Items fresh from LifeNews.com -- * The Senate Appropriations Committee last week to end funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and to put resources into programs that promote only sexual education. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii led the move to defeat the abstinence education funding. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) was the sole "no" vote on the funding package in protest to the elimination of abstinence education.* After defeating one pro-life amendment Thursday night and adopting a phony ban on abortion funding, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Friday afternoon defeated another amendment to limit abortion in the House health care restructuring bill.
Rep. Joe Pitts, a Pennsylvania Republican, would ensure taxpayer dollars do not pay for abortions or subsidize health insurance plans that include abortion. "We want an explicit exclusion in the bill to prevent any taxpayer funding from paying for abortions," Pitts told his colleagues. "Anything else is wrong, and contrary to overwhelming popular opinion.”
Though Pitts received support from most Republicans and a handful of pro-life Democrats, he could not gather enough votes to overcome the pro-abortion Democrats who control the committee. The panel voted 31-27 against the amendment.
* President Barack Obama on Thursday directed the National Institutes of Health to officially adopt its proposed rules to implement his decision to force taxpayers to pay for embryonic stem cell research. Obama reversed protections that prevented the funding of new research destroying human life.
President Bush has kept protections in place because new embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of unborn children to obtain their stem cells.
The research has yet to help a single patient, unlike adult stem cell research -- which has helped patients with more than 100 diseases and medical conditions and which Bush supported with hundreds of millions in federal funding.
