Dear Friend for Life,

“For unto us a child is born.”

Never more than at Christmas do we celebrate God’s great gift of life! It’s not too late to add a special gift of life for your dearest loved ones by remembering them with an honorary contribution to the Missouri Right to Life Educational Fund.

This perfect gift can do so much! It proclaims your love for life and for those dearest to you. Every dollar enables the MRL Ed Fund to reach tens of thousands of Missourians yearly with vital information regarding fetal development in the womb, the medical dangers of abortion, physical effects of nutrition withdrawal in the sick, bioethical problems of human cloning and embryonic stem cell research and much more.

For contributions at the $15 level and higher, your honorees can receive a special card, informing them that a charitable donation has been made in their honor.

Every gift to the MRL Ed Fund is tax-deductible because it is used for educational purposes only.

Click here now to add this wonderful sentiment for every pro-life person on your gift list this year! Or, make your gift by phone at 888-675-4748. A peaceful, blessed Christmas to you and your family,

Pam Fichter
President, Missouri Right to Life

P.S. The Missouri Right to Life Educational Fund is dedicated to sharing the truth about life with citizens in every corner of our state, throughout the year. Your gift is needed and deeply appreciated.

From the December MRL Newsletter now online:

Archimedes said, “Give me a lever big enough, and I can move the world.” As a kid, I remember learning about jujitsu, the martial art of self defense. It was predicated on leveraging the other guy’s weight and momentum against him. So a little guy could beat a bigger guy if he knew about leverage.

What could we in the Pro-Life arena leverage to advance the cause of life?

Could we leverage the gains made by the pro-abortion forces in Congress, the Senate and the White House? Could we leverage the press, who are traditionally mouthpieces for abortion advocates? Could we leverage the thousands of Missouri Right to Life volunteers and supporters? Could we leverage the massive power of the majority of Americans who call themselves Pro-Life? Could we leverage the awful truth of what actually happens in an abortion?

The answers are yes, yes, yes, yes and yes!! Two things happened recently that underscore the power behind the truth of what happens in an abortion.

First, the Executive Director of a Planned Parenthood facility in Texas walked out of her abortion mill to join forces with a Pro-Life group right across the street. Her reason? She watched an ultra-sound during a suction abortion. She was exposed for the first time to what actually happens in an abortion. And she was instantly transformed.

Secondly, I had the opportunity to speak with a room-mom who was helping at her eighth-grade son’s school. The topics for the morning were fetal development and the realities of abortion. She later confided that when she walked into the classroom that morning, she considered herself “pro-choice.” But when she heard descriptions of the various types of abortions, she said, “I’m 45 years old, and when I heard what happens in an abortion, I was shocked. I’m not okay with that. I now consider myself Pro-Life.”

How many millions of Americans need only to hear the truth, and will react the same way that these two women reacted? Our challenge is to let all of America hear the truth. Can you imagine the effect on our country if every American knew that abortion is not removing a blob of tissue, but it is cutting an innocent human being into pieces? Can you imagine the hearts that will change when people realize that abortion is not having a clump of cells taken out, but it is burning a precious child to death with a salt solution?

Can you imagine Americans voting only for Pro-Life legislators because they are “not okay” with voting for someone who would harm a child in the womb? Can you imagine an America that truly respects life? That was America a generation ago. And if we have anything to do with it, it will be the America of generations to come. But we will need your help.

In this and upcoming issues, we will continue to show how you, the backbone of Missouri Right to Life, can lead the nation to truth. We will show how together, we can use the power of leverage against the forces of death. Tens of millions of Americans have never heard the truth. We are from Missouri, the Show-Me-State. We will show that the truth will set America free. Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small, committed group of people can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

God bless and stay tuned!

Steve Rupp
Missouri Right to Life Vice-President

With her vote against the Nelson-Hatch amendment, McCaskill has broken her promise to Missourians. McCaskill promised she would not support legislation that included federal funding for abortions. The Nelson-Hatch amendment would have prevented funding for abortions in any new public option for health care and prevented federal subsidies for any plan that included abortion. Her vote against this amendment allows Sen. Harry Reid’s health care proposal to retain such funding.

McCaskill excuses her vote by saying the Hyde amendment already prevents such funding and that the Nelson-Hatch amendment prevents women from using their own money to buy abortion coverage. Both statements are false.

The Hyde amendment only prevents funding for abortion through annual appropriations to the Department of Health and Human Services. Congressman Henry Hyde proposed this amendment in l977 to prevent taxpayer-funded abortions through Medicaid. Before this amendment, more than 300,000 abortions were performed each year through Medicaid. However, the Reid bill creates new streams of funding that would not flow through the Department of Health and Human Services, so they would not be covered by the Hyde restriction.

The Nelson-Hatch amendment would not prevent women from purchasing coverage of abortion with their own money as long as no federal subsidies were also used to purchase that coverage.

Missouri taxpayers do not want to pay for abortion. We call on McCaskill to keep her promise.

–Pam Fichter, president Missouri Right to Life

Pro-life Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ben Nelson (D-Ne.) plan to soon file – possibly today! – an amendment to the bill, which will be supported by the NRLC and other major pro-life groups. The Hatch-Nelson Amendment would make the same critical policy changes to the Reid bill that were accomplished in the House of Representatives by adoption of the NRLC-backed Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the House version of the health care legislation (H.R. 3962) on November 7.

Thus, the effect of the Hatch-Nelson Amendment would be to prevent the proposed new government health insurance program — the “public option” — from paying for abortions, and also to prevent federal funds from being used to subsidize the purchase of private health plans that pay for elective abortion.

Time is short! Please telephone the offices of Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond. Urge them to support the Hatch-Nelson Amendment to the health care bill (H.R. 3590). The Washington offices of all U.S. senators can be reached through the Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121. In most cases, you can also obtain fax numbers, and phone numbers for senators’ in-state offices, through the NRLC Legislative Action Center at this internet address: http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/dbq/officials/

After the Senate has voted on the Hatch-Nelson Amendment, there will be other critical votes on the health care legislation! The legislative situation may change rapidly. Any time you want to check the current status of the legislation, visit this page on the Legislative Action Center:
http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/issues/alert/?alertid=13157881&type=CO

For further information on the abortion-related issues the health care legislation, go to:http://www.nrlc.org/ahc

For further information on the rationing-related issues on the health care legislation, go to: http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com/

Dear Senator McCaskill:

Will you keep your promise?

At a town hall meeting in Jefferson County last summer, you promised not to support health care legislation that included funding for abortion. With your elderly mother at your side, you also promised not to support health care rationing. Yet you voted to advance Senator Reid’s bill that includes massive abortion funding and rationing of care for the elderly and disabled.

The Senate bill establishes a public option and authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to require coverage of any and all abortions throughout the public option program. (pg. 118) The bill also creates new government subsidies to purchase private health plans that directly pay for abortions. (pgs. 116 –124)

You claim that the Hyde Amendment prevents federal funding of abortion. In fact, the Hyde Amendment affects only funds allocated through the annual appropriations bill for the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The funding for both the House and Senate bills would not flow through the DHHS, and thus would not be covered by the Hyde Amendment.

Senator McCaskill, you oppose the Stupak-Pitts amendment passed by the House (with 64 Democrat votes) claiming that it prevents private plans from offering abortion coverage. In fact, that amendment prohibits coverage of abortion services only in the public health insurance option and private plans that receive federal subsidies. It does not prohibit individuals from purchasing plans with their own money that offer abortion services.

Instead, the Senate is supporting a re-wording of the Capps’ amendment, originally proposed but rejected in the House. Capps sets up an accounting scheme to hide government-funded abortions based on the ludicrous notion that money spent by the federal government is not federal money.

The Senate bill also contains numerous elements that would result in rationed medical care. It severely limits senior citizens’ ability to purchase supplemental insurance for care not covered by Medicare by empowering the federal government to exclude plans whose bids it doesn’t like. (pg. 920). In effect, this denies senior citizens, like your mother, the ability to use their own money to save their own lives.

Also, state commissioners of the new health insurance exchanges would be given the power to deny people who are trying to obtain policies in the insurance exchange the option of choosing health plans less likely to deny treatment by limiting what they would be allowed to pay for such policies. (beginning on pg. 37)

While your colleagues in the Senate avoided including the “advance care planning” provisions in the House bill, they achieve a similar result under the title “Shared Decisionmaking,” which funds and promotes “patient decision aids” to “help” patients make treatment decisions. (begins pg. 1106). These measures could “nudge” patients to reject life-saving treatment to save costs.
The Reid bill establishes a Medicare Advisory Board to force Medicare payments below the rate of medical inflation resulting in reduced medical care or forcing providers out of the Medicare program altogether. (begins on pg. 1000).

These elements, combined with inadequate funding and drastic cuts to Medicare, would result in rationing life-saving treatment.

Senator McCaskill, the question all Missouri citizens must ask now is will you keep your promise?

Pam Fichter
President, Missouri Right to Life

Please contact Senator McCaskill and ask her to oppose Senator Reid’s Health Care Reform legislation and any effort to include federal funding for abortion or any elements that would lead to rationing of care.

At this time when we pause to reflect on our many blessings, we want to thank all of our loyal members for their support and prayers throughout the year. We have so much to be grateful for! While we face tremendous challenges at both the state and national level, we are so very grateful that we live in a country where involved citizens can make a difference. We pray that your Thanksgiving will be filled with love of family, love of country, and love of God. With grateful hearts, we ask God’s blessings on our work.

“Dismiss all anxiety from your minds. Present your needs to God in every form of prayer and in petitions full of gratitude. Then God’s own peace, which is beyond all understanding, will stand guard over your hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus.” (Ph 4:6)

A few important reminders:

Christmas cards to benefit MRL Education Fund are still available. Help us raise money for literature, fair booths and all educational activities.

The broadcast premiere of “Thine Eyes,” a powerful documentary on last year’s March for Life, will be on Wednesday, November 25, at 9:00 PM (CST) on Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).

Over this Thanksgiving holiday, please contact Senator Claire McCaskill and ask her to oppose Senator Reid’s health care reform bill. Ask her to keep her word to oppose federal funding of abortion and to oppose rationing of health care.

For complete information and updates on health care reform legislation, please visit National Right to Life

50 MILLION is a lot of people. I wonder how many “Beethoven’s” abortion has killed in the last 36+ years…

Folks, there’s much more to be concerned about with the current Senate health care reform bill than just federal abortion coverage. National Right to Life has an analysis:

Read more

Even more details and documentation can be found here: http://www.nrlc.org/healthcarerationing/reidsubstitute.html and at the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics blog

Health care reform is quickly making its way through the United States Congress. After passing the House just two weeks ago, the Senate is set to begin the voting process on health care reform tonight.

From NRLC:

According to Majority Leader Harry Reid, on Saturday the Senate will begin consideration of sweeping health care restructuring legislation which, as pro-lifers have explained at length, is riddled with pro-abortion language. Please go to http://nrlactioncenter.com to get the complete background on the language inserted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid into the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” and directions how to contact your two senators to urge them to oppose the Act because of it.

Given how thorough the information is at http://nrlactioncenter.com, there are just a couple of points I’d like to highlight.

First, Reid and his pro-abortion cohorts were not bound to insert the pro-abortion language favored by the Obama White House and the army of pro-abortion advocacy groups. In spite of clear warnings from National Right to Life and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Reid chose not to include the Stupak-Pitts language which the House had inserted.

Just so we are clear: the Stupak-Pitts Amendment plows no new ground. By prohibiting both direct federal funding of abortion by the “public option” and the use of federal subsidies to purchase private plans that cover elective abortion, the Amendment merely maintained longstanding federal policy on abortion-funding.

Of course that is precisely why pro-abortionists want it deleted. They ardently desire coverage of abortion on demand in two big new federal government programs.

Second, as bad as the House bill was before amended, the Reid bill is worse. For starters, they had the advantage of the educational phase, if you will, in which pro-lifers patiently pointed out to Congress the path down which it oughtn’t to go. Well, Reid blew off those polite warnings at the same time he pretends to be heeding them.

Naturally the White House fell all over itself praising Reid for his alleged statesmanship. In the words of White House health reform director Nancy Ann DeParle, the Senate bill “was carefully worked through by the leader, who cares a lot about making sure this maintains the status quo on abortion policy.” The AP paraphrased DeParle as saying “Reid struck just the right balance” to keep the bill “neutral on abortion.”

But in that same AP story, Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said Reid’s “is actually the worst bill we’ve seen so far on the life issues.” Doerflinger called it “completely unacceptable,” adding that “to say this reflects current law is ridiculous.”

Please read go to http://nrlactioncenter.com and then call your two United States Senators. Time is short and the importance of your involvement at this critical stage can not be overstated.

Contact Senators McCaskill and Bond and urge them to vote “no” on cloture on motion to proceed to anti-life Reid bill at 8:00 EST tonight.

A few members of Missouri Right to Life attended the launch of the Family Research Council’s Adult Stem Cells Saved My Life campaign last Saturday. Here is a local news story about the launch:

It was very well done and the testimonies were encouraging as always. The event was held in Kansas City where over 1,500 adult stem cell transplants have taken place! How nice it is to actually see positive results in human patients! Shamefully an intellectually dishonest campaign of junk science and emotional manipulation has largely dismissed or ignored the benefits of adult stem cells and lead many to believe that our greatest hope for therapies and cures lies in research that requires the creation, use and destruction of tiny human beings (despite growing evidence to the contrary). This manipulation and misinformation is what lead Missouri voters to approve “Amendment 2″ in 2006, creating a constitutional right to clone and kill human embryos in our State.

We were going to take our own video of the testimonies while we were there, but they already have a few very nicely done little videos that tell some of the patient’s stories. They are featured on the new website StemCellResearchFacts.org:

Laura Domingues has a spinal cord injury and is now starting to walk again with the help of Adult Stem Cells taken from her own nose. She’s working with Dr. Carlos Lima from Portugual who has been studying olfactory mucosa autografts in human spinal cord injury – you can see his pilot study here. Another patient of Dr. Lima has given her testimony several times as well, which you can see here. More on ASCs and SCI: here, here, here, here and here.

Little Joseph Davis was cured of sickle cell anemia with his little brother’s umbilical cord blood stem cells. These guys were super cute on Saturday. Joe’s little brother went up to the mike and told the audience, “I gave my brother my cord blood and now we can play together!” See this story on sibling cord blood transplantation for sickle cell and the Sickle Cell Information Center’s Bone Marrow and Cord Blood Stem Cell Transplant page for more.

Amy Daniels has had a near complete recovery from Scleroderma- a disease that causes the tissue in the skin, blood vessels, and muscles to harden. More on ASCs and Scleroderma here, here, here, here, and here – for starters.

We also heard from Doug Rice who was at end-stage heart failure and was not a candidate for transplant because of his diabetes. Doug was at death’s door, and preparing for it, until he met with scientists (from Israel and Bangkok) who isolated stem cells from his blood, cultivated them and implanted them into his coronary artery. According to Doug the effects were immediate with his heart increasing to 41 percent efficiency from 11 percent before the procedure. After seeing this man’s testimony and meeting and talking with him for a few minutes I can tell you this man does not look like anyone in the advanced stages of heart failure! Watch video of Doug telling his story here: part 1 and part 2 (Windows media). And yes, there is more on ASCs and heart treatment: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here)

Here is MRL Executive Director Patty Skain and MRL Legislative Liaison Susan Klein at the event:

See more pictures at our MRL Facebook Fan Page.