DriveThru – Get What You Need

Fact:  71 percent of Americans don’t want their tax dollars being used to pay for abortions under the government health care proposal.

Fact:  150,000 Americans signed a Focus Action petition to their lawmakers asking them to keep government funding of abortion out of the health care bills.

Fact:  The current health care bills still include government funding of abortion.

Fact:  Congress needs a wake-up call.

So what did Focus on the Family Action do about all this? We took those 150,000 petitions straight to Capitol Hill.  And the media showed up.  And so did 10 U.S. representatives and senators.  And collectively, we called on Congress to listen to the voices of tens of millions of Americans across this country who do not want their tax dollars being used to pay for abortions in any government health care plan.

On hand to speak on behalf of Focus on the Family Action was Tom Minnery, Senior Vice President of Government and Public Policy, and he was joined by almost a dozen lawmakers, like Senators Sam Brownback and Jim DeMint, and Representatives Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, Mary Fallin, and Lincoln Davis.

And every single petition was hand-delivered to the appropriate lawmaker.  I know that–because I was part of the team who delivered them.  What a great experience.

You can watch the entire news conference here or just watch our Focus Action Update video summary of the conference.  If video’s not your thing, you can simply read our wrap-up of the press conference and petition delivery

We’ll be watching what our lawmakers do as a health care bill (yet to be determined) heads to both chambers of Congress for a vote.  We hope and expect that there will be some maneuvering by pro-life lawmakers in the House and the Senate to offer language that would exclude abortion funding from the bill, since all other attempts in committee were voted down by the pro-abortion Democrat majority.

And late last week, Democrat Alan Mollohan was joined by 29 other House Democrats in sending a letter to Speaker Pelosi asking her to adopt language similar to the Hyde Amendment that would prevent federal funds from being used for abortion.  This letter is the third group letter signed by pro-life Democrats concerned about abortion in health care reform.  Will Democrat leadership in the House listen this time?