Posted on 09/26/2002 11:02:30 AM PDT by Coleus
Check to see if your congressman voted AGAINST this bill and FREEP him if he did and congratulate your congressman who voted FOR this bill.
Our NJ Congressional Delegation, including 3 Roman Catholic Congressman: Pascrell, Pallone and Menendez, voted Against allowing Doctors and Hospitals right to choose to not commit abortions.
The legislation passed 229-189 with NJ 4-8-1 with Marge Roukema not voting.
To see the vote tally visit:
http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=2002&rollnumber=412
This is not a partisan issue. 37 Democrats voted for HR 4691 The Abortion Non-Discrimination Act. 24 Republicans, including Rodney Frelinghuysen, voted Against allowing medical professionals and institutions right to choose to not commit abortions.
Contact your Representative in NJ:
http://www.nje3.org/blitz/uscongress.html
Contact your Representative in the USA:
http://www.capwiz.com/nra/dbq/officials/directory/directory.dbq?command=congdir
From: The Pro-Life Infonet <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Reply-To: Steven Ertelt <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Subject: It's Still Legal to Oppose Abortion, Isn't It?
Source: National Review; September 25, 2002
It's Still Legal to Oppose Abortion, Isn't It?
by Kathryn Jean Lopez
[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Kathryn Jean Lopez is the executive editor of
National Review.]
You might think that any piece of legislation with the word
"non-discrimination" in it is just about automatically headed for easy
congressional passage. What politician wants to be on record as being in
favor of discrimination?
Well, it's just not so. At least if the issues involved are religion and
abortion.
The House of Representatives is set to take up the Abortion
Non-Discrimination Act (ANDA) this week. The goal of the bill is to protect
Americans' right to not have to pay for or otherwise participate in
abortions. Specifically, ANDA seeks to protect religious hospitals and other
health-care providers (clinics, insurers, nurses, doctors) who are opposed,
in conscience, to abortion, from having to have anything to do with them.
This has been one of the hottest "reproductive rights" issues over the last
few years. Very few statehouses haven't seen coercive bills seeking to force
religious -- often Catholic-hospitals to provide the whole gamut of so-called
"reproductive health" services, including abortion, all in the name of
"access." Currently 49 states (the exception is Vermont) have some kind of
conscience protection for health-care providers, though none of them are as
comprehensive as the proposed ANDA bill-which covers all health-care
"entities."
In this regard, one of the favorite topics among abortion advocates recently
has been hospital mergers. Planned Parenthood argues, in an action alert send
out to supporters this week, that health-care institutions, whatever their
affiliation, "operate in a secular sphere, and employ and serve people of
diverse backgrounds and faiths. Thus, their claimed right to refuse to
provide these services imposes serious burdens on people who do not share
their religious views."
The ANDA bill, says PP, "would allow the 'conscience' of the entity to trump
the 'conscience' and needs of the women they serve. . . . This is wrong."
What is not wrong, however, in Planned Parenthood's estimation, is "the
entity" -- i.e. actual private organizations and Americans -- being forced by
law to provide services that the people who make up the organizations believe
to be morally prohibited. In fact, these hospitals often believe the very
essence of their work is founded on an opposition to the taking of a human
life. It's a principle that all of medicine -- whether the practitioners were
religious, agnostic, or atheist -- once considered at its very core.
Even a nonsectarian hospital can get in legal trouble under the current
regime. In Alaska, Valley Hospital's (elected) board decided that it did not
want to continue letting a community OB/GYN use hospital facilities to
perform abortions. The board's decision meant that abortion was no longer
available at the hospital except in cases of "rape, incest, and danger to the
life of the mother -- exactly the same policy the federal government has had
in Medicaid and its other health programs for many years," as board member
Karen Vosburgh told the House Energy and Commerce committee this summer.
As Vosburgh told the committee, an Alaska court's subsequent decision (upheld
by the state supreme court) to prohibit Valley Hospital from making such a
decision "potentially places all hospitals in our state in a 'Catch-22'
situation. If you are a non-religious hospital you have no First Amendment
claim of religious freedom, so you must provide abortions. If you are a
religious hospital with a 'free exercise' claim, respect for your right of
conscience may be seen as showing favoritism to religion, so you may still
have to provide abortions."
It's just not Planned Parenthood and the overt abortion-advocacy groups
actively opposing ANDA. The American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive
Freedom Project sent a representative to the Hill earlier in the summer to
argue that the bill would unfairly restrict women from abortion,
contraception, and even simple counseling.
The groups lobbying against ANDA have grabbed the talking points from their
anti-abortion folder without focusing on the actual legislation they are so
enthusiastically opposing. In fact, if this were not the narrow clarification
that ANDA is, pro-lifers would likely be debating amongst themselves, some
saying that the bill does not go far enough into specifics, into the realm of
abortifacient so-called contraception, for instance. But these are battles
for another day-having nothing to do with this piece of legislation.
Simply put, this isn't a bill about abortion politics. It's a bill about
freedom. What abortion advocates have been arguing when it comes to "access"
is that they would see rather a hospital merger not go through-and a hospital
potentially shut down -- than allow a hospital to choose not to participate
in what its employees and founders believe to be murder of a human life. For
them, this is not about freedom. Their opposition to ANDA is a backdoor way
to oppose any restrictions on women getting abortions whenever, wherever. As
Brigham Young University Law School professor Lynn Wardle has put it,
"zealous abortion activists continue to try to use the powers of government
to compel participation in and payment for and coverage of abortion.
Specifically, they try to compel hospitals, clinics, provider groups, and
health-care insurers to provide facilities for, personnel for, and funding
for abortion."
In fact, despite the scare stories from those opposed to ANDA, federally
funded abortions would still be possible under ANDA. Nor is this a bill that
seeks to reverse Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that okayed abortion.
As a fact sheet put out by the Catholic Bishops' pro-life department notes,
"States can ensure access to any abortions they fund without forcing specific
providers against their will to provide these particular abortions. A
requirement that a state will contract only with a provider that offers
absolutely every reimbursable service would be an enormous barrier to
patients' access to care, as few providers in any state could meet such a
test."
The case for the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act is a simple one, despite the
heated rhetoric. As Pennsylvania congressman Joe Pitts put it at a hearing in
July, "Abortion is an elective surgery. It is not prenatal care. It is not
basic health care, as some of our friends would like us to believe. Private
hospitals should be able to decide what types of elective surgery they wish
to offer. If they don't want to provide abortions, they shouldn't have to."
That simplicity might give the bill a decent shot at passage. Tough sells on
pro-life issues, like Republicans Tom Davis and Fred Upton, are cosponsoring
ANDA. And some leading pro-life members -- along with the Catholic bishops,
an important voice on this issue in particular, given that there are over 600
Catholic hospitals in the U.S. (never mind other Catholic health-care
entities) -- are willing to push for this as a top priority for passage
before the end of the year (likely as part of a lame-duck session, after the
election). Rep. Pitts tells NRO: "I think there will be overwhelming support
for the bill when it comes up for a vote." In fact, as Pitts points out, even
President Clinton signed a less comprehensive conscience-clause bill in 1996.
Cases like the Alaska one, however, make the need for ANDA clear.
In fact, for some members, ANDA is not at all different from what they voted
for in 1996. Senator Olympia Snowe said on the Senate floor in 1996: "[The
amendment] does protect those institutions and those individuals who do not
want to get involved in the performance or training of abortion when it is
contrary to their beliefs . . . I do not think anyone would disagree with the
fact -- and I am pro-choice on this matter, but I do not think anybody would
disagree with the fact that an institution or an individual who does not want
to perform an abortion should do so contrary to their beliefs." She didn't
foresee how courts would interpret the law: as not including hospitals,
because they are "quasi-public" entities.
Of course, prospects in the Senate -- as is so often the case -- are murkier
than in the House.
As Lynn Wardle noted in his testimony this summer, ANDA "is a very small, but
very important, step in the right direction." Wardle tells NRO, "The basic
issue in the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act is forced abortion. A forced
abortion occurs not only when a woman is forced to have an abortion she does
not want, but also when a health-care provider is forced to provide or
participate in an abortion against her will. Even the Supreme Court abortion
cases are based on protecting voluntary choice. The right of individuals and
organizations of individuals to choose in accord with their conscience to not
have and to not participate in abortion must be protected against extremists
who are trying to coerce others to provide abortion services that extremists
want but which others find morally repugnant. That is what ANDA is about. It
protects freedom of choice, the freedom not to be forced to perform or
support abortion against one's moral beliefs."
But then, for some, there are issues much more important than choice and
non-discrimination: like making sure abortion is anything but rare. That's
why National Organization for Women calls ANDA "one of the most harmful bills
yet proposed."
--
The Pro-Life Infonet is a daily compilation of pro-life news and
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To prohibit certain abortion-related discrimination in governmental activities.
Abortion Non-Discrimination Act of 2002 - Amends the Public Health Service Act to prohibit the Federal Government, and any State or local government that receives Federal financial assistance, from discriminating against any health care entity because (in addition to current prohibited reasons) the entity refuses to provide coverage of, or pay for, induced abortions. Expands the definition of "health care entity" to include (in addition to physicians) other health professionals, a hospital, a provider sponsored organization, a health maintenance organization, a health insurance plan, and any other kind of health care facility, organization, or plan.
I'm not sure there are words to describe the mental imbalance these PP folks suffer from. Don't you just love this mentality of "women have a right to an abortion, have a right for someone else to pay for it and have a right to force someone to perform it"?
They will have to disband all churches, according to this reasoning.
Believing in right and wrong is now a violation of separation of church and state. And keeping your nose out of others' business is seen as helping their particular causes. In the view of these corrupt judges.
%%&%*$%%!@$@ ^They should be excommunicated. So sick of this crap.
Great catch, FreeTally. PP has a skewed eye on reality.
We tried to unseat him in the Primary Election, but I guess the Republicans in my district are just too freakin' stupid to realize that Kolbe is not a Republican and is not worthy of their votes. Jim Behnke, his only challenger, received about 28% of the vote. That's only 3% more than the psycho perennial candidate Sweeney got 2 years ago in the primary right after Kolbe "came out" of the closet.
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