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NRL News
Page 1
Fall 2011
Volume 38
Issue 8
Pro-Life House and Pro-Abortion
Senate Divided on
Pro-Life Issues, As Obama Pushes Pro-abortion Agenda
WASHINGTON (November 23, 2011)—With less
than one year to go before the national election, the Obama
Administration continues to advance its pro-abortion agenda on
multiple fronts—even as most new abortion-related proposals, from
either side, are blocked in a divided Congress.
In the current 112th Congress, which convened in January 2011, the
House of Representatives is under Republican control. The top
Republican leaders, including Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and
Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), are strongly pro-life. They have
pushed major pro-life bills through the House—most recently, in
October, the Protect Life Act (H.R. 358), a bill that would nullify
the abortion-expanding components of the “ObamaCare” health care law
enacted in 2010, and enhance anti-discrimination protections for
pro-life health care providers.
The Obama Administration has strenuously resisted pro-life efforts
to amend ObamaCare. On October 5, Secretary of Health and Human
Services Kathleen Sebelius vehemently defended the health care law
in a speech to a NARAL Pro-Choice America fundraiser, saying “we are
in a war” with critics of the law. On October 12, the White House
issued a formal veto threat against the Protect Life Act.
“President Obama won enactment of ObamaCare in 2010 partly by
pretending that the bill did not expand abortion—but now that mask
is coming off,” commented NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.
Despite such efforts by the House Republican leadership, prospects
for such pro-life bills are dim in the Senate, where Democrats hold
a 53–47 majority, and where 60 votes are usually needed to pass new
legislation.
Under Senate rules, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nv.) has
powers that have allowed him to thus far prevent most pro-life
measures from even coming to a vote, including the Protect Life Act
and the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 3).
The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which would create a
permanent and government-wide prohibition on subsidies for abortion,
was passed by the House in May by a vote of 251–175. Every
Republican House member who was present—235 lawmakers—voted in favor
of this bill, joined by 16 Democrats. Every one of the 175 negative
votes was cast by a Democrat. (See June/July NRL News, page 1.)
Like the Protect Life Act, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act
was targeted with a formal written veto threat from the White House.
“There are over one million Americans who are alive today because of
the Hyde Amendment policy,” commented NRLC’s Johnson. “But President
Obama, although he claims to seek abortion reduction, continues to
work against that policy—in this case, by threatening to veto the
legislation that would codify it.”
Pro-Abortion Senate
On measures that actually have come to a vote in the Senate, the
pro-life side has been on the losing end. In February, for example,
the House voted largely along party lines to approve a bill to cut
off all federal funds from the Planned Parenthood Federation of
America (PPFA) and its affiliates—but the bill failed in the Senate,
42–58 (see April/May NRL News, page 21).
On the other hand, during this Congress, pro-abortion lawmakers also
have been unsuccessful in their efforts to get new pro-abortion
legislation to the President’s desk.
For example, in early November, Democratic Leader Reid tried to
bring to the Senate floor a so-called “mini-bus”—a bill constructed
by coupling together three separate appropriations bills that had
been written in the Senate Appropriations Committee. NRLC analysts
found seven pro-abortion provisions woven into the measure,
including repeal of a longstanding ban on funding of abortions for
federal employees, and a prohibition on any future president cutting
off funds to groups that promote abortion in foreign nations. NRLC
alerted pro-life senators to what it termed “a pro-abortion express
train.” As a result, a group of senators, including Jim DeMint
(R-SC), David Vitter (R-La.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Mike Lee
(R-Utah), creatively employed Senate rules to erect a procedural
barrier that prevented the entire bill from reaching the Senate
floor. Reid announced that he was “terribly disappointed” with this
outcome.
However, NRLC’s Johnson warned of likely further attempts by the
Senate Democratic leadership to attach pro-abortion provisions to
various funding bills, right up to the time that Congress takes a
break for Christmas.
“We’ll be keeping a hawk-like gaze on all of these appropriations
bills,” he said.
One issue that remains in contention is whether government funds
will be used to fund abortion on demand in the District of Columbia,
a city that the Constitution places exclusively under federal
jurisdiction. Congress had banned such funding for many years, but
in 2009 President Obama and the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress
lifted the ban, with the result that the city government resumed
paying for abortion on demand. However, in April 2011 House Speaker
Boehner succeeded in getting a reluctant Obama to accept restoration
of the pro-life policy as part of a compromise on a government-wide
funding bill.
Because this pro-life policy is attached to an annual funding bill,
it must be renewed periodically, and some key pro-abortion lawmakers
have vowed to strongly resist any renewal of the ban. The “mini-bus”
blocked by the pro-life senators contained a provision that would
have repealed the pro-life policy.
Administration Actions
As the contending forces in Congress engage in thrust and
counter-thrusts over such issues, the Obama Administration continues
to advance a pro-abortion agenda through the use of executive powers
and administrative decisions. Many of these policies may draw little
attention from the news media or the general public, but their
aggregate impact, over a four-year period, may be very considerable.
The Obama Administration’s pro-abortion ideology has found its
fullest expression in overseas activities—perhaps because
Administration officials believe they are less likely to draw
widespread public attention in the U.S.
On his third day in office, President Obama nullified an executive
order previously issued by President Bush, usually referred to as
the “Mexico City Policy,” which had barred U.S. funding to private
organizations that perform and promote abortion as a method of
family planning in foreign nations. Since then, the Administration
has pumped large amounts of U.S. money to organizations that
aggressively campaign to expand access to abortion in many parts of
the world, including the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),
which participates in China’s coercive population-control program.
The State Department is led by officials deeply committed to the
pro-abortion ideology, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
who openly testified at a 2009 House hearing that “we are now an
administration that will protect the rights of women, including
their rights to reproductive health care,” that “reproductive health
includes access to abortion,” and that the Administration intends to
advocate for this right “anywhere in the world.”
When the government of Kenya was drafting a new constitution, the
Administration gave about $400,000 to a private group that played a
key role in lobbying the drafting committee to include language that
gravely weakened legal protections for unborn children. The new
constitution was adopted in August 2010. Some details of the
Administration-funded activity were documented in a report issued in
October by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), chairman of the House Foreign
Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights, and
co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus, has charged that in Kenya the
Administration violated a law dating back to 1981 (sometimes called
the “Siljander Amendment”) that prohibits use of U.S. funds “to
lobby for or against abortion” in foreign nations.
“The Obama Administration basically hired surrogates to do its dirty
work of abortion promotion in Kenya,” Smith said. “U.S. policy on
international constitutional reform is, by law, supposed to be
abortion-neutral. This new report shows that at a minimum the Obama
Administration ignored the prohibition, with the end result being a
new Kenyan constitution that vastly expands access to abortion in
Kenya, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.”
Smith also noted that a senior State Department official, Under
Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero,
ignored repeated GAO requests to be interviewed as part of the GAO
investigation. “That a high-ranking official in the Obama
Administration ... chose not to cooperate with the GAO as they
uncovered procedural and funding problems begs for further
investigation and review,” Smith said. “What else might they be
hiding?”
(For a related story on pro-abortion activity at the United Nations,
see “UN General Assembly Told that Every Nation Must Legalize
Abortion,” page 27.)
Attacks on Pro-Life Health Care Providers
Another area in which the Obama Administration has revealed its true
pro-abortion colors pertains to the rights of health-care providers
who do not wish to participate in abortion.
In May 2009, Obama gave a speech at the University of Notre Dame in
which he said he wanted to “honor the conscience of those who
disagree with abortion.” In a July 2009 interview with journalists
for religious publications, he offered assurances that his
Administration would adopt a “robust conscience clause.”
But in reality, Obama’s Administration has engaged in multiple
actions that have weakened protections for health-care providers who
do not wish to participate in or facilitate abortion.
In 2009 and 2010, President Obama worked
actively with Democratic leaders in Congress to successfully block
strong conscience-protection language from being included in the
final health care bill that he signed. In 2011, the Administration
“rescinded” (nullified) a regulation issued by the Bush
Administration that provided stepped-up enforcement mechanisms for
existing federal “conscience protection” laws.
This October, the Department of Health and Human Services decided
not to renew a grant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
to help victims of human trafficking (modern-day slavery),
substantially because the USCCB refuses to facilitate abortions for
such victims.
As the Washington Post reported on October 31, “On the trafficking
contract, senior political appointees at HHS awarded the new grants
to the bishops’ competitors despite a recommendation from career
staffers that the bishops be funded based on scores by an
independent review board, according to federal officials and
internal HHS documents. That prompted a protest from some HHS
staffers, who said the process was unfair and politicized,
individuals familiar with the matter said. Their concerns have been
reported to the HHS inspector general’s office.”
The Post story quoted USCCB spokeswoman Sister Mary Ann Walsh as
saying, “I think it’s a sad manipulation of a process to promote a
pro-abortion agenda.” On the USCCB Media Blog, Walsh wrote on
October 13, “There seems to be a new unwritten reg at the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It’s the ABC Rule,
Anybody But Catholics.”
Besides these overt evidences of hostility to pro-life conscience
rights, Administration officials have not lifted a finger to enforce
federal conscience protection laws even in the most egregious cases.
When a major hospital in New Jersey threatened to fire any
surgery-unit nurse who would not assist in providing abortions, the
nurses were forced to find private attorneys to file a federal
lawsuit on their behalf. Federal HHS officials have done nothing to
bring the force of federal law to bear against the hospital. (See
“New Jersey Nurses Refuse to Participate in Abortions, Take Hospital
to Court,” page 4.)
“There are plenty of militant pro-abortion organizations that
believe that if you won’t assist in abortions, you shouldn’t be
allowed to practice medicine or operate a hospital,” said NRLC
Senior Legislative Counsel Susan T. Muskett. “These ideologues refer
to conscience-protection laws as ‘refusal clauses,’ and they seek to
evade and nullify them. The Obama Administration is populated with
people who share this point of view. By its actions and inactions,
the Obama Administration has signaled that it is open season on
pro-life health care providers.”
NRLC has urged Congress to challenge the Administration on the
“conscience” issue.
Planned Parenthood
President Obama has demonstrated his deep commitment to protecting
federal funding for the Planned Parenthood Federation for America
(PPFA), the nation’s largest abortion provider. In April, during
negotiations with House leaders Boehner and Cantor, Obama made it
clear that he would allow the federal government to go into partial
shutdown rather than accept House-passed language to cut off funding
for Planned Parenthood. (See April/May NRL News, page 1.)
Recently, speaking at a dinner for a pro-abortion group, the
National Women’s Law Center, President Obama ridiculed the efforts
of pro-life Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood.
In September, pro-life Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fl.), who chairs an
investigations subcommittee on the House Committee on Energy and
Commerce, sent PPFA a letter requesting detailed documents on its
financial operations. Prominent Democrats in the House, led by Rep.
Henry Waxman (D-Ca.), denounced the Stearns investigation as a
“vendetta,” although PPFA said it would respond to the document
request.
In a statement issued in September, Stearns said, “Planned
Parenthood has an extensive record of violating state sexual assault
and child abuse reporting laws, and of encouraging young girls to
lie about their ages to circumvent state reporting laws. Although
Planned Parenthood is barred from using federal funds to perform
abortions, these funds are fungible and allow the group to use funds
from other sources ostensibly for abortions.”
In an October 13 interview on CBN’s The 700 Club, Stearns noted that
PPFA receives many millions of dollars annually in government funds,
and said: “Really, our investigation is to see how this money is
being used, to try and track it, and ... to say, here we are broke
in the country, and should we be giving that amount of money to
Planned Parenthood, especially in light of their misconduct?”
Other Issues
On a few pro-life issues not directly touching on abortion, pro-life
forces have made modest gains in the current Congress.
For example, an eight-year effort, in which NRLC played a key role,
culminated in the codification of a prohibition on any patent being
issued on a human embryo. Such a ban was originally enacted as a
temporary law in 2004, and NRLC had sought codification (permanent
enactment) ever since—a goal finally achieved as part of a bill
revamping U.S. patent law, signed into law on September 16.
“To achieve enactment of more expansive pro-life protections, we
need a pro-life Senate at the same time we have a pro-life House—and
of course, we need a pro-life president to sign the bills,”
concluded NRLC’s Douglas Johnson. “Fortunately, the American people
will have the opportunity to provide all three, in less than a
year.”
Resources
For up-to-date congressional action alerts, congressional voting
scorecards, and information on whether your federal representatives
have co-sponsored specific bills of interest, visit the Legislative
Action Center on the NRLC website, at
http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/home/. This site includes easy-to-use
tools to assist you in communicating with your federal
representatives on timely issues.
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