Urge the U.S. Senate to protect religious freedom next week!
Call Now — U.S. senators to vote next week on pro-life Blunt Amendment! 

Take Action!

WASHINGTON — Phone calls to U.S. senators are urgently needed in support of a vital pro-life amendment that is likely to be voted on around February 28, or within a few days thereafter.  Please click on the “Take Action” link above, then enter your zip code in the “Call Now” box, and you will be shown the correct numbers to call and suggested points to make during your call.

The amendment has been offered by pro-life Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and is strongly supported by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC).  The text of the Blunt Amendment is taken from an NRLC-endorsed bill, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (S. 1467, H.R. 1179).  It would amend the Obama health care law (“ObamaCare”) to prevent the imposition of regulatory mandates that violate the religious or moral convictions of those who purchase or provide health insurance, such as the recent decree that virtually all employers — including religiously affiliated hospitals and schools — must purchase health insurance plans that cover all government-approved methods of birth control.

When President Obama’s health care legislation was under consideration in the Senate in 2009, NRLC warned that a provision dealing with “preventive health services” would empower the Secretary of Health and Human Services to mandate coverage of any medical service, including abortion, merely by adding the service to an expandable list.  Predictably, the Administration issued a decree in August, 2011, covering all FDA-approved birth control methods – a mandate that, unless overturned, will produce an irreconcilable conflict between conscience and the coercive force of government for many employers.  In recent months, the Administration’s “birth-control mandate” has been strongly characterized as an attack on fundamental religious liberties by the U.S. Catholic bishops, the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and the leaders of many other religious bodies.

But this is not a debate only about the specific parameters of the birth-control mandate.  Exactly the same statutory authority could be used by the Administration — as early as next year — to mandate that virtually all health plans pay for elective abortion on demand.

The Blunt Amendment goes to the heart of the problem by amending the ObamaCare law itself, to prevent provisions of the law from being used as a basis for regulatory mandates that violate the religious or moral convictions of those who purchase or provide health insurance.

PLEASE CALL TODAY!

Please click on the “Take Action” link above.  Enter your zip code in the “Call Now” box, and you will be shown the correct phone numbers to call for your two U.S. senators.  You will be shown suggested comments that you can make to the staff person who takes the call.  You’ll also be invited to use the simple “Your Feedback” tool to send NRLC a short email, reporting on how your call went, if you wish to do so.

To view a letter sent by NRLC to senators, which provides more details on this issue, click here.  To view additional information regarding the Obama Administration’s attacks on pro-life health care providers, click here.

February 14, 2012
                                                       RE: The District of Columbia Pain-Capable
                                                       Unborn Child Protection Act (S. 2103)

Dear Senator:

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the nationwide federation of state right-to-life organizations, urges you to cosponsor the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (S. 2103).

This vital legislation, which is a top priority for NRLC during 2012, was introduced on February 13 by Senator Mike Lee. (The House companion bill, H.R. 3803, was introduced on January 23 by Congressman Trent Franks.) The bill contains legislative findings and operative language very similar to bills already enacted in five states during 2010 and 2011: Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Alabama. None of these laws have faced any serious legal challenge to date.

Like those state laws, S. 2103 contains findings of fact regarding the medical evidence that unborn children experience pain at least by 20 weeks after fertilization (which is 22 weeks in the “LMP” system, or about the start of the sixth month), and prohibits abortion after that point, except when an acute physical condition endangers the life of the mother.

Some of the extensive evidence that unborn children have the capacity to experience pain, at least by 20 weeks, is available on the NRLC website at http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/Fetal_Pain/index.html

Additional state legislatures will be taking up similar legislation during the months ahead. However, there is one substantial jurisdiction over which the U.S. Constitution places legislative responsibility solely on the shoulders of the Congress: The District of Columbia. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution dictates unequivocally that Congress shall “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District . . .”

Currently, in our nation’s capital, unborn children may legally be killed at any point up to birth, for any reason. Abortions are advertised, and performed, in the sixth month and later. This means that unborn children who are capable of experiencing excruciating pain are killed every day – most often, by a method in which arms and legs are twisted off by brute manual force, as the abortionist guides his forceps using an ultrasound image. A medical illustration of this common method (“D&E”) is posted here.

Another advertised method, in the seventh month and later, involves thrusting a needle into the unborn child’s heart and injecting a lethal substance.

Under the Constitution, only the Congress – and, if he would, the President – have the responsibility for putting an end to these brutal practices. The National Right to Life Committee urges you to join the campaign to protect pain-capable unborn children in the nation’s capital, by adding your name as a cosponsor of S. 2103 (contact:Ryan_McCoy@lee.senate.gov), and by working for its expeditious enactment.
Respectfully,

Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee (NRLC)

February 14, 2012

                                             RE: Senator Blunt’s Respect for Rights of Conscience amendment

Dear Senator:

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the nationwide federation of state right-to-life organizations, strongly supports Senator Blunt’s amendment (No. 1520) to the pending transportation bill, and intends to include any roll call on the Blunt amendment in the NRLC scorecard of key pro-life issues for the 112th Congress.

The text of the amendment is taken directly from the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (S. 1467). It would amend the Obama health care law (“ObamaCare”) to prevent the imposition of regulatory mandates that violate the religious or moral convictions of those who purchase or provide health insurance.

When the health care legislation was pending in the Senate in 2009, NRLC warned that the “preventive health services” provision would empower the Secretary of Health and Human Services to mandate coverage of any medical service, including abortion, merely by adding the service to a fluid list. Predictably, the Administration has begun with a decree covering all FDA-approved birth control methods – a mandate that, unless overturned, will produce an irreconcilable conflict between conscience and the coercive force of government for many employers. But this is not a debate only about the specific parameters of the birth-control mandate. Exactly the same statutory authority could be used by the Secretary, next year or the year after that, to mandate that all health plans pay for elective abortion on demand.

This concern is underscored by the rationale that the Administration offered last week as part of its so-called “accommodation,” under which certain insurers will be directly required to offer coverage of birth control methods without copayments, while forbidden to charge anything extra for this option. The White House argued that the expanded use of birth control will save any health plan money, and therefore, nobody is really paying for it. The same twisted logic could be employed to justify the future abortion mandate: By ordering health plans to cover elective abortion, health plans would save the much higher costs of prenatal care, childbirth, and care for the baby.

(It is sometimes asserted that the ObamaCare law contains language prohibiting the federal government from mandating that health plans cover abortions. In reality, the law prevents the Secretary of HHS from including abortion in a list of federally mandated “essential health benefits,” but those provisions are entirely separate and distinct from the “preventive services” authority that the Administration has employed as the basis for the birth control mandate, and would employ for a future abortion mandate.)

The Blunt amendment goes to the heart of the problem by amending the ObamaCare law itself, to prevent provisions of the law from being used as a basis for regulatory mandates that violate the religious or moral convictions of those who purchase or provide health insurance. A vote against this amendment is, in effect, a vote to allow just such mandates. NRLC strongly urges your support for this vital pro-life amendment.
Respectfully,

                                       
Douglas Johnson                                                                     Susan T. Muskett, J.D.
Legislative Director                                                                 Senior Legislative Counsel

WASHINGTON– In response to criticism of its recent regulation requiring coverage of FDA-approved birth control drugs and devices, the White House today announced a purported “compromise” under which insurance plans will be required to provide the coverage in all plans, without charging anything additional for it.

The Administration position is that insurers can be required to provide the coverage for “free” because birth control is less expensive than childbirth.  The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the national federation of right-to-life organizations, issued the following comment, any part of which may be attributed to NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson:

“President Obama today promulgated a scam that, if he is re-elected, will allow him to mandate that every health plan in America cover abortion on demand,” said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.  “The same twisted logic will be applied:  By ordering health plans to cover elective abortion, health plans would save the much higher costs of prenatal care, childbirth, and care for the baby — and under the Obama scam, if a procedure saves money, then that means that you’re not really paying for it when the government mandates it.”

By this form of doublespeak, one could say that the federal Medicaid program was not really “funding abortion” when it paid for 300,000 abortions a year (prior to adoption of the Hyde Amendment in 1976), because after all, every abortion that the government paid for also saved the government money.

The Obama “you must pay, but nobody pays” scam might also be applied to other “cost-cutting” mandates.  Perhaps every health plan will be mandated to cover physician-assisted suicide, in states in which assisted suicide is legal.  After all, each suicide would result in a net savings to the plan, and under the Obama scam, that means it is really free and nobody really pays for it.

Some journalists have wrongly reported that the ObamaCare law contains language prohibiting the federal government from mandating that health plans cover abortions.  This is erroneous.  The law prevents the Secretary of Health and Human Services from including abortion in a list of federally mandated “essential health benefits.”  But the birth control mandate is based on an entirely different provision of the law, which allows the Secretary to mandate that all health plans cover any service that the Secretary places on a list of “preventive” services.  There is nothing in the law to prevent the Secretary from placing abortion, assisted suicide, or any other additional services on the preventive services list, nor does the Secretary require the agreement of any other authority in the government to do so — except, perhaps, the president.

At his press conference today, President Obama suggested that the birth-control mandate was recommended by “the nation’s leading medical experts.”  The actual make up of the handpicked panel that made the birth control recommendations was reported by Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online here (http://nrlc.co/wlEyK4).

NRLC supports enactment of the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (S. 1467, H.R. 1179)(http://nrlc.co/zKiSSV), which would allow health providers to decline to provide abortions or other specific medical services on the basis of religious belief or moral convictions.