Friends,
I really had to work to reduce the number of items from this past week that I think you need to pay close attention to. I hope you find these helpful.
Blessings,
Barrett
The Ryan-DeLauro False Pro-Life Bill
The pressure to accept the bill by Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) as a compromise pro-life bill is mounting. Don’t be fooled by all the talk. The bill is not a compromise bill. The only people compromising on this bill are people with pro-life values. The only “compromise” pro-abortion supporters made was not to make the bill all about abortion. But make no mistake, there are abortion provisions in this bill. The remarkable group Democrats for Life of America is so irritated with Tim Ryan's ongoing support of pro-abortion policies, including his aggressive support of this bill, that they recently removed him from their board.
Earlier, I gave you some information about this bill. Below is my expanded assessment of it. You can download the assessment, which includes the actual language in the bill, at http://erlc.com/documents/pdf/ryan-deLauro-hr3312-abortion-connection.pdf.
The Ryan-DeLauro (H.R. 3312) Abortion Connection
The Ryan-Delauro bill (H.R. 3312), referred to as the “Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion, and Supporting Parents Act,” is being promoted as “common ground” legislation in the abortion wars. In reality, the bill is woefully misguided. While it does provide some helpful safety net services for women who find themselves in a difficult pregnancy, there is no doubt that H.R. 3312 will result in more abortions.
H.R. 3312 will facilitate more use of the abortion-inducing Plan B “morning after” pill, increase the number of “family planning” clinics on college campuses, and provide increased funding for Planned Parenthood. The following evidence from the bill is undeniable.
I. The Plan B “Morning after Pill” Connection
·Sec. 102 of the bill includes funding for teaching teenagers about all forms of contraception and encouraging its increased use.
·Section 301 of the bill says those who use federal funds for teen pregnancy prevention programs must “increase contraceptive use among sexually active teens” and can offer “preventive health services” as a means to reduce teen pregnancy.
·Because Plan B is referred to in the medical literature as a contraceptive, the Ryan-DeLauro bill will include teaching teenagers about it and encouraging its use. Plan B is more than a contraceptive. It also causes abortion of a young embryo by preventing implantation in the uterine wall.
II. The Family Planning Connection
·Sec. 602 of the bill specifically calls for establishing “campus-based family planning services” among community college students.
·Sec. 701 of the bill mandates that states include family planning services for all Medicaid patients.
·It is established fact that “family planning services” include abortion services and contraception distribution.
III. The Planned Parenthood Connection
·Sec. 1002 more than doubles current Title X funding to $700 million, and additional funds as needed in future years.
·Planned Parenthood is a primary recipient of these funds. In their 2007-2008 fiscal year, Planned Parenthood received nearly $350 million dollars from the government for their “family planning” services. In that same year, their clinics performed more than 305,000 abortions, more than 1/4 of all the abortions performed in the United States.
·While federal funds cannot be used for abortion, Planned Parenthood is able to use these funds for their other activities and administrative costs, freeing up money from other sources, including from the states, to fund their abortion and abortion-related activities.
IV. Conclusion
The Ryan-DeLauro bill (H.R. 3312) is an abortion bill. It provides federal funding and stipulations that will result in more abortions. Plan B is an abortion-inducing drug. Family planning services often include abortion and abortion-related offerings among their services. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, will receive funding under this bill.
If someone is looking for a legitimate abortion-neutral bill, they should support the Pregnant Women Support Act, (S. 1032, H.R. 2035). The Pregnant Women Support Act offers nearly all of the safety-net features for pregnant women contained in the Ryan-DeLauro bill plus many others, without any of the pro-abortion compromise. Those who are truly interested in reducing abortions in this country should support the Pregnant Women Support Act and oppose the Ryan-DeLauro bill.
The Collapsing Obama Bubble
While President Obama continues to enjoy high personal ratings, the country is becoming more nervous about his policies. The Tea Parties were the first evidence of eroding public confidence. The conflict at congressional town hall meetings is the next. These meetings are becoming very confrontational. People are worried about what is going to happen to their health care, and rightly so. Two trends are responsible for raising the level of public angst that is now being focused on Obama and the liberal congress. The first is the growing list of unpopular policies they are pushing. Just consider this sampling:
+Misspent stimulus, to date only $80 billion of the $800 billion has been spent, and most of the money is to be spent on liberal pet projects,
+Unemployment now officially at least 9.4%, but maybe as high as 16.3%,
+Bloated $3.6 trillion budget that drives up the national debt to $9.3 trillion in 10years,
+Cap and Trade global warming legislation, that creates less energy and higher costs,
+Erosions of pro-life protections, including loss of conscience protections for pro-life medical professionals, no abstinence education funding, and increases for Planned Parenthood,
+Government take-over of huge swaths of the economy, including insurance, banking, and GM,
+Government take-over of health care.
People can only take so much stress at one time. The more anxiety producing events (APE) they experience, the more resistant and fearful they become. It’s called going APE. Well, the country is going APE over all these anxiety producing events President Obama and the liberal congress are throwing at them. And there is no end in sight. The radical homosexual community continues to push their agenda. Liberals are about to pass their Hate Crimes bill, providing special DOJ protections for homosexuals, and last week they introduced the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which provides special workplace protections for homosexuals.
The other trend that is working against public confidence in the policies President Obama is pushing through with the help of liberals in congress is the growing list of discrepancies between what the President says and what he does. People are increasingly commenting that it is more important to watch what he does, because you cannot count on anything he says to have the meaning you think it has. He is being perceived by a growing number of people as deliberately deceptive with his words. This recent Commentary article by Peter Wehner, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/decoding-obama-15181, catalogues some of the worst examples:
+He said he would create 150,000 American jobs, but claimed success for saving or creating 150,000 jobs,
+He said he saved $2 trillion in the budget, but the money was never going to be spent,
+He said he opposes borrowing and spending, but then he engaged in massive borrowing and spending,
+He said he doesn’t want to run GM, but he controls everything it does,
+He said he doesn’t want to meddle in the private sector, but he constantly meddles in it,
+He said he wants bipartisan governance, but none of his policies have bipartisan involvement,
+He said he is against indefinite detention of terror suspects, but then he detains them indefinitely,
+He said he deplores Bush’s anti-terror tactics, but then he continues to use them,
+He said he would bring transparency to government, but then he obstructs efforts to get information,
+He said lobbyists are off limits, but then he hires the ones he likes,
+He said he wants to turn the page, but then he keeps going back to deflect criticism.
Here is how Wehner concludes this article:
"It is hardly unprecedented for a politician to rely on contradictory, misleading, and intellectually dishonest statements. But in only five months, Barack Obama – the man who campaigned on a new kind of politics, who ran on hope and against cynicism, and who insisted ‘words mean something’ – has set a pace that is going to be hard to match, and hopefully hard to sustain.
“'I have always had a sort of mania about words,' Malcolm Muggeridge said in a speech he delivered more than three decades ago. 'Words can be polluted even more dramatically and drastically than rivers and land and sea. There has been a terrible destruction of words in our time.' It is an irony that Barack Obama, a politician as gifted in both the written and spoken word as we have seen in decades, has contributed to the cheapening of them."
Health Care Horror Stories
You don’t want to miss this description, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/07/government_medicine_should_horrify_americans_97810.html, of the health care horrors people in England and Canada live with every day. Murdock includes these recently uncovered public comments by Obama in his pre-president days:
With these comments, it’s pretty clear where the President is headed with his health care plan. Where is this likely to lead? Murdock gives some very disturbing statistics from England and Canada that tell us precisely where:
+Breast cancer kills 25 percent of its American victims and 46 percent of its targets in the U.K.
+Prostate cancer is fatal to 19 percent of its American patients and 57 percent of Britons it strikes.
+The U.K.'s 2005 heart-attack fatality rate was 19.5 percent higher than America's.
+In Canada, some towns address the shortage of doctors with lotteries in which citizens compete for rare medical appointments.
+In 2008, the average Canadian waited 17.3 weeks from the time his general practitioner referred him to a specialist until he actually received treatment, 86 percent longer than the wait in 1993.
+Such sloth includes a median 9.7-week wait for an MRI exam, 31.7 weeks to see a neurosurgeon, and 36.7 weeks - nearly nine months - to visit an orthopedic surgeon.
The Shifting Political Scene
If you are wondering what people are talking about on the national political scene, I think this article, http://spectator.org/archives/2009/07/30/the-republican-recovery, from the American Spectator is the best summary of the current thinking that you could read. This article, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Terrible-new-poll-numbers-for-Obama-Democrats-52062972.html, from the Washington Examiner does a good job discussing the most recent polling data on the popularity of the Democrats and Republicans. Here is a key paragraph from that article:
"The poll has other bad news for Democrats and President Obama. The percentage of people who believe the country is on the wrong track has risen six points since April. The percentage of people who approve of the way Obama is handling the economy has dipped below 50 percent for the first time. The percentage of people who approve of his handling of the health care issue is 41 percent, with 46 percent disapproving. The percentage of people who have a positive opinion of Obama is down nine points since April. The percentage of people who say the president has strong leadership qualities, can be trusted to keep his word, will work with people of different viewpoints, is likable -- all those numbers are down."
The Republicans are recruiting many very prominent candidates to run in historically conservative districts. If the economy is still in the tank in 2010, there is a strong likelihood that many of them will win. When you add in the national mood on the health care issue, cap and trade global warming legislation, the Sotomayor confirmation, and many other issues that I list above, the stage is being set for a repeat of 1994.
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