Douglas Johnson on NRO’s The Corner

NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, writing on National Review Online, takes Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus to task for promoting abortion lobby’s line that the Capps Amendment is a “compromise” that preserves a careful balance on federal abortion policy.  Johnson writes:  “One of the biggest whoppers of the summer is the argument that the Capps Amendment to the Obama-backed health-care bill (an amendment that was actually written by pro-abortion champion Rep. Henry Waxman and his veteran staff) represents a ‘compromise.’  A meeting of the minds between Planned Parenthood (which loves the Capps Amendment) and the congressman from West Hollywood is not likely to be much of a compromise, and this one is as phony as they come.  The Capps Amendment, if enacted, would insert the federal government into the abortion-funding business in two very big ways, both of which would mark sharp breaks from longstanding federal policy.”  Read the entire essay here.

Obama Perpetuates Abortion Funding Myth in Joint Address

For immediate release:                                        
Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 9:30pm   

OBAMA PERPETUATES ABORTION FUNDING MYTH
IN JOINT SESSION ADDRESS

 WASHINGTON – In his address to a joint session of Congress tonight, President Obama said, “One more misunderstanding I want to clear up — under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.”

 Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, commented: “Barack Obama needs to learn that the mere repetition of a verbal formula does not change reality.  The reality is that the Obama-backed House bill would explicitly authorize the federal government insurance plan to pay for elective abortions and would explicitly authorize subsidies for private abortion insurance — and all with federal dollars, which are the only kind of dollars that the federal government can spend.”

 The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) last week released definitive memoranda that demonstrate that (1) the “Hyde Amendment” would not apply to the new programs that would be created by the Obama-backed health bill, H.R. 3200, and (2) that all of the funds that would be spent on elective abortions under the bill, and all of the funds that would be spent to subsidize private insurance plans that cover abortion, would be “federal funds” in both the legal sense and in the sense in which those terms are used throughout the government. 

 “The claim that a federal agency would be spending private funds on abortion, not federal funds, is absurd on its face, a political hoax,” Johnson said.

 To read a September 8 NRLC media advisory that summarizes these issues, click here.  The advisory contains links to the detailed memoranda that disprove the “Hyde Amendment myth” and the “government will spend private funds on abortions myth.”

 The National Right to Life Committee, the nation’s largest pro-life group is a federation of affiliates in all 50 states and 3,000 local chapters nationwide. 

 # # #

NRLC: news media duped by Obama on abortion

For immediate release: Tuesday, September 8, 2009, at 2 PM EDT 

National Right to Life on the health care debate:
“On government-funded abortion, Obama has duped the news media with head fakes and doubletalk”

NRLC releases two new memoranda refuting “the Hyde Amendment myth” and “the private funds myth.”

WASHINGTON (September 8, 2009) — The following statement may be attributed to Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), which is the federation of right-to-life organizations in all 50 states.

 The health care legislation being pushed forward by President Obama would create a federally run insurance plan that would pay for elective abortion with government funds.  The legislation also would provide massive tax-based subsidies to purchase private insurance plans that would cover elective abortions.  Both of these new programs would represent drastic breaks with decades of federal policy against funding abortions in government-subsidized health programs.

 Yet, in recent weeks, much of the news media have been manipulated by top Congressional Democrats and by the White House into denying or minimizing the abortion-related policy changes that are being advanced.  Many journalists have casually adopted highly misleading characterizations of the abortion-related content of the legislation — characterizations that cannot survive careful scrutiny.  For example, many journalists have been snookered into reporting that House Democrats amended their legislation (H.R. 3200) so that the proposed government-run insurance program would be paying for elective abortions with “private funds” — a claim that is absurd on its face, and that cannot survive thoughtful and skeptical scrutiny.

 It is past time for the would-be factcheckers to stop acting as stenographers for the president and Speaker Pelosi on this issue.  Here are some facts for them to check:

 *  In 2007, Barack Obama made face-to-face promises to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.  Asked about his plans for “health care reform,” Obama said, “in my mind, reproductive care is essential care.  It is basic care, and so it is at the center, and at the heart of the plan that I propose.”  He also stated, “What we’re doing is to say that we’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance.  It’ll be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services.”  The Obama campaign confirmed (and nobody disputes) that “reproductive services” includes elective abortion.  You can watch a short video clip of Mr. Obama making the promises here or here.  Obama has never publicly repudiated those promises.  

 *  The health care bills approved by Democrat-controlled committees in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate during July would fulfill the Obama promises to Planned Parenthood, as quoted above.  This advisory focuses only on the House bill, H.R. 3200, although the bill approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on July 15 has the same basic problems and more.  (The abortion-related provisions of both bills are summarized in a two-page document posted here, and are explained in a detailed, footnoted memorandum here.)

 *  As amended by the House Energy and Commerce Committee with the Capps Amendment (or Capps-Waxman Amendment) on July 30, the House health care bill (H.R. 3200) would explicitly authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to pay for elective abortion under the government-run insurance plan (the “public option”).  As FactCheck.org concluded in its August 21 analysis titled “Abortion:  Which Side is Fabricating?,” “Obama has said in the past that ‘reproductive services’ would be covered by his public plan, so it’s likely that any new federal insurance plan would cover abortion unless Congress expressly prohibits that.”  The abortion coverage would not be optional; no person would be allowed to enroll in the public option without contributing to the abortion fund.  

 *  Amendments backed by NRLC to expressly prohibit the government plan from covering elective abortions were opposed by the Democratic chairmen of all three House committees that considered the legislation, and defeated in each committee — a result for which the White House staff has taken partial credit.  (As The American Prospect reported, “Advocates were able to ensure that both the House tri-committee bill [H.R. 3200] and the Senate HELP bill made it through committee without any amendments limiting access to reproductive care.  But as Tina Tchen, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, told a July 15 Planned Parenthood conference — perhaps in an effort to tamp down expectations — ‘That was not easy.  It was not easy in committee.  It won’t be easy to hold on the House floor.  It won’t be easy to hold on the Senate floor.’”  From “Aborting Health Reform: Without reproductive-health coverage, any public insurance plan is doomed to fail,” by Dana Goldstein, The American Prospect, August 18, 2009, http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=aborting_health_reform)

 *  The House Democratic leadership has already publicly said that they will not allow the full House to vote on the amendment (the Stupak Amendment) to exclude elective abortion from the government plan and to prevent subsidies from flowing to private plans that cover elective abortion.  This means that a vote to advance H.R. 3200 is a vote to create a federal government insurance program that would fund elective abortions, and also a vote to create a federal government premium subsidy program that would help pay for private insurance plans that cover elective abortions.

 THE “PRIVATE FUNDS” MYTH

 *  Since July 30, the White House, dozens of congressional Democrats, and many news media “factcheckers” have publicly asserted that the Capps Amendment provides that the “public option” may not spend “federal funds” on elective abortion, but only “private funds.”  Such statements have been made, for example, by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.), by President Obama (who said on August 19 that it was a “fabrication” to suggest that the bill would result in “government funding of abortion”), and many others.  Yet, the claim that a federal agency would be paying for a service with “private funds” is beyond misleading — it is absurd on its face.  The public plan would be an arm of the federal Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), part of the federal Executive Branch.  Once the agency collects “premiums” from enrollees, they would be as much “federal funds” and “public funds” as any funds collected by the IRS. 

 * Under the Capps Amendment, abortion providers would send their bills to DHHS and receive payment checks drawn on a federal Treasury account.  It is perplexing that so many in the news media are being duped into adopting the untenable pretext that a federal agency would be expending “private funds.”  In reality, this would be direct federal government funding of elective abortion.

 *  Aside from the public plan, H.R. 3200 and the Capps Amendment explicitly authorize the proposed premium subsidies to go to private insurance plans that cover elective abortions – which is something that would not be permitted under any of the existing federal health programs (for federal employees, military, Medicaid, etc.).  These subsidies would be federal funds that would flow directly from the federal Treasury to the insurers.  Regardless of how the books are kept, when the government pays for insurance, the government pays for what the insurance pays for.

 *  On September 7, NRLC issued a detailed memorandum demonstrating all of the funds that the “public option” would expend for elective abortions are “federal funds” and “public funds” as those terms are defined in law and as they are used throughout the government.  The memorandum also demonstrates that all of the funds in the premium-subsidy program would be federal government funds.  The memorandum cites documents from the CBO, GAO, Congressional Research Service, and other authoritative sources.  It is here:
http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/NRLCmemoFederalFundsnotPrivateFunds.html

 THE HYDE AMENDMENT MYTH

 *  Throughout his career as an Illinois state senator, a U.S. senator, and a presidential candidate, Barack Obama consistently opposed all limitations on government funding of elective abortion.  During his presidential campaign, he expressed explicit opposition to the Hyde Amendment, the annually renewed provision that prevents federal Medicaid funding of abortion (with narrow exceptions).  Recently, some journalists have reported that Obama endorsed the concept that the government should not fund abortions in an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News, broadcast July 21, but Obama really did no such thing. Instead, he simply made a head fake — an artful observation that “we also have a tradition of, in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government funded health care.”  Obama did not endorse the “tradition.”  Certainly, it is true that there is such a tradition – a tradition that Obama has always opposed, and which the Obama-backed health care bill would shatter.

 * There is another deception that is being widely employed — again, with little critical scrutiny from the news media.  During the just-completed congressional recess, innumerable congressional Democrats told their constituents that the pending legislation would not result in government funding of abortion because the Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funding of abortion.  (Examples are found here and here.)

 *  In reality, the Hyde Amendment is not a government-wide law — it applies only to funds appropriated through the annual appropriations bill that funds the Department of Health and Human Services.  As National Right to Life has pointed out for months, and as the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service confirmed in two memoranda issued in late August (which we now have obtained and posted on our website), none of the funds that would be expended by the public plan, and none of the funds that will subsidize the purchase of private insurance plans, will ever flow through an HHS appropriations bill.  Therefore, none of the funds will be covered by the Hyde Amendment.  Many Democratic lawmakers have directly misinformed their constituents by telling them that the Hyde Amendment will apply — and, for the most part — the news media have simply transmitted the misinformation, or actually adopted the false claim as fact.

 * President Obama himself has made statements of artful indirection involving the Hyde Amendment, in addition to the Katie Couric interview referred to above.  For example, on August 20, 2009, Obama said at a health-care forum, “There are no plans under health reform to revoke the existing prohibition on using federal taxpayer dollars for abortions.  Nobody is talking about changing that existing provision, the Hyde Amendment.  Let’s be clear about that.  It’s just not true.”  This statement was another trademark head fake by Obama.  It is true that the Obama-backed health bill does not directly revoke the Hyde Amendment — and it is also entirely irrelevant, because Obama’s congressional allies have carefully crafted the bill language to allow government funding of elective abortions using federal money that is not covered by the Hyde Amendment. 

 * On September 3, NRLC issued a memorandum that explains in detail why the funds in question will not be affected by the Hyde Amendment.  The NRLC memo quotes from, and links to, two new Congressional Research Service memoranda, and other official documents.  It is here:
http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/NRLCmemoHydeAmendmentWillNotApply.html

 THREE QUESTIONS FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA

 As the White House warms up its smokescreen generators for a heavy workload during the week ahead, National Right to Life now suggests three questions for the President:

 (1)  Mr. President:  During your campaign for President, you promised the Planned Parenthood Action Fund that funding for “reproductive care,” including abortion, would be “at the heart” of your health-care plan, and that the “public plan” would cover such services.  The pending House bill, with the Capps-Waxman Amendment, would explicitly authorize your secretary of Health and Human Services to cover all abortions in the government insurance plan, the public option.  If Congress enacts that language, would your Secretary fulfill your promise to Planned Parenthood by covering abortions in the public plan, OR would you order her NOT to cover elective abortions under the government plan?

 (2)  Mr. President:  Speaker Pelosi, among others, has insisted that if the public option does pay for abortions, the abortions will be paid for with “private funds.”  National Right to Life says that this is misleading and absurd — that as a matter of law, the funds that would be spent by DHHS under the public option would be federal funds, public funds.  Do you embrace the notion that a federal agency, writing checks drawn on a federal Treasury account, would be expending “private funds,” and if so, is that a concept that you think could be applied to other federal agencies — for example, the CIA, the Pentagon, or the Department of the Interior?

 (3)  Mr. President, in recent weeks, you and your staff have made several references to the Hyde Amendment, a provision of the annual appropriations bill that funds the Department of Health and Human Services.  For example, you said that the pending healthcare bill would not “revoke” the Hyde Amendment.  National Right to Life says this is a “head fake” — that is, irrelevant with respect to the pending healthcare bill, because none of the money expended by the public option or by the premium-subsidy program would be covered by the Hyde Amendment.  However, the Hyde Amendment does cover the federal Medicaid program, and the Hyde Amendment expires every September 30.  National Right to Life points out that you have always opposed the Hyde Amendment.  Are you willing to change that position now, and to pledge now that you will actively support renewal of the Hyde Amendment next year, and each year for the remainder of your term, so that federal Medicaid funds would not be used to fund elective abortions?  And if you are not willing to make that promise, are you willing to at least promise that you will not, next year or in any subsequent year, issue a veto threat on an HHS appropriations bill because the bill would renew the Hyde Amendment?  And if you are not willing to make either of those promises, why should anyone believe that the Medicaid program will not be paying for elective abortions by the end of your term (in addition to the abortions that would be paid for under the new programs that would be created by H.R. 3200)?

 ****

 Addendum:  Some members of Congress have even managed to mix the “Hyde Amendment myth” and the “your government will be spending private funds myth” together.  For example, in an August 28, 2009, “telephone town hall,” here, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nv.) said: “Another myth that’s being thrown around is that health insurance reform uses money for abortions.  Not true. . . . Next, the House bill states, and I quote, health insurance providers aren’t required to or prohibited from offering abortion coverage.  The cost of such coverage would be exclusively paid by premiums, not by public subsidies.  Public funding for abortion would be permitted only as under current law, that’s the so-called Hyde Amendment, named after Henry Hyde, who I served with in the House.  And as you know, that is in cases of rape, incest or when a woman’s life is in danger.”

NRLC responds to Obama “fabrication” charge

For immediate release:
Wednesday, August 19, 2009      

OBAMA SAYS “GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF ABORTION IS A FABRICATION,”
BUT THE WHITE HOUSE-BACKED HOUSE BILL EXPLICITELY AUTHORIZES IT

 WASHINGTON (August 19, 2009) — In a conference call with supporters this afternoon, President Obama said that it is a “fabrication” to say that the legislation backed by the White House would result in “government funding of abortions,” and that this is “untrue.”  The following comment may be attributed to Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the national federation of state and local right-to-life organizations:

 Emboldened by the recently demonstrated superficiality of some organs of the news media, President Obama today brazenly misrepresented the abortion-related component of the health care legislation that his congressional allies and staff have crafted.  As amended by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on July 30 (the Capps-Waxman Amendment), the bill backed by the White House (H.R. 3200) explicitly authorizes the government plan to cover all elective abortions.  Obama apparently seeks to hide behind a technical distinction between tax funds and government-collected premiums.  But these are merely two types of public funds, collected and spent by government agencies.  The Obama-backed legislation makes it explicitly clear that no citizen would be allowed to enroll in the government plan unless he or she is willing to give the federal agency an extra amount calculated to cover the cost of all elective abortions — this would not be optional.  The abortionists would bill the federal government and would be paid by the federal government.  These are public funds, and this is government funding of abortion.

 In 2007 Obama explicitly pledged to Planned Parenthood that the public plan will cover abortions (see the video clip here).  Some journalists have reported that Obama “backed off” of this commitment in an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News, broadcast July 21, but Obama actually carefully avoided stating his intentions — instead, he simply made an artful observation that “we also have a tradition of, in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government funded health care.”

 It is true that there is such a tradition — which Obama has always opposed, and which the Obama-backed bill would shatter.

On August 13, NRLC released a detailed memo explaining the provisions of the pending bills that would affect abortion policy, with citations to primary sources. Many of the “factcheck” articles that have appeared in the news media in recent weeks reflect, at best, unsophisticated understandings of the provisions they purport to be explaining, and also give evidence of a weak understanding of Obama’s history on the policy issues involved.  The memo is downloadable in PDF format here:

http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/HR3200NRLCfactsheet.pdf

 The National Right to Life Committee is the nation’s largest pro-life group is a federation of affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide.  National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

# # #

2008 Oklahoma Ultrasound Law Struck

For immediate release:                                        
Tuesday, August 18, 2009  

TECHNICALITY TAKES OUT OKLAHOMA ULTRASOUND LAW

WASHINGTON — Today, in the case of Nova Health Systems v. Henry, the County District Court in Oklahoma struck down SB 1878, a bill providing expectant mothers the opportunity to view the ultrasound image of their unborn child.  The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and its affiliate, Oklahomans for Life, supported the measure and urged its passage.

 “The court’s ruling is by no means a condemnation of the commonsense protections provided for in the legislation,” said Mary Spaulding Balch, National Right to Life director of state legislation. “The court’s decision was based solely on a procedural issue and not the substantive matters addressed in the bill.”

 The court determined that the law violated Oklahoma’s single-subject rule which requires legislation only deal with one issue at the time. SB 1878 was an omnibus bill that addressed five abortion-related issues.

 Besides the ultrasound provision the law required that distribution of the abortion pill RU-486 follow federal protocol, a logical standard for administration of a lethal drug. In an attempt to prohibit coercive abortions the law required abortion clinic to display a simple sign stating that no-one can force a woman to have an abortion against her will. Along with protecting the essential right of conscience, the law would have prevented wrongful birth lawsuits that argue a child should have never been born.

 “When all is said and done and the dust has settled from today’s ruling we fully expect that each of these laws will be given full effect in Oklahoma,” Balch said.

 The National Right to Life Committee, the nation’s largest pro-life group is a federation of affiliates in all 50 states and 3,000 local chapters nationwide.  National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

 # # #

New Resources on Abortion in Health Care

WASHINGTON (August 15, 2009) – The purpose of this e-mail is to alert you to a number of new documents available on the NRLC website, dealing with the abortion-related implications of the health-care restructuring bills that are being pushed by the White House.  The new resources include the following:

 – A new and detailed NRLC memorandum that documents the abortion-related problems with the two bills that President Obama and the White House are pushing:  Senator Kennedy’s bill (as yet unnumbered) and the House Democratic leadership bill, H.R. 3200.  This analysis contains numerous citations to primary sources.  It includes an examination of the Capps Amendment, a “phony compromise” that was written by hard-core pro-abortion lawmakers and adopted over pro-life objections in one House committee on July 30.  Among other objectionable elements, the Capps Amendment explicitly authorizes coverage of all elective abortions in the proposed new government health insurance program (the “public option”).  This memo, dated August 13, 2009, can be viewed or downloaded here (PDF format).

 – A one-page summary of abortion-related problems with the bills, here.

 – An August 5, 2009, Associated Press story, “Government insurance would allow coverage for abortion,” by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, here.

 – A detailed update on the current state of the debate in Congress, sent to NRLC affiliates and supporters nationwide on August 7 in the form of a page 1 article in the National Right to Life News.  This article can be viewed in your web browser here or downloaded in PDF format from here.

 – A special webpage set up by NRLC to highlight the pro-abortion activities of Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Oh.), who impersonates a pro-life lawmaker in the media in order to undercut the efforts of the real pro-life lawmakers of both parties, here.

 – A new letter sent to members of the U.S. House by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on August 11, urging the lawmakers to vote against the “rule” – the procedural bridge by which H.R. 3200 would be brought to the House floor in September — unless the rule allows consideration of amendments to remove the pro-abortion components from the bill.  To view or download the letter (PDF format), click here.

Youc an also visit www.nrlc.com/AHC/index.html for these and other documents on abortion in healthcare.

Staying Current?

As we all know, the health care debate in Washington is changing on an almost hourly basis.  Even with the House in recess and the Senate getting ready to leave town for the rest of August, things can change quickly.  If you haven’t already checked out the latest alert from our Federal Legislation Deparment, head over to National Right to Life’s Legislative Action Center at www.nrlactioncenter.com.  Even if you have been there, it’s best to make the Action Center part of your regular rounds on the web.  The Action Alert on health care is updated constantly (last update as of this post is August 1) to keep up with the changing landscape.

Also, check out the latest Today’s News and Views from our NRL News Editor, Dave Andrusko.  You can sign up to have it delivered to your inbox.  Or you can follow us on Twitter – TN&V is tweeted daily. (www.twitter.com/nrlc). 

And, of course, be sure to check back in here for the latest news from the Communications Department.   Congress may be in recess, but we’ve got work to do!

A MUST-Read: NRL Academy Graduation Address

Last Friday, we held graduation ceremonies for the NRL Academy Class of 2009.  Below is the address that Burke Balch, who does double-duty as director of the Powell Center for Medical Ethics and as academic director for the Academy, gave to the students during the ceremony.  It inspired not only the students, but all of us in attendance and we wanted to share it with you.  Please forward on to any and all appropriate lists.

 If you’re interested in more information about the Academy, or are interested in sending a student to the 2010 NRL Academy, you can contact Megan McCrum at (202) 626-8825 or megan.mccrum@gmail.com.

ADDRESS TO THE ACADEMY GRADUATES
 NRL Academy Graduation Ceremony, July 31, 2009
Burke J. Balch, Academic Director

            “These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

             My friends:

            Let us tonight openly face the stern truth, directly and boldly: as we assemble for the graduation of the Class of 2009 of the National Right to Life Academy, there is all too much to unite our time with the darkest days of 1776 when Thomas Paine penned those lines.

            We have just seen the election of a President who is so sworn a foe of the helpless children yet within their wombs that he is pledged to support a bill that would strike down all legislation that might meaningfully protect any of them from violent death.

            The foes of life confront us on every side.  To the demand for unabated abortions is now joined a swelling call for euthanasia.

            The cry of almost all the seats of leadership, of the formers as of the purveyors of public opinion, seems ever against the protection of the helpless and the vulnerable.

            Do we look to the scientists, to illustrate with compelling proofs the humanity of the victims?  The National Academy of Sciences, the scientific journals, all the organs of the scientific establishment, with rare exception instead loudly agitate for inhuman experimentation upon the victims, and the exploitation of their organs for transplant.

            Do we look to the doctors, trained to heal and schooled to save life?  The American Medical Association, which in the 19^th Century led the effort to protect unborn children, educating legislators and the public about their living existence from the very moment of conception, today lends its prestige and support to those of its members whose daily occupation is to kill them.

            Walk into virtually any campus, virtually any newsroom, virtually any place where the educated, the well-to-do, the elite gather, and dare to assert the human equality of the very young, of those not yet born–and you will be met less with rebuttal than with scorn.

            My friends, in America of 2009, you will know from all the organs of sophisticated opinion that abortion is respectable–and that we in the pro-life movement are not.

            It is, we think, the world turned upside down.  How can it be sophisticated and civilized to be discriminatory, and beyond the bounds of respectability to insist on human equality?  How can it be sophisticated and civilized to be violent, and beyond the bounds of respectability to call for loving alternatives to violence?  How can it be sophisticated and civilized to dehumanize and destroy the helpless and vulnerable, and beyond the bounds of respectability to seek their protection?  How?

            My friends, in history’s scale we are not alone in lack of respectability.  The well-known PBS series on the Civil War included this quote from historian Barbara Fields:

             Those appointed or self-appointed as spokesmen for “respectable” opinion in the loyal states agreed [that the war was an issue between free, white citizens: between unionists and secessionists] even when they disagreed heatedly on the conclusion to be drawn from it.  Some might believe that property rights, including rights to human property, must be held inviolable, others that slavery must not be allowed to spread, yet others that neither goal mattered compared to preserving the Union undisturbed.  Nevertheless, as respectable citizens of sound and practical sense, all concurred that the aggrieved parties in the struggle of North against South were white citizens, and that the issue should be decided on the basis of what would best promote such citizens’ desires and interests.

            But wars, especially civil wars, have a way of making respectability scandalous and scandalousness respectable, and that is just what the American Civil War did. Abruptly, people whose point of view had never been respectable became the voice not just of morality but of practical common sense as well: abolitionists, black and white, calling not just for the containment of slavery but for its eradication; free black people demanding a right to take an active part in the war; and especially the slaves themselves, insisting on the self-evident truth that their liberty, like everyone else’s was . . .  inalienable.

             In 1844, James Russell Lowell wrote a poem to summon his generation to the fight for what was right rather than currently respectable:

           Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,

            In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;

            Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,

            And the choice goes by forever, ‘twixt that darkness and that light.

             Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,

            Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ‘tis prosperous to be just;

            Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,

            Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

             For what truth, for what good, do we of the pro-life movement fight?  You will recall that in Roe v. Wade Justice Blackman deemed it necessary, before elevating abortion to a constitutional right,  to try to discredit the Hippocratic Oath, by which for millennia new physicians had pledged to refrain from abortion and euthanasia.  The great anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote this about the epochal significance of that Hippocratic Oath, now cast aside by contemporary medical schools who substitute far other words for their graduation ceremonies:

             For the first time in our tradition there was a complete separation between killing and curing.  Throughout the primitive world, the doctor and the sorcerer tended to be the same person.  He with power to kill, had power to cure, including specially the undoing of his own killing activities.  He who had power to cure would necessarily also be able to kill.

            With the Greeks the distinction was made clear.  One profession, the followers of Asclepius, were to be dedicated completely to life under all circumstances, regardless of rank, age, or intellect.  The life of a slave, the life of the Emperor, the life of a foreign man, the life of a defective child.

            This is a priceless possession which we cannot afford to tarnish.  But society always is attempting to make the physician into a killer–to kill the defective child at birth, to leave the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient.

            It is the duty of society to protect the physician from such requests.

             The man who was assassinated in Ford’s Theater right across the street from our headquarters, who died in a building just two doors away from where we gather tonight, wrote these words to the Congress:

             Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.  We of this . . . generation will be remembered in spite of ourselves.  No personal significance or insignificance can save one or the other of us.  What we do will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.  We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth.

             Solemnly I assure you: each of you is called to serve.  In what role and in what manner your individual contribution can best be given must depend on circumstances and your own appraisal of your talents and opportunities.   But whatever particular way you are called to serve –

            Let it never be said of this movement and of your generation that when the time of testing came, you fell away. 

            Let it rather be said, by the historians of the 21^st Century, that in the darkest hour– when the fight for life seemed to tremble on the edge of being lost– a stalwart band yet raised high the torch of truth and the lamplight of compassion and with renewed effort and unremitting dedication found somewhere and somehow the way again to turn the tide and stem the age of death.

            We have done our best to help you take the torch of leadership from we who go before.  And now, we send you forth to bear onwards that torch of truth, that lamp of compassion– that fight for life– with our blessing, our support, and our hope.

Pelosi Double Talk

Pelosi Doubletalk on Abortion:  Hear House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) duck, weave, stammer, and prevaricate in response to a question from CNN’s John King about whether the Obama health bill will pay for abortions (July 26, 2009). 

Letter to Senate on Sotomayor

The following letter was sent by National Right to Life to members of the U.S. Senate on July 27, 2009.   

 July 27, 2009

 The Honorable Harry Reid
Majority Leader
United States Senate
S-221 The Capitol   
Washington, D.C.  20510

The Honorable Mitch McConnell
Republican Leader
S-230 The Capitol
Washington, D.C.  20510

Dear Leader Reid and Leader McConnell:

On behalf of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of right-to-life organizations in all 50 states, we write to express the opposition of our organization to the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

 As a judge, Ms. Sotomayor has encountered little in the way of abortion-related litigation, either at the district court or the court of appeals.  In the single ruling that she authored that bore directly on an abortion-related federal policy, Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush, the result was unambiguously governed by the precedents of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Second Circuit.  Yet, there are many troubling indications that Ms. Sotomayor believes that it is the proper role of the U.S. Supreme Court to construct and enforce constitutional doctrines on social policy questions, even where the text and history of the Constitution provide no basis for removing an issue from the realm of lawmaking by the duly elected representatives of the people.

 Legal abortion on demand was imposed by seven Supreme Court justices in Roe v. Wade.  Roe was an exercise in judicial legislation, aptly branded “an exercise of raw judicial power” by dissenting Justice Byron White.  The ruling lacked any real basis in the text of the Constitution, and imposed a policy that was completely at odds with the intent of the lawmakers who crafted and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. 

 The evidence indicates that Ms. Sotomayor approves of the Roe ruling and approves of the type of judicial activism that produced it.  For a period of 12 years (1980-1992), prior to becoming a judge, Ms. Sotomayor served on the governing board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), and for part of that time she was the chair of the PRLDEF Litigation Committee.  During her tenure on the board, the PRLDEF was actively involved in litigation that attempted to persuade the Supreme Court to expand the judge-created “right to abortion,” often beyond what the Court was willing to embrace.  During this period, the fund joined briefs at the U.S. Supreme Court in six abortion-related cases.  These briefs urged the Court to regard abortion as a “fundamental right” (a right on the level of freedom of speech), to apply the strictest standard of scrutiny when reviewing abortion-regulated laws, and thereby to nullify informed consent requirements (including those involving ultrasound), waiting periods, parental notification requirements, restrictions on taxpayer funding of abortion, and even record keeping requirements. The PRLDEF’s own “statement of interest” in three of these cases said that the PRLDEF  “opposes any efforts to overturn or in any way restrict the rights recognized in Roe v. Wade.” 

 During her recent confirmation hearings, Ms. Sotomayor suggested that she was only aware of this litigation activity in the most general terms, and had no responsibility for or awareness of the substance of the briefs.  Frankly, this testimony was not very believable.  Ms. Sotomayor was a Yale Law School graduate who, according to many accounts, is exceedingly – even excessively – detail oriented on the legal matters in which she is involved.  More believable is what the New York Times reported on May 29, 2009, after interviewing various parties who were directly involved in the PRLDEF litigation activity during this period:  “Ms. Sotomayor stood out, frequently meeting with the legal staff to review the status of cases, several former members said. . . . .The board monitored all litigation undertaken by the fund’s lawyers, and a number of those lawyers said Ms. Sotomayor was an involved and ardent supporter of their various legal efforts during her time with the group.”

 If confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ms. Sotomayor will no longer be constrained by the precedents of that Court, including the precedents in which the Court upheld laws requiring notification of a parent before performing an abortion on a minor, requiring a pre-abortion waiting period, barring public funding of abortion, and – by a single vote, in 2007 – banning partial-birth abortion.  Nor, it appears, will she feel greatly constrained by the text and history of the Constitution, in which Roe v. Wade and its progeny find no support. 

 Because the available evidence strongly suggests that once on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor will seek to nullify abortion-related laws adopted through the normal legislative processes of our democracy, consistent with the extreme legal theories with which she was associated before being appointed to the federal bench, National Right to Life urges all senators to vote against her confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Respectfully,

David N. O’Steen, Ph. D.
Executive Director 

Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director

cc:  Members of the United States Senate