Tag Archives: Mary Burke

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Wisconsin Democrat Mary Burke would veto bill to ban “pain capable” abortions

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There is a big race right now to choose the governor of Wisconsin. The Republican candidate is Scott Walker. He is the current governor. The Democrat is a woman named Mary Burke. They are pretty much tied in the polls, but their positions on abortion are quite different.

First, let’s remember that Scott Walker is pro-life – and not just in word, but in deed.

Here’s a story from Fox News.

Excerpt:

Gov. Scott Walker quietly signed a contentious Republican bill Friday that would require women seeking abortions to undergo an ultrasound and ban doctors who lack admitting privileges at nearby hospitals from performing the procedures.

Opponents contend legislators shouldn’t force women to undergo any medical procedure and the bill will force at least two abortion clinics where providers lack admitting privileges to shut their doors.

The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the bill in mid-June.

[…]Under the bill, any woman seeking an abortion would have to get an ultrasound. The technician would have to point out the fetus’ visible organs and external features to the woman. Abortion providers would have to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles to perform the procedures.

Republican supporters argue the ultrasound requirement is designed to help the woman bond with the fetus and convince her to save it. The admitting privileges mandate is meant to ensure an abortion provider can follow up with a patient at the hospital if an emergency arises, they say.

The bill is part of national GOP push to curtail abortions. North Dakota’s governor, Republican Jack Dalrymple, signed a law this spring that outlaws abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, making North Dakota the most restrictive state in the nation to get an abortion. The state’s lone abortion clinic has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the law.

Republicans in Arkansas this spring passed a law that bans most abortions after 12 weeks. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas and the Center for Reproductive Rights. A federal judge has temporarily blocked that law. A trial has been tentatively scheduled for next year.

Republicans in Alabama passed a law similar to the Wisconsin bill in April requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The ACLU and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit contending the law would shut down three of the state’s five clinics because doctors at the clinics haven’t been able to get admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. A federal judge temporarily blocked the law in June.

The Wisconsin bill sparked a fierce debate in both the state Senate and Assembly as minority Democrats tried to push back. Republican leaders in the Senate abruptly halted a floor debate in that house. Senate President Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, flew into a rage as Democrats protested, pounding his gavel so hard he broke the base. Assembly Democrats, for their part, did a slow burn, complaining about the bill for hours. Republicans still rolled the bill through both houses.

The law eventually passed, and it reduced the number of abortions in Wisconsin, as you would expect.

Now let’s see what Mary Burke thinks about saving unborn children.

Life News reports.

Excerpt:

Wisconsin has made huge strides in the protection of unborn babies and mothers in our state. In just 2013 alone, our new lifesaving laws gave mothers more information about their unborn children and helped save 465 babies, who now sleep peacefully in their beds. But we still have far more work to do.

That’s why so many Wisconsinites are concerned by Mary Burke’s recent statement in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel interview about her position on legislation that would protect unborn babies who are capable of feeling pain.

When asked what she would do with legislation that would “ban abortions after 20 weeks” (when unborn babies can feel pain), Burke responded, without a moment of hesitation,

“Yeah, I would veto it.”

Wow,  even if the unborn child can feel pain, she would veto the bill to stop their suffering. You can’t get much more innocent than an unborn child.

News

Federal court reinstates anti-voter-fraud law in Wisconsin, Democrats hardest hit

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If it’s not close, they can’t cheat. And in Wisconsin, they can’t cheat anyway.

National Review reports:

Voter-ID opponents have suffered another stunning blow.

On Friday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals dissolved the injunction that had been issued against Wisconsin’s voter-ID law by a federal district court in April. The court told Wisconsin that it “may, if it wishes (and if it is appropriate under rules of state law), enforce the photo ID requirement in this November’s elections.” In reaction, Kevin Kennedy, the state’s top election official, said that Wisconsin would take all steps necessary “to fully implement the voter photo ID law for the November general election.” The appeals court issued its one-page opinion within hours of hearing oral arguments in the appeal.

As I explained in an NRO article in May, the district court judge, Lynn Adelman, a Clinton appointee and former Democratic state senator, had issued an injunction claiming the Wisconsin ID law violated the Voting Rights Act as well as the Fourteenth Amendment. Adelman made the startling claim in his opinion that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2008 upholding Indiana’s voter-ID law as constitutional was “not binding precedent,” so Adelman could essentially ignore it.

However, that was too much for the Seventh Circuit. It pointed out, in what most lawyers would consider a rebuke, that Adelman had held Wisconsin’s law invalid “even though it is materially identical to Indiana’s photo ID statute, which the Supreme Court held valid in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008).”

It was also obviously significant to the Seventh Circuit that the Wisconsin state supreme court had upheld the state’s voter-ID law in July, since the three-judge panel cited that decision, Milwaukee Branch of NAACP v. Walker, too. In fact, the appeals court said the state court decision had changed the “balance of equities and thus the propriety of federal injunctive relief.”

In other words, there was no justification for striking down a state voter-ID law that was identical to one that had been previously upheld by both the Supreme Court of the United States and that state’s highest court.

[…]This is also another big defeat for Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced in July that the Justice Department would be intervening in this lawsuit. The Department lost a lawsuit that claimed South Carolina’s voter-ID law was discriminatory in 2012, and a federal judge recently refused to issue an injunction against North Carolina’s voter-ID law in another lawsuit filed by Justice.

This is a big win for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who faces a tough Democrat challenger backed by powerful unions in November.