So reports Politico: Under the agreement, President Barack Obama would sign an executive order ensuring that no federal funding will go to pay for abortion under the health reform plans. In addition, Stupak will get to state his concerns about abortion funding in the bill during a colloquy on the House floor during the debate. That is insufficient. Even if the EO [...]
National Review has the text of a proposed Executive Order that would prohibit funding of abortion -- a scheme necessary to get Bark Stupak and other pro-life Democrats on board with the Senate version of health care reform. (Yuval Levin doubts the EO's language "possibly be a draft of actual executive order language" and therefore might only be symoblic.) I entirely endorse Kathryn Jean Lopez's [...]
Worst job in the world this weekend? Democrat whip in the House of Representatives. Do they have the votes or don't they? Appears that no one knows, not even Nancy Pelosi. Talks to secure the votes of pro-life Democrats have broken down. The latest rumour is that there could be an executive order with Stupak-like language to satisfy pro-life Democrats. Don't believe it. Barack Obama [...]
Two days after his Foreign Affairs Minister reasserted that contraception and abortion would not be part of the Canadian government's plan for maternal health, Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to have reversed, or perhaps clarified, the government's position on contraception. Harper says that contraception will be included -- maybe. Or perhaps it was always included and it was not properly communicated. It is [...]
Is it any coincidence that the Democrats are pushing for a health care reform vote on the opening weekend of the NCAA men's basketball tournament? To answer my own question, no. After being in power for 14 months and eight months after the first of numerous deadlines, the Democrat leadership insists that reform must be passed this weekend and signed into law before the [...]
Intrade prediction market on whether Obamacare will become law (by June 30, 2010) falls from about $70 yesterday to under $35 today, the lowest point since March 3.
Great news reported on the front page of today's Globe and Mail: The Conservative government has offered an explanation for why it will exclude contraception from its initiative to improve the health of mothers in poor countries: Birth Control doesn't fit with saving lives. In no uncertain terms, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon yesterday ruled out any kind of family-planning programs being included [...]
At one point yesterday I was convinced that the Democrats had more than 220 votes and thus enough to pass their radical plan to reform health care. At another point, I figured they were about a half-dozen short of the 216 necessary to ram it through. Depending who you talk to, the feeling on The Hill is that the Democrats have enough [...]
At the University of British Columbia, pro-abortion demonstrators show their true colours by using their signs to block the Genocide Awareness Project message comparing abortion to past genocides. How very mature of those "pro-choice" students. Of course, in many jurisdictions abortion advocates have successfully used the power of the state to block pro-life sidewalk counselling, vigils and protests near abortion facilities. One might charge [...]
Grace-Marie Turner explains the Democrat thinking and complexities on the Slaughter Strategy and what Republicans can do about it all at NRO's Critical Condition. It speaks volumes that Obamacare cannot be passed honestly. Our esteemed editor and I have had a three-day long running email conversation on whether Democrats will risk electoral suicide to ram through the unpopular health care reform and we seem to [...]
According to an NRO interview with heroic pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak, an anti-life health care reform bill will be pushed through Congress one way or another. That is, even without the Stupak amendment language, a number of his pro-life colleagues were picked off by the Democrat leadership to support Obamacare. Stupak's view is that the leadership and some weary pro-life Congressman just want the whole health [...]
In November we reported that Redeemer College in Ancaster was going to host pro-abortion speaker Stephen Lewis. This month we cover the pro-life protest at Redeemer and the college's response to our original article. Note that the college did not refute what we reported -- that they were a Christian college inviting a strongly pro-abortion speaker who holds numerous positions at odds with a Christian [...]
The Swiss reject the idea of lawyers for animals by better than a two-to-one margin. That isn't to say that the country has sane laws surrounding animal rights: Switzerland tightened its laws two years ago and now has among the strictest rules anywhere when it comes to caring for pets and farm animals. The country's 160-page animal protection law states exactly how [...]
I had a post yesterday at Sobering Thoughts explaining guessing why I think the Tories opened the Pandora's Box of rethinking Canada's national anthem for its alleged sexism in the lyrics "in all thy son's command": I think what baffles people is the question of why the government would bother doing this. Let me speculate on the motivations: politics. First, be assured [...]
Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life addresses abortion and health care in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. She examines whether or not President Barack Obama's "balanced" approach to abortion in his health care reform maintains the status quo (the Hyde Amendment) as Democrats claim or whether it "opens the spigots" to abortion funding. Yoest describes how Obamacare will expand [...]