DriveThru – Get What You Need

Just so you know, the health care debate isn’t dead.  We still need you to make your voice heard on health care — even if you’ve already done so.

The President is holding a bipartisan meeting on Feb. 25th to try to hammer out a new version of the health care bill.   (Although it looks like he might have a bill crafted by the time the summit begins).

What that means is now is the time to remind your lawmakers where you stand on health care, particularly on the funding of abortions with federal dollars.  The Massachusetts election may have slowed down the Democrats from pushing their current health care version forward, but it hasn’t stopped them altogether.

So make sure your two U.S. senators and representative know that whatever bill they come up with, at a minimum, needs to keep your money from being used to pay for abortions.

Don’t know who your 2 U.S. senators and representative are? It’s easy to find them on our website by typing in you zip code here. You can even find the closest district office to you, in case you want to make an in-person visit!

So, Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat, in case you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last 24 hours.

And now Senator Max Baucus is saying that the Dems might use a complicated “budget reconciliation” process to pass health care, because it only requires 51 votes for passage.  Take that Scott Brown.  And the rest of America.  Full steam ahead on health care!

It’s like that guy who keeps asking you for a date, and you keep turning him down politely, until you finally have to just play your mean card and slap him so he’ll stop asking.  The Massachusetts election result was that slap.

Then you have President Obama saying the Senate should wait for Brown to arrive before moving on health care and oh by the way, last night’s election loss was Bush’s fault.

And Barney Frank said he thinks health care is dead but also, get rid of that pesky 60 vote cloture rule thingy so we can pass it.

The truth is that last night’s election result really *was* a barometer of how Massachusetts voters–and the rest of the country–feel about the Dems’ health care reform. But many Dems don’t want to say it, or say it fully.

Massachusetts didn’t suddenly turn into a red state after 60 years of blue.  Voters simply turned red with anger over the failed health care proposal being rammed down their throats by Democrats who rejected the writing on the wall polls, ignored the townhall complaints, and dismissed the tea parties.

And that means that as much as Americans may be disenchanted with politics, they still care enough to remind Washington that they won’t be trampled upon.  God bless America.

You might think that the health care debate is over.  That you’re stuck with whatever abortion-funding, higher-taxing, premium-increasing, health care “reform” plan Congress comes up with.  But that’s not true—yet.

You still have time to stop this ugly train.  You still have time to persuade your U.S. representative to vote NO when the bill comes to the floor.

Right now, the House and the Senate are working out the differences in their versions of the bill behind closed doors.  When they’re done—they’ll quickly throw the bill on the House and Senate floors for a vote. That’s why *right now* is so important.  Now is the time to contact your U.S. representative and tell him or her that the health care plan is unacceptable, particularly because the Senate-passed version includes abortion funding.

And while phone calls are good, in-person visits to your representative’s home district office are better.  Check out this toolkit to help you set up a meeting at your lawmaker’s office.  You still have time!

Senator Reid is determined to somehow jam his unpopular health care bill through by Christmas.  That means we could see a vote as early as 1AM on Monday morning.  Talk about voting on legislation under the cover of darkness.

The most important vote will come first—the 60-vote threshold to end debate on the bill itself, known as cloture.  If the Democrats cannot  even get 60 votes to end debate and move to a final vote on the bill, they’re in trouble.

Call or email your senators right now and say vote NO on cloture.  The health care bill, with all of its problems, still includes federal funding of abortion and subsidizes private plans that cover abortion.  And if you live in Nebraska, Senator Ben Nelson MUST hear from you.  The Dems really need his vote to pass health care and so far, he’s held off from supporting the bill because of the abortion funding provisions. But who knows how long he’ll stay the course.  Call him.

While Saturday night’s 60-39 vote to move the health care bill forward was disappointing, all is not lost. 

Americans have all this week, while their senators are home for the Thanksgiving break, to contact local offices and urge their senators to vote NO on the 60-vote hurdle coming up after the holiday.  Did we mention the bill still includes federal funding of elective abortion? Yes, it does.  And we now know that the “reform” will cost far more than the $849 billion that the Dems are touting.  

So eat a lot of turkey this Thanksgiving, and while you’re at it, make a quick phone call to your senators’ local offices and say “vote NO” on the next health care vote coming up.  Just go here, type in your zip code, and then click on your senators’ names to find the contact information for their state offices.  Quick and easy.

Remember when President Obama said that under his health care plan (the Democrat plan), no federal dollars will be used to pay for abortion? 

And remember how Democrats repeatedly told constituents concerned about abortion funding in health care that the Hyde Amendment  “will not change,” – leading many constituents to believe that the Hyde Amendment would keep federal dollars from going toward abortion or plans that cover abortion? 

The message the Democrats have been sending to the public is don’t worry, we took care of it.  No federal funding of abortion.  No problem.

Well, last Saturday, 64 Democrats and 176 Republicans took the extra step to make sure that the government health care plan didn’t fund abortion.  They passed the Stupak/Pitts amendment which guaranteed that no federal dollars would pay for abortion or any health care plan that covers abortion.

And out of nowhere, Democrats are mad, mad, madder than my mom was when one time I threw a rock at her car because I didn’t want to leave a friend’s house.

Why would they care? Didn’t the Democrats’ health care bill already exclude abortion funding? Didn’t the President promise that no federal dollars would be used to pay for abortion? (Yes).  So why all the complaining over an amendment that simply codified what Democrats were saying was already in place?  

Because, as we’ve known all along, they prevaricated.

Here’s a quick recap from Saturday’s vote on health care reform.

The House of Representatives passed its version of government health care “reform” 220-215.  39 Democrats and 176 Republicans voted against the bill.  219 Democrats joined 1 Republican, Joseph Cao (Louisiana), to pass the bill. 

The Stupak/Pitts amendment that would prohibit federal funds from being used to pay for abortion or to cover any part of the costs of a health plan that includes abortion coverage, also passed, 240-194.  64 Democrats and 176 Republicans voted in favor.  One lone Republican, John Shadegg, voted “present.”  This vote is a win for pro-lifers — in a Democrat-controlled Congress.  Are those pigs flying?

And yes, it’s possible that the Stupak amendment could be stripped out in conference committee when the two chambers work out the differences in their versions.  But health care  “reform” has to clear the Senate first.

Moving forward, we await the unveiling of Senate Democrats’ version of health care.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) says  he’ll release it after the Congressional Budget Office finishes tallying the cost of the plan, and that his version will “look markedly different” from the House bill.  Interestingly, Senator Joe Lieberman is promising to keep the bill from coming to the floor if it contains a public option plan.

I’ve mentioned it before but it bears repeating:  the only thing Americans oppose more than government health care is government health care that funds abortion.  Perhaps the Senate will listen.

It seems that Rep. Brad Ellsworth, an Indiana Democrat who traditionally votes pro-life, is helping the Democrat majority work up “compromise” language to exclude abortion funding from the health care bill.

Only funny thing, the proposed language doesn’t actually exclude abortion funding.

No surprise there.  Democrats tried already—via the Capps Amendment—to change the bill to make it “sound” like they weren’t using federal funds to pay for abortions.  We didn’t go for that attempt, either.

Perhaps Democrats on the Hill think that pro-life activists, pro-life Americans and pro-life lawmakers cannot identify a phony pro-life amendment when we see one? 

The only thing that will work is for Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer to allow a vote on the Stupak-Pitts amendment.  The real pro-life amendment.  The one that would ensure that no federal funds are used for abortion and plans that cover abortion. 

One has to wonder what Rep. Ellsworth was up to—did he cut a deal with his party?  We don’t know.  What we do know is that the House health care bill still explicitly funds abortion and not even a good, pro-life Democrat can make us believe otherwise.

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?

About once a year, the Guttmacher Institute (which operates as the research arm of the abortion industry) releases a report on the number of illegal abortions in the world and uses the report to argue for legalizing abortion in those nations.  The latest report was released yesterday.

Abortions are illegal in many developing nations, including in Latin America and Africa.  Guttmacher’s report contends that making abortion legal in these places would make abortion safe – thus saving women’s lives.  (This apart from the fact that abortion is always fatal for the woman’s preborn baby.)  

Yet, a broader look at the status of overall medical care in these developing nations leads to a different conclusion: it’s a lack of sanitary, quality medical care, including obstetrical care, that brings about a high mortality rate for women surrounding pregnancy – not bans on abortion.  

This is documented in an on-line report by Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Global Outreach entitled, “Does legalizing abortion protect women’s health?”   Its research found that the best way to reduce maternal mortality is to provide women in developing nation’s access to the same quality health care available to women in developed ones.

Experience tells us that legalized abortion leads to more abortion, and in developing countries without adequate medical care, more women would die or be harmed if abortion is liberalized.  Women in developing nations don’t need abortion; they need clean water, food and education for their children. The Guttmacher Institute should get in touch with the real needs of these women and stop promoting death for their children instead.