Pro-Abortion Endorsements Announced

NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri has announced it’s picks for the 2008 election. Executive Director Pamela Sumners said:

“In a state like Missouri – where a woman’s right to control her own reproductive health is constantly under attack by anti-choice, anti-woman elements in the state government – one of the most important aspects in the fight for the right to choose is the election of champions of reproductive rights. NARAL is glad to be able to support these excellent candidates in their election and re-election campaigns.”

Click: Full list of pro-abortion endorsements.

MRL Backs Gina Loudon

Missouri Right to Life has endorsed Gina Loudon for State Senate in the 7th district Republican primary. Gina is running to replace her husband, Sen. John Loudon, who is out this year due to term limits. Find out more about Gina Loudon at LoudonForSenate.com.

In the Republican primary, Loudon is running against Jane Cunningham and Neal St. Onge. The Democrat candidate for district 7 is Kevin Leeseburg (I could not find a link for him).

A full list of Missouri Right to Life endorsements will be published in it’s July newsletter. Be sure to keep you eye out for it on their website, missourilife.org!

The Pressure to Abort

During the last legislative session, the Missouri Senate failed to pass a bill would strengthen the informed consent process and make abortion clinics offer an ultrasound to all women seeking abortions. The part of the bill that caused the most problems for the Senate leadership, however, was the section dealing with coerced abortions. Under the proposed law it would be a crime to coerce a woman to have an abortion or knowingly perform an abortion on a woman who had been coerced. Many considered that there was little evidence to show that such forced abortions exist. But the post abortion group, Silent No More, begs to differ.

After news broke recently of a 44 yr. old Georgia woman who is serving jail time after pressuring her son’s 16 yr. old girlfriend into having an abortion and then posing as her mother in order to sign off on the procedure, co-founder of the SNM Awareness Campaign, Janet Morana, said,

“The claim of the pro-abortion lobby that terminating a child’s life is ‘a choice between a woman and her doctor or her God’ is empty rhetoric to the countless women I know who were intimidated or threatened by boyfriends, husbands, or relatives. This Georgia case shows just how far reaching the pressure to abort can be.”

And according to Georgette Forney, another SNM co-founder, this heavy pressure often goes unnoticed or is out right ignored by abortion clinic workers whose job it should be to protect these women:

“Abortion clinics will not voluntarily ask girls or women if they’re being coerced into ending their children’s lives. Abortion clinics are in business to make money and the more abortions they perform, the richer everyone involved becomes; everyone, that is, except the woman who’s just had her life shattered and the baby who’s just had his life ended.”

More information about the Silent No More Awareness Campaign can be found at their website, www.silentnomoreawareness.org.

If you would like to see Missouri women better protected from coerced abortions contact Gov. Matt Blunt’s office at 573-751-3222 and urge him to call a special session to run concurrent with the veto session in September of 2008 in order to pass HB 1831.

Read more:
Pathway Calls for a Special Session
MRL Urges Calls to the Governor

“We’re Here to Protect Life”

At the town hall meeting in Springfield this week, Missouri Right to Life President Pam Fichter offered words of encouragement regarding the failed attempt to get a cloning ban on the Missouri ballot this year, “We’re on the winning side. We just aren’t in charge of the timetable.” Highlighting recent advancements in ethical stem cell research, Fichter said, “Science is on our side. Pro-life people are patient and we’re not going away.”

What about this year’s legislative session? “This was truly a very disappointing session.” Instead of passing a ban on coerced abortions, “The Senate spent more time debating whether the ice cream cone should be the state dessert.”

One thing is certain, after this session MRL can no longer be pigeonholed in favor of one side over the other. “The Democrats accuse us of being an arm of the Republican Party, and the Republican Party thinks we’re out to destroy them” That’s because the issue of life transcends partisan politics. Says SW region MRL chairman, Dave Plemmons, “Life is not a game. We’re not here to play; we’re here to protect (life)”

MRL endorsements should be made public within the next month.

Audio of Abortion Debate!

I finally uploaded the audio I recorded from the abortion debate last week with Bob Onder and Ken Jacob, both running for Congress in the 9th district. It is a little over an hour long – click: Onder/Jacob Debate.

At the debate I had the privilege of meeting Tom Scheppers, pro-life candidate for State Representative in district 20. He is running to replace Danie Moore who is running against Bob Onder and 3 others to be the Republican nominee in the race to replace Kenny Hulshof as the 9th district Congressional Representative. Onder and Jacob will be hosting another debate on July 1 in Wentzville, MO.

Meanwhile, Dr. Onder has released the first television ad of all 9th district candidates, highlighting his past association with Missouri Right to Life and Missourians Against Human Cloning:

Others running for Congress in dist. 9: Republicans Dan Bashir, Brock Olivo and Blaine Luetkemeyer; Democrats Steve Gaw, Judy Baker and the pro-life Lyndon Bode

MRL Town Hall Meeting Tonight

Just a reminder: Missouri Right to Life will host a town hall meeting at 7:30 p.m. tonight at The Library Center in Springfield.

State president Pam Fichter will review the recent Missouri legislative session, overview the upcoming elections and provide an update on the initiative petition campaign to ban human cloning.

For information and details, contact Carl Schimek, treasurer of the Missouri Right to Life SW Region, at 417-496-1235 or carl725@aol.com

“SciFest” in St. Louis

St. Louis has been chosen to host a five day science festival this October 9 to 13 at the St. Louis Science Center, which will include discussion of stem cell research. When it comes to embryonic stem cell research, I wonder if it will accurately address the fact that human embryos (whether they’re created by in vitro fertilization or somatic cell nuclear transfer) are human life and that this research destroys these human lives in the process. I’m not sure why, but something tells me it probably will not.

Komen Q & A

The Susan G. Komen breast cancer awareness foundation has been worrisome for pro-lifers because of their donations to the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. As the annual Komen sponsored “Race for the Cure” approaches next month in St. Louis, the St. Louis Review offers some advice for concerned Catholics.

Read: Komen Q&A

Pathway Calls for Special Session

Editor of the Missouri Baptist Convention’s Pathway publication calls on Gov. Blunt to hold a special session in order to pass pro-life legislation:

Now history could – and should – repeat itself. Like in 2005, the General Assembly failed to act on important pro-life legislation that would have further curtailed Missouri abortions. The House passed a bill that would make it illegal to try to coerce a woman into having an abortion by abusing, stalking or threatening to fire her, reducing her wages, changing her working environment or taking away her college scholarship. It also would require a woman seeking an abortion to be given the option of seeing an ultrasound of the fetus and would have expanded the information required to be given to the woman by the physician performing the abortion. Sadly, the Senate failed to act. As a result, pro-life supporters are calling on Blunt to again create “the perfect storm” and call a special session of the General Assembly to address the issue. The timing of such action could produce, for abortionists, another “perfect storm.”

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Pro-Life Bill Battered, Senate Does Nothing

The Pathway reports on the end of the 2008 legislative session:

House Bill 1831 would have strengthened Missouri’s informed consent law and made it a crime to coerce a woman into having an abortion. The bill cleared the House 113-33 back in April but stalled in the Senate as time ran out May 16 on this year’s Legislature. Kerry Messer, lobbyist for the Christian Life Commission (CLC) of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC), called it “our biggest disappointment of the year.”

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