Tag Archives: Abortion

News

Republicans Renee Ellmers and Jackie Walorski derail vote on 20-week abortion ban

1 Comment

I’m afraid I have some bad news to report.

This is from the Federalist.

Excerpt:

Evidently, Republicans don’t feel competent enough to make a case against infanticide. Why else would the GOP pull its 20-week abortion limit bill?

[…]A Quinnipiac poll found that 60 percent of women support limiting abortions to the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. A CBS News poll found that 60 percent of Americans thought abortion “should not be permitted” or available only under “stricter limits.” A CNN Poll found that 58 percent of Americans believe abortion should legal only in a “few circumstances” or “always illegal.”

Yet the GOP caves on a bill that would prohibit most abortions after 20 weeks and promises instead to pass another worthless ban on taxpayer funded abortions—which we all know can be ignored by hiring an accountant.

Polls change. Polls don’t make you right. I know. But today is the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. And while the media continues to treat every Obama non-starter and crowd-pleaser as genuine policy idea, the 20-week abortion ban was predictably framed as another divisive play by zealous conservatives. Controversial. Republican leadership helpfully confirmed this perception by abandoning the only bill their party has come up with in years that widely supported.

[…][T]he most mystifying aspect of the GOP’s retreat on the 20-week ban is that the 20-week ban is not new. Most of these same Republicans voted on the same legislation before the midterm elections, including some of the same representatives that reportedly withdrew their support for the bill. Nearly every GOP candidate running in the midterms publicly backed the idea, even in high-profile races where Democrats made abortion the central issue of their campaign.

Yet, at the same time, Obama continues to support unrestricted abortion on demand for any reason at any time by anyone. There is no one to moderate his position. No one to make him veto a bill. No one to ask him about it. The president has no compunctions about supporting infanticide…

[…]This is about politics. Tragically incompetent politics. Even though a veto was imminent, you have to wonder: If the party representing the pro-life position, a party with a sizable historic majority, can’t pull together a vote on an issue as unambiguous and risk-free as this one, what are the chances if it coming to a consensus and offering compelling arguments on issues like health care or tax reform? Very little, I imagine.

Before anyone goes crazy and starts to talk about not voting for Republican candidates in general elections, I want to point out that the vast majority of Republicans in the House would have voted for this bill. The opposition to the vote was led by a few Republican women – women who were known to be moderates.

The Federalist reports on that, too:

Two of the representatives who caused the biggest stink about the bill were Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina and Jackie Walorski of Indiana. Last week, Ellmers said she didn’t think it was a good idea to vote on the legislation so early in the session (an argument that makes no sense, but let’s put that aside). Yesterday the women pulled their sponsorship of the bill over what they said were concerns over the rape reporting requirement. And yet here are both women speaking in favor of this exact same legislation two years ago…

Renee Ellmers, from North Carolina:

Jackie Walorski, from Indiana:

The rest of the article discusses what a blunder this was for the GOP.

But their conclusion is important:

Newsflash to the geniuses in her policy shop: there are few issues the Republicans can have with as much support, much less as much passionate support. If you’re cowering in fear on popular stuff, what are you going to do when the going gets tough?

What are they going to do on Keystone XL? What are they going to do on Obamacare? Are they going to fight the tough battles when they retreat on the easy ones?

So what’s the answer? I think that the answer is that the grassroots have to do the following:

  1. Never give money to Republican groups, but only to individual candidates who have pro-life achievements.
  2. Find out who the candidates are in the primaries and vote for the most conservative one. You can always vote for the moderate Republican in the general election, should it come to that.
  3. Call your elected representatives in Washington and let them know how you feel about these moderate Republican women.

It’s generally not a good idea to vote for a third party or a Democrat in an election, that would be worse than voting for a moderate… except in the case of these two ring leaders. I think we can send a message to the GOP by voting for a third party or voting Democrat just for these two. That way, the rest of them will learn not to do what they did. I don’t recommend doing this for trivial things, but for a ban on abortions after 20 weeks? I think some retaliation is in order, for the ring leaders. Ellmers is garbage anyway, and needs to go. Her betrayal is a surprise to no one.

Ellmers won her primary

Of course, we should first try to defeat these RINOs in the Republican primaries, where the Republican candidate for the general election is selected.

Ellmers won her last primary because her opponent had no money:

According to his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission, Roche had raised only $23,000 through the middle of April, less than three weeks before election day. Ellmers, meanwhile, had raised nearly $1 million over the election cycle and had $424,000 in cash on hand.

In other words, Ellmers had over 18 times as much cash on hand as Roche had raised over the course of the entire race.

Ellmers has also had the backing of the GOP establishment in North Carolina and well-funded national pro-amnesty organizations ranging from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg via his political advocacy shop FWD.us to ImmigrationWorksUSA, a business group pushing amnesty.

[…]Tea Party Patriots, which is led by national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin, has already faced some criticism for where its resources have been focused. Ingraham hosted Martin on her program last week, and asked why she hasn’t spent any of the $2 million Tea Party Patriots spent on polling, fundraising and consulting fees on candidates like Roche or House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary challenger Dave Brat.

“If you could knock off Cantor and you can knock off Ellmers, that sends shockwaves through the establishment that you seem so committed to upending, and yet you haven’t done the research?” Ingraham pressed Martin. “It’s a little late in the game to be doing the research. What’s the hold up?”

But Martin’s group is hardly the only one where this issue–which is not necessarily because of nefarious motives, but more likely because of political inexperience and a pack mentality in the conservative political action committee world where one group goes into a race all others follow–has arisen. Because of actions from various conservative groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), Madison Project, FreedomWorks and more–which are focused on races like Matt Bevin’s unlikely-to-succeed challenge to Mitch McConnell or Milton Wolf’s lagging bid against Pat Roberts–candidates like Roche either go unnoticed, underfunded or ignored.

We actually did knock off Cantor – this actually works. But it works better when pro-lifers start to think about all the issues, not just abortion, and start to primary candidates who are liberal on any issue, not just on abortion.

News

Obama issues veto threat against Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act

5 Comments

The Daily Signal reports:

The White House announced today President Obama would veto the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act if it came to his desk.

The bill, which is scheduled for a vote in the House Thursday, would ban elective abortions after twenty weeks–or five months of pregnancy.

That’s a policy that has huge public support.

According to a November Quinnipiac poll, 60 percent of Americans back banning abortion, except in cases of rape or incest reported to the authorities, after 20 weeks. There’s virtually no gender divide: 59 percent of women support the ban. Furthermore, the age breakdown shows widespread support for the ban by:

  • 57 percent of 18-29 year olds
  • 61 percent of 30-49 year olds
  • 63 percent of 50-64 year olds
  • 58 percent of 65+ American voters

In this divided age, there’s little that unites Americans in such large numbers as this ban does.

Most of the world already has such a ban. Only six other countries besides the United States allow elective abortions after 20 weeks, including China and North Korea.

By the time a pregnancy is 20 weeks along, the unborn child is hearing, has fingernails and toenails, and a beating heart.

The child is also close to being potentially able to survive outside the womb. In 2011, 21-one-week-old Frieda Mangold was born in Germany.

She made it.

Little Frieda faced huge obstacles: she weighed just over a pound when born. Sadly, her twin brother didn’t survive. But Frieda’s birth shows how incredibly developed these 20-week-old babies are, even at this early stage.

Why will Obama veto this bill? Because he is radical on the abortion issue.

First, he supports late-term abortions, as reported by the Weekly Standard.

Excerpt:

The Washington Post reports that President Obama is running his reelection campaign as a “culture warrior,” trying to cast his opponents as extremists on such issues as abortion in the case of rape and requiring religious institutions to pay for contraception. But could Obama’s own extremism on abortion come back to bite him?

During a 2003 press conference, Barack Obama indicated that he thought abortion should be legal in all situations, even late in pregnancy:

OBAMA: “I am pro-choice.”

REPORTER: “In all situations including the late term thing?”

OBAMA: “I am pro-choice. I believe that women make responsible choices and they know better than anybody the tragedy of a difficult pregnancy and I don’t think that it’s the government’s role to meddle in that choice.”

In another interview, Obama said: “I voted no on the late-term abortion ban, not because I don’t recognize that these are painful issues but because I trust women to make these decisions.”

And second, on abortions where the baby is born alive(infanticide):

When Obama opposed a bill to stop infanticide as a member of the Illinois legislature, he said he did so because it reportedly contained language that would have contravened the Roe v. Wade decision. However, documents uncovered during the 2008 election show Obama has misrepresented his position.

Obama, as a member of the Illinois Senate, opposed a state version of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a measure that would make sure babies who survive abortions are given proper medical care.

It also protected babies who were “aborted” through a purposeful premature birth and left to die afterwards.

On the federal level, pro-abortion groups withdrew their opposition to the bill after a section was added making sure it did not affect the status of legal abortions in the United States. Ultimately, the bill was approved on a unanimous voice vote with even leading pro-abortion lawmakers like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry backing it.

And finally, Obama very likely supports sex-selection abortions.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama appears to oppose the ban on sex-selection abortions that the House of Representatives debated yesterday and will be voting on today.

ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper posted a new report indicating President Obama opposes the bill to prohibit performing or coercing abortions to eliminate unborn babies of an undesired sex. Tapper raised the question at Wednesday’s White House press briefing, but did not receive a respond to his question about Obama’s position.

[…]White House deputy press secretary Jamie Smith told him in a statement: “The Administration opposes gender discrimination in all forms, but the end result of this legislation would be to subject doctors to criminal prosecution if they fail to determine the motivations behind a very personal and private decision.   The government should not intrude in medical decisions or private family matters in this way.”

National Right to Life legislative director Douglas Johnson was upset to learn Obama opposes the common-sense bill, telling LifeNews:  “It is appalling, but not surprising, that President Obama now stands with the pro-abortion political committees and his Hollywood donors, rather than with the coerced women, and their unborn daughters, who are victimized in sex-selection abortions.”

The Democrat Party also  supports sex-selection abortions. Their view is that the mere fact that an unborn child is female is sufficient reason to kill that child. Is that pro-women? What could be more discriminatory and anti-women than that?

I still know Christians who think that Obama is pro-life and pro-natural marriage. I hope that stories like this will wake them up to the fact that he is actually a radical leftist on social issues. Just because a person is handsome and can read a teleprompter, it doesn’t mean that he is pro-life and pro-marriage.

News

Canadian court rules that pro-life students can’t show images of abortion on campus

9 Comments
Map of Canada
Map of Canada

This is from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

In a stunning reversal of recent rulings in nearby provinces, British Columbia Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson has ruled that Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not apply to pro-life students seeking space on the University of Victoria campus to demonstrate.

Former U Vic student Cameron Cote and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association had petitioned for a declaration that the university administration had breached the Youth Protecting Youth pro-life club’s Charter rights when, in early 2013, it refused permission to display pictures of aborted and healthy babies.

But the Charter only applies to government bodies and Hinkson ruled that the university, though funded mostly by taxpayers, and incorporated by the provincial government, which also appoints a majority of its directors, was acting privately when it decided to deny YPY use of its property. So even though the decision was based on the content of YPY’s pro-life message, the Charter protection of free speech and assembly does not apply.

The university is funded by taxpayer dollars – it’s not private. But, any port in a storm for this judge.

More:

[T]he University of Victoria, by simply refusing YPY space to air its views, was acting as a private landlord, ruled Hinkson. But what Hinkson isn’t getting, said John Carpay, head of the Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom, is that universities respect freedom of speech, and alternately impose censorship, very selectively.

“Universities censor pro-life students for showing graphic pictures of aborted babies,” said Carpay. “But universities allow Falun Gong supporters showing graphic pictures of members tortured by the Chinese government. They also allow those promoting use of seat belts to show graphic images of people with their heads halfway through windshields.”

“Free expression is a cornerstone of democracy,” Carpay added. “But a lot of people seem to believe they have a right not be offended, and this outweighs free speech.”

[…]YPY’s battle with the U Vic student society goes back at least to 1999, when the pro-life club won a human rights discrimination ruling. In 2010, a second human rights complaint against the society was settled out of court in the club’s favor.

In all these cases pro-abortion students complained that they felt “harassed” by YPY’s posters, pamphlets, or pictures. The student society then suspended the group’s club status, resulting in the removal of the privilege to use university property for its activities.

As well, pro-abortion protesters have stolen YPY displays, covered others in cat feces, and pelted members’ belongings with smoke bombs and stink bombs with no response from the university administration. “They’ve created a culture of bullying. They can get away with treating pro-life students badly,” said Anastasia Pearse, western co-ordinator of the National Campus Life Network.

I’m not sure what secular leftists are learning in college, but it sure isn’t the ability to separate fair process from political correctness. If anyone disagrees with a secular leftists, then the rules don’t apply and anything can be done to stop us from exercises the same rights that everyone else gets. It’s not fair, and I fear that we need to just be more serious about whether what we are doing is going to reverse this problem of not having any influence. I recommend that each one of us not be content with a normal life. In order to fix these problems, we need to aim to have an influence.