Yet another former ACORN employee was convicted of voter fraud last week. This brings the total number of convictions for former workers from the embattled group to at least 15 so far this year.
Kevin L. Clancy of Milwaukee pleaded guilty last week to participating “in a scheme to submit fraudulent voter registration applications,” according to Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen. Clancy admitted to filing multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals and registering himself and other voter registration canvassers to vote multiple times while working on an ACORN voter drive.
Clancy received a 10-month prison term for his crime. Clancy’s sentence will begin when he completes another sentence he is currently serving for armed robbery.
“The integrity of elections is dependent upon citizens and officials insisting they be conducted lawfully,” Van Hollen said. “Wisconsin’s citizens should not have to wonder whether their vote has been negated or diminished by illegally cast ballots.”
So far 2010 has been a banner year for ACORN voter fraud prosecutions.
The article lists other convictions of ACORN employees for voter fraud from this year.
The vote on the Canadian bill seeking to criminalize abortion coercion, which was initially pushed back to February, is now set for December 15th.
The bill, called “Roxanne’s Law,” is named after Roxanne Fernando, a Manitoba woman whose boyfriend attempted to coerce her to have an abortion after she became pregnant in 2007. After refusing to have the unborn child killed, Roxanne was beaten and left to die in a snow bank.
It was introduced in April as a private members bill by Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge (Winnipeg South), who serves as chair of the parliamentary pro-life caucus. It is opposed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who says he “will oppose any attempt to create a new abortion law.”
The bill, also known as C-510, received its first hour of debate on November 1st. “No pregnant woman should ever have to choose between protecting herself and protecting her baby,” Bruinooge told the House of Commons.
It will receive a second hour of debate on December 13th.
The bill has gained wide support among religious and pro-life organizations, including the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the Canadian Bishops’ Catholic Organization for Life and Family, and Priests for Life, among numerous others.
Conservative prime minister (Stephen Harper) has committed to not changing abortion law at all while he has a minority government, probably because he feels he doesn’t have a mandate to do that since he never campaigned to do that. However, this law is so sensible and moderate, I have to think that he should allow a free vote on the issue, and let the social conservatives see that they have a home in the federal Conservative Party. This measure is so moderate that it would be difficult to see how anyone could be against it.
The latest poll has the Conservatives at 33.3% support, and the socialist Liberals at 27.1% support, and the communist NDP at 16.6%. To get a majority, the Conservatives have to be north of 40%. Canada is still a very liberal country.
UPDATE: Mary writes:
I agree that they should allow a free vote on the issue. It’s something that even the pro-choice side should support – provided they’re really pro-choice…
This is actually really important. There need to be repercussions to coercing a woman into abortion. It could save a lot of lives. Most abortions are not wanted and many are coerced. Read this to see just how bad it is: http://www.theunchoice.com/pdf/FactSheets/ForcedAbortions.pdf
And:
In the US context, listen to this recording of the testimony of a woman was coerced into an abortion by Planned Parenthood and hear how they try to shut her up when she wants to tell them why PP is not worthy of taxpayer funding:
Today the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Catholic nurse who was forced by a New York hospital to participate in an abortion does not have the right to sue her employer.
Administrators at Mt. Sinai Hospital had threatened Catherine DeCarlo with disciplinary measures in May 2009 if she did not honor a last-minute summons to assist in a scheduled late-term abortion. The hospital insisted on her participation in the procedure on the grounds that it was an “emergency.”
Lawyers for DeCarlo, however, have pointed out that the procedure was not classified by the hospital as an emergency, and the patient was apparently not in crisis at the time of the surgery.
DeCarlo claims that her participation in the abortion led to serious emotional trauma. She also claims that hospital administrators later attempted to coerce her into signing an agreement to participate in abortions in the future.
The hospital had reportedly known of the Catholic nurse’s religious objections to abortion since 2004.
Alliance Defence Fund (ADF) attorneys had filed two suits in the case – one federal, filed in July 2009, and another state, filed earlier this year. The federal suit claimed that Mt. Sinai ignored federal laws prohibiting coercion while receiving hundred of millions of dollars in federal funding.
In January the case was dismissed by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, at which point it was appealed to the Second Circuit.
However, in today’s ruling the court found that there is no right to private action or private remedy under the statue cited by DeCarlo in her suit – the so-called “Church Amendment.” (Read the decision here.)
That amendment protects health care workers working for federally-funded entities from being discriminated against because they refused to perform abortions on religious or conscience grounds.
WINTERY KNIGHT 