"Facts of Life" Email: August 11, 2003

Facts of Life—August 11, 2003 

The Recall Election of Governor Gray Davis will take place on October 7, and the last day to register to vote in this special election is September 22^nd.  You can register to vote at http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_vr.htm.  Absentee voting begins on September 8 and the last day to apply for an absentee ballot by mail is September 30.  The People’s Advocate, the principle sponsor of the recall effort, submitted 1,651,191 signatures to the registrar of voters, and the registrar reported that they had obtained 1,356,408 valid signatures—a very high quality.  Only 897,157 valid signatures were necessary to invoke the recall election.  The actual number of signatures gathered was actually over 2 million, as about 400,000 signatures came in after the chosen submission date.    

There will be around 150 candidates for Governor on the recall ballot.  Saturday, August 9 was the last day for candidates to file to run for Governor, and the final list is expected to be certified this week.  Pro-life State Senator Tom McClintock filed on August 5.  McClintock got the most votes of any Republican in last year’s general election, when he lost the race for Controller by less than one percent.  McClintock was endorsed by the California Republican Assembly on August 10 by a voice vote.  Bill Simon, who is also pro-life and narrowly lost to Gray Davis in 2002 filed his papers on Saturday.  Pro-life Congressman Darrell Issa, after playing a major role in qualifying the Recall early enough to assure a fall election, graciously announced on Thursday that he would not run, and instead would seek to retain his Congressional seat.  The highest profile pro-abortion Republican in the race is Arnold Schwarzenegger.  And the best-known pro-abortion Democrat to file is Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante. 

The California Senate on Sunday July 27 rejected five pro-life budget amendments, which would virtually have ended, or at least limited the abortion-on-demand policies in our tax-funded Medi-Cal program.  Senator Dennis Hollingsworth (R-Murrieta) and his staff led the annual attempt to cut abortion funding from the state’s budget. Senator Hollingsworth offered the primary amendment to AB 1762, which would have virtually eliminated tax-paid abortions and one which would have prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars for the cloning of human embryos or for the sale or purchase of fetal or embryonic tissue or organs. Senator Rico Oller carried an amendment to prohibit tax-funded partial-birth abortions; Senator Jim Battin carried an amendment to prohibit Medi-Cal-funded abortions on minors without parental consent, and Senator Bill Morrow offered an amendment that would have required Medi-Cal patients to sign a form assuring that they are not having the abortion under any coercion or duress.  All of the amendments were tabled entirely by Democrat votes, allowing the continued funding of approximately 100,000 abortions a year in California. 

The Roseville Joint Union High School District Board has joined a number of other California school boards in approving a policy that will require parental consent before a student may be excused from school for any reason.  The August 6 vote was 3-1, and reversed a policy adopted in December of last year that allowed students to leave school to seek confidential medical care during school hours without the knowledge of their parents.  Trustees Dean Forman and Kelly Lafferty valiantly defended the pro-parental rights position, and are briefly quoted in this Sacramento Bee article.       http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/v-print/story/7171635p-8118763c.html  Trustee Jim Joiner was the lone dissenter, and board President Jan Pinney was absent.  The board went against the advice of the district’s lawyers, who obviously misread the law and the intent of the California Legislature.  The district’s insurance company issued a frivolous and unwarranted warning that forbidding confidential medical appointments could “seriously jeopardize” the school’s insurance coverage.   Education Code Section 46010.1 was added to California statutes in the mid-‘80s when pro-life legislators learned that students were being released from school for confidential medical appointments without parental knowledge.  The original legislation by the late Eric Seastrand (R-Monterey) required school districts with this policy to notify parents that “school authorities may excuse any pupil from the school for the purpose of obtaining confidential medical services without the consent of the pupil’s parent or guardian.”  Before it got through the messy legislative process it was revised to require notification of both parents and students.  However there is no requirement in the law that the school districts be complicit in confidential medical appointments for minors, and liability is more likely to accrue for those that do.  Some may remember that the Thermalito School district paid out a hefty sum some years ago for a teacher’s involvement in a secret abortion that resulted in serious medical complications for the young girl.

The March of Dimes, which has for three decades been in the crosshairs of the pro-life movement for its failure to defend innocent, if imperfect, human babies from abortion and its involvement in anti-life research projects, has recently removed information from it’s website concerning the risk of premature births following abortion.  Maria Gallagher recounts the new as well as the old controversies of the March of Dimes at  http://www.lifenews.com/nat65.html.  

The New Zealand Parliament rejected a bill to legalize voluntary euthanasia by a close 60-57 vote on July 30^th.  The proposed referendum would have made euthanasia available not only to the terminally ill, but also to those with chronic illnesses.    National leader Bill English said so-called safeguards in the bill were a sham, and also expressed concern that it would be used to justify killing disabled children.   Brian Johnston, Executive Director of CPLC and a former member of California’s Commission on Aging was in New Zealand to assist with opposition to the measure.  Johnston also spent some time in Australia where a similar measure has been under consideration.    

The U. S. House of Representatives has for the first time officially taken the position that human beings should not be patented.  On a voice vote on July 22^nd, the House approved an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill (H.R. 2799) by a Republican Representative from Florida Dave Weldon, M.D.  The text of the amendment is “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this act may be used to issue patents on claims directed to or encompassing a human organism.”  Some in the research field have advocated the patenting of human beings.  Although the patent office has rejected these requests, it is important that Congress recognize this position in law.  As John Cusey, Staff Director of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus stated, “Humans should not be considered property.  Whatever one’s views about prenatal life, we should all agree that no member of the human species is an ‘invention,’ or mere property to be licensed, bought and sold.  That question was resolved when our nation approved the 13^th Amendment to end slavery.”  For a complete and current rundown of the status of pro-life bills in Congress go to http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/LegUpdates/Congprogreport080503.html. 

U. S. Senator Barbara Boxer still hopes to block the final passage of the federal ban on partial-birth abortions passed overwhelmingly by both houses of the U.S. Congress many times.  The latest two versions passed by the House and Senate are in a conference committee, where one version must emerge to go to back to both houses for a final vote. Pro-life members hope to remove a resolution that affirms Roe v. Wade, which was attached to the Senate bill.  Boxer has said that she has “no intention of filibustering.  But if we keep Roe in, we might be able to stop this bill.”   http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=16319

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)