Democrat-Controlled U.S. Senate Kills Pro-Life Bills

Favored by President Bush and Passed by U.S. House

 

WASHINGTON (October 3, 2002) – The U.S. Senate has become the graveyard for major pro-life legislation.

The two-year 107^th Congress is likely to end around mid-October, giving lawmakers a few weeks to campaign full-time before the November 5 general election.  When adjournment occurs, it appears that an unprecedented number of major pro-life bills -- already passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and supported by President Bush – will die because of obstructionism by the leaders of Senate Democrats.  The Democrats control the Senate by a single seat, 51-49.

In the House of Representatives, the Republicans continue to hold majority control as they have since 1995, keeping scheduling power and most key leadership positions in the hands of pro-life lawmakers, including Speaker Dennis Hastert -Il.), Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tx.), Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tx.), and Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wi.).  They have shepherded a succession of major pro-life bills through the House during 2001 and 2002.

Democrats took control of the Senate on June 5, 2001, when pro-abortion Senator Jim Jeffords (Vt.) quit the Republican Party and voted to make Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) the majority leader, displacing pro-life Republican Leader Trent Lott (R-Ms.).

The Senate Democratic leadership and most of the Democratic senators are profoundly hostile to pro-life positions.  Under Senate rules, the leaders of the majority party have broad powers to set the Senate’s schedule, and to advance or obstruct legislation. 

Daschle has used that power to obstruct and kill these important pro-life bills that were passed by the House, all of which President Bush would sign if they reached his desk: 

*  The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (H.R. 4965), passed by the House on July 24, 2002, 274-151.

* The Weldon-Stupak-Brownback legislation to ban all human cloning, including the cloning of human embryos (H.R. 2505, S. 1899), passed by the House on July 31, 2001, 265-162.

*  The Unborn Victims of Violence Act (H.R. 503), a bill to recognize as a legal victim any unborn child who is injured or killed during commission of a federal crime, passed by the House on April 26, 2001, 252-172.

*  The Child Custody Protection Act (H.R. 476), to make it a crime to take a minor across state lines for a secret abortion, if this abridges her parents’ right to be involved under their home-state law, passed by the House on April 17, 2002,  260-161.

*  The Abortion Non-Discrimination Act (H.R. 4691), to prohibit state and local governments from discriminating against hospitals and other health care providers for refusing to participate in abortions, passed by the House on September 25, 2002, 229-189.

One pro-life measure did make it all the way through the legislative process: The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (H.R. 2175), which was signed into law by President Bush on August 5, 2002.  This bill, backed by NRLC, establishes that any infant who is fully outside his or her mother and shows any signs of life is a legal person for all federal law purposes.  Daschle allowed the bill to clear the Senate on a voice vote because pro-abortion groups decided not to actively oppose it.

 

Judicial Nominations

The June, 2001 switch in party control placed pro-abortion Democrats in the chairs of all of the Senate committees that are crucial to pro-life interests, and gave the Democrats at least a one-seat majority on each committee.

The consequences have been particularly grave for many of President Bush’s nominees to federal judgeships, whose nominations are reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The committee, currently chaired by pro-abortion Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), is made up of ten Democratic and nine Republican members. 

The Democrats are exercising the maximum degree of obstructionism on nominations to the 13 federal courts of appeals.  These courts, which are only one level below the U.S. Supreme Court, are the last word in most cases, since the Supreme Court accepts only about one percent of the cases appealed to it.

Twice this year, the ten committee Democrats have voted en bloc to reject court of appeals nominees who were opposed by pro-abortion groups: Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen.  For comparison, judicial nominees have been voted down in the committee on only four previous occasions in the last 60 years.

As of October 3, after nearly two years in office, President Bush has made 32 nominations to courts of appeals. 

Of these, only 14 nominees have been confirmed, or 44%.  For comparison, at the end of President Clinton’s first two years in office, 86% of his nominees to courts of appeals had been confirmed.  Currently, 15% of all of the appellate court seats in the country are vacant.

As of October 3, President Bush has made 94 nominations to federal district (trial) courts, of which 66 have been confirmed, or 70%.

Many judicial nominees have been stalled for a year or more in the Judiciary Committee without a public hearing or a vote.

The ten Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are Leahy (Vt.), the chairman, and Senators Joseph Biden (De.), Maria Cantwell (Wa.), Dick Durbin (Il.), John Edwards (NC), Russell Feingold (Wi.), Dianne Feinstein (Ca.), Edward Kennedy (Ma.), Herb Kohl (Wi.), and Charles Schumer (NY).

If Republicans held majority control in the Senate, the committee would be chaired by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who has strongly defended President Bush’s judicial nominees.

 

Cloning Ban

In the case of the legislation to ban all human cloning, the measure would very likely have become law if Daschle had scheduled a vote promptly after the House passed the bill in July, 2001.

But Daschle dragged his feet for many months, giving the powerful biotechnology industry and its allies time to organize a well-funded propaganda campaign in support of so-called “therapeutic” human cloning – the cloning of human embryos to be killed in medical research.

On April 10, 2002, President Bush invited NRLC leaders and other opponents of human cloning to the White House to hear him strongly urge immediate action by the Senate on the bill to ban all human cloning.  On the same day, Daschle rejected that urging, saying, “The president wants to ban it all and I think he’s wrong and I think the American people are on our side on this issue.”         

 Public opinion polls show that the great majority of Americans oppose the cloning of human embryos.  But by the fall of 2002, there was danger that Daschle might be able to muster the 60 votes necessary to push through legislation to put the federal government squarely behind such cloning, in the form of legislation sponsored by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), and others.  This “clone and kill” proposal would explicitly allow the cloning of human embryos and make it a crime to allow them to live past 14 days of age. 

However, pro-life senators, led by Sam Brownback (R-Ks.), made it clear that they would use every procedural option to prevent such anti-life legislation from passing the Senate.  As of October 3, it appeared that Daschle was unlikely to force a showdown on the issue this year.  But by blocking the House-passed ban, he had already succeeded in his primary goal of keeping legal the cloning of human embryos – opening the door to what President Bush called human “embryo farms” to be developed in the near future.

 

Pro-Abortion Measures Blocked

With assistance from the White House, pro-life lawmakers have succeeded in blocking approval of anti-life legislation by Congress. 

President Bush has warned pro-abortion lawmakers that he will use his veto power to defend pro-life policies if necessary, but so far no pro-abortion bill has reached his desk.  There have, however, been a number of attempts by pro-abortion lawmakers to roll back existing pro-life policies. 

For example, in the weeks immediately after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, pro-abortion senators quietly added language to several appropriations bill to weaken or repeal four existing pro-life policies dealing with federal funding of abortions, embryo-destructive stem cell research, and funding of pro-abortion groups overseas.  In response, the White House issued veto threats on each bill, and all four of the pro-abortion provisions were ultimately dropped.  All of this occurred without the Senate conducting a roll call vote on any of the issues.

Indeed, during the entire two-year Congress, there as been (as of October 3) only one roll call vote of the full Senate directly on an abortion policy issue.

That occurred on June 21, 2002, when the Senate voted 52-40 in favor of an amendment to the defense authorization bill, sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wa.), that would repeal a law that bans most abortions in military medical facilities.  However, the House has rejected a similar amendment, and the final version of the defense authorization bill is expected to continue the current pro-life policy, which is supported by President Bush.

(Eight senators missed the vote on the Murray Amendment, of whom seven opposed the amendment. If every senator had voted, the amendment would still have passed, but by a much slimmer margin.)

The majority of senators also favor overturning President Bush’s pro-life “Mexico City Policy,” which cut off foreign aid funds to private organizations that perform or promote abortion overseas.  But on May 16, 2001, the full House voted 218-210 to sustain the President’s pro-life policy, and there is little doubt that President Bush would use his veto power to defend the policy if that ever became necessary.

In July of 2002, the Administration announced that it was cutting off U.S. funds to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) because of that agency’s involvement in China’s coercive population-control program.  Congressional allies of the UNFPA have pushed for amendments to reverse that action, but they have not come to a vote in either chamber and probably will not this year.

 

CEDAW