"Facts of Life" Email: January 31, 2003

January 31, 2003

California Assembly "celebrates" 42 million abortions under 30 years of Roe v. Wade. AJR 2 is a non-binding resolution, which garnered 54 Assembly and Senate co-authors. It will be sent to the President and members of Congress, asking them to uphold Roe v. Wade and to "encourage all Americans to participate in the national celebration, 'Celebrating 30 Years of Roe v. Wade.' " AJR 2 passed the Assembly on January 21, 47-22, with 2 Republican votes, Lynn Daucher, AD 72, and Keith Richman, AD 38, and with 4 pro-life members abstaining-- Guy Houston, AD 15, Guy.Houston@asm.ca.gov; Abel Maldonado, AD 33, Abel.Maldonado@asm.ca.gov; Robert Pacheco, AD 60, Robert.Pacheco@asm.ca.gov; and Bonnie Garcia, AD 80, Bonnie.Garcia@asm.ca.gov. (Pat Bates and George Plescia were officially absent.) There is good information that Republican leadership suggested that legislators in marginal districts may not want to vote on this resolution. If you are a constituent of one of the abstaining members, you may want to encourage them to have the courage of their convictions. It should have been an easy vote to oppose the "celebration" of more than 42 million deaths of the innocent unborn. It is not clear whether this resolution will be voted on in the Senate. You can view the Assembly votes by going to www.assembly.ca.gov -- click on legislation and insert "2" and follow the prompts to the information for AJR 2.

The body of another abandoned newborn baby girl was found in a Los Angeles dumpster on January 28. California law allows mothers to safely and legally relinquish babies up to 72 hours old at hospitals or health clinics, and in Los Angeles and Sacramento Counties, at fire stations. http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la-me-briefs29.1.1jan29§ion=/news/printedition/california The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors just voted on January 28 to join Los Angeles County in designating fire stations as safe havens for mothers to leave their unwanted newborns, a step authorized by the 2001 legislation. They also vited to undertake a a public awareness campaign to promote the area's hospitals and 63 fire stations as safe havens. http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/v-print/story/6017943p-6973955c.html

Geron, a Menlo Park corporation involved with human embryonic stem cell research, announced it will lay-off 40 employees, nearly have of its staff. The San Jose Mercury News reported on January 22nd, that Geron wants "to concentrate its resources'' on developing a cancer drug and stem-cell related therapies. Fifty-one employees will remain in Menlo Park, and another 27 scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. The Mercury News reported that "Geron hopes to profit from the controversial stem cell field. Fertility clinics donate their unwanted human embryos to Geron and other stem cell researchers who, in turn, destroy their lives to extract the stem cells." Their chief financial officer, David Greenwood, admitted "It is possible that the political debate makes a difficult capital market all the more difficult.''

Carolyn Kuhl, a Pete Wilson appointee to the Los Angeles Court, has been nominated by President Bush for a seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. She is targeted for defeat by the likes of the California Abortion Rights Action League, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Sierra Club, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild, and others. Among her crimes is that while In the Reagan Justice Department, "Kuhl worked on legal arguments calling for the reversal of the Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion." http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/01/25/MN109364.DTL&type=printable Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted to break the logjam on pro-life judicial nominees by voting the nomination of Miguel Estrada for the U. S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia to the floor of the U. S. Senate. It was a strictly partisan 10-9 vote, and Estrada was the first of 33 district and appeals court nominees to pass through the Committee since Senator Orrin Hatch returned to the chairmanship due to the Republican majority gained in last year's elections. The L.A. Times reported that California "Senator Dianne Feinstein said she was unimpressed with Estrada during the daylong hearing [last fall], and that "her office had about 3,300 calls this week regarding Estrada's nomination, and all but a handful of the callers were opposed to his nomination."

http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la-na-estrada31jan31§ion=/news/printedition/asection

For what it's worth, you could contact Dianne Feinstein through National Right to Life Committee's "Legislative Action Center," at www.nrlcorg.

Despite the huge turnout-- perhaps more than 200,000 pro-lifers at the March for Life in Washington, D. C., there was virtually no coverage on the major networks. This was in stark contrast to the in-depth coverage of the "Bush-bashing anti-war march just four days before," noted the Media Research Center, which also pointed out that Dan Rather of CBS news misled viewers into assuming large crowds on both sides, saying "Tens of thousands of demonstrators on both sides of the issue filled the streets of Washington today." http://www.mediaresearch.org/realitycheck/2003/fax20030123.asp

The Agence France Presse English reported on January 28 that "The Polish government has asked the European Union to guarantee that its accession treaty will include a declaration relating to the protection of moral values and human life, government spokesman Michal Tober said on Tuesday." Adding that "Poland has the strictest abortion legislation in Europe after Ireland and Portugal, they reported that the text addressed to the European bloc read, "The Polish government means that no clause of the EU's founding treaty, nor the later treaties which modify or complete it, will prevent the Polish republic from directing its own moral questions and those relating to the human life." Poland is among ten countries expected to join the bloc on May 1, 2004.

If you want to write to Bishop William K. Weigand to thank him for calling upon Governor Davis' integrity to recognize that he is not in good standing with his Church due to his proudly proclaimed pro-abortion views and actions, the Bishop's address is Office of the Bishop 2110 Broadway, Sacramento, CA 95818-2541. Msgr. Edward Kavanagh is at St. Rose Parish, P. O. Box 5037 Oak Park Station, Sacramento, CA 95817.

California ProLife Council (CPLC) (www.californiaprolife.org.) is the largest statewide organization in California solely dedicated to pro-life issues. CPLC is a non-sectarian, non-partisan, non-profit grassroots organization of pro-life groups and individuals in California dedicated to protecting and fostering the most basic value of our society—respect for LIFE itself. We seek to educate our community in regard to abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide, to identify and organize the pro-life population of the state into an effective team, and to restore respect for human life to public policy. California ProLife Council is the California affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee, Inc. (www.nrlc.org).

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