediately reintroduced the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA) (H.R. 1964, S. 1173). This is a proposed federal law that would nullify virtually any state or federal law or policy that limits access to any abortion, including partial-birth abortion. “In the interests of truth in advertising, the bill should be renamed the ‘Freedom for Partial-Birth Abortionists Act,’” NRLC Legislative Director Johnson commented immediately after its introduction. The measure, sponsored by Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Senator Boxer, was referred to the House and Senate Judiciary committees, which took no action on it. However, by the end of the year, the FOCA had gathered 101 cosponsors (100 of them Democrats) in the House, and 19 cosponsors in the Senate, including two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for President, Senator Hillary Clinton (NY) and Senator Barack Obama (Il.). (For further information, see the NRLC website page on the FOCA at http://www.nrlc.org/FOCA/index.html) According to a March report in the Washington Post, congressional Democratic leaders promised votes on the so-called Equal Rights Amendment (S.J. Res. 10, H.J.Res. 40), a proposed amendment to the federal Constitution that could have sweeping pro-abortion effects. Since no such votes occurred in 2007, the votes would have to occur during 2008 if the Post report was accurate. Pro-life Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wi.) plans to offer an NRLC-backed amendment that would prevent the ERA from being used as a pro-abortion legal weapon, but leading pro-ERA groups are adamantly opposed to any such revision. (For further information, see the NRLC website page on the ERA-abortion connection, at http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/era/Index.html) Various liberal activist groups are also pressing for a Senate vote on ratification of a treaty, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), that has been interpreted by some international bodies as condemning virtually any limits on abortion. The proposal has been pending before the Senate since 1980. NRLC opposes ratification, which would require a two-thirds vote. Pro-Life Bills Languish Although pro-life forces were successful in defending pre-existing pro-life policies during 2007, the pro-abortion congressional leadership ensured that new pro-life bills did not move forward. In late November, Donna Crane, director of government relations for NARAL, told womensenews, “We’re very excited about the anti-choice attacks we were able to beat back with new [congressional] leadership,” but added, “We need to make some more gains in the 2008 elections before we can make some real progress.” Senator Brownback signed up eight cosponsors on the Ultrasound Informed Consent Act, a new NRLC-backed bill (S. 2075) to require that every abortionist perform an ultrasound and allow the pregnant woman to see it, prior to performing an abortion. But Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, was not expected to schedule any action on the measure. Brownback’s Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (S. 356) gathered 28 cosponsors, while a companion bill sponsored by Congressman Chris Smith (H.R. 3442) gathered 118 cosponsors, but neither bill was scheduled for action in the Democratically controlled committees to which they were referred. During 2007, a great deal of congressional energy went into proposed bills to reauthorize and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which was originally created in 1997. In 2002, the Bush Administration ruled that states can provide health services to an unborn child under the program, an action known as the “unborn child rule.” NRLC and other pro-life groups supported amendments by Senator Wayne Allard (R-Co.) and Rep. Pitts to “codify” the unborn child rule (that is, to make it a permanent part of the law). Unfortunately, the Allard Amendment failed 49–50 in the Senate on August 2, and the House Democratic leadership prevented a vote on the Pitts Amendment. Therefore, the “unborn child” codification did not become part of either of two SCHIP reauthorization bills that were ultimately approved by Congress. Both of those bills were vetoed for unrelated reasons, so the “unborn child” issue is likely to resurface during a future session. Congress also began work on major legislation to revamp federal health programs for American Indians. NRLC lobbied in favor of amendments, to be offered by Senator David Vitter (R-La.) and Rep. Pitts, to codify a long-standing policy that these programs may not provide abortions. However, consideration of the legislation was postponed until January of 2008. An amendment intended to curb the flow of federal “family planning” funds to abortion providers, offered by Senator Vitter, failed in the Senate, 41–52 on October 18. Earlier, an amendment to cut off such funds specifically to Planned Parenthood, offered by Congressman Mike Pence (R-In.), failed in the House, 189–231, on July 19. Restricting Activism The 2007 session also saw a major push to enact new regulations affecting the ability of citizen activists to engage in campaigns to motivate members of the public to contact their congressional representatives about pending issues—sometimes referred to as “grassroots lobbying.” At the urging of NRLC and many other groups, including the ACLU, both the House and the Senate ultimately rejected these proposals to regulate “grassroots lobbying” (although a number of new restrictions on Washington-based lobbyists were enacted). A key victory occurred when the Senate adopted an NRLC-backed amendment offered by Senator Robert Bennett (R-Utah) to remove the language regulating “grassroots lobbying,” 55–43. Every Republican senator supported the amendment, as did seven Democrats. Another dangerous bill, the so-called “Executive Branch Reform Act” (H.R. 984), sponsored by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.), would require thousands of executive branch officials to file reports listing nearly every letter, e-mail, fax, or verbal communication they receive from any citizen on a public policy matter. The bill was approved by a House committee in February. It was shelved after NRLC raised alarms about it, but it could be revived during 2008. NRLC endorsed a bill introduced by Rep. Pence, the “Broadcaster Freedom Act” (H.R. 2905), which would prohibit a resumption of government regulation of the “balance” of commentary regarding controversial issues on radio and television stations. Such a regulation, known by the misleading term “the Fairness Doctrine,” was abandoned by the Federal Communications Commission two decades ago, but recently some Democratic leaders have called for the reimposition of such constraints—a move widely seen as intended to curb the influence of conservative talk-show hosts. The House Democratic leadership has bottled Rep. Pence’s bill up in committee, but by the end of 2007, 194 House members—all of them Republicans—had signed a “discharge petition” on the bill. If 218 House members sign the petition, it would force a vote on the bill on the House floor. However, that would require the signatures of about 20 House Democrats, and so far no Democrats have signed. Detailed information on all of the legislative issues mentioned in this story, and others, along with scorecards of key congressional roll call votes, may be found on the NRLC website at http://www.nrlc.org, under “Legislation.” |