House Republicans Dump "Mexico City" Amendment
The Republicans blinked
again. The $12.8 billion Foreign Operations spending bill was stalled
in Congress for
over a month due to House Republicans' insistence on inclusion of an
amendment, known as the Mexico City policy, prohibiting funding for
international "family planning"
agencies that perform, promote or support abortion, or lobby for changes
in pro-life laws in foreign countries with their own money. President
Clinton had vowed to veto the
bill, should it contain the pro-life language. On November 12, House
leaders moved to drop the amendment in order to move the bill, opening
the way for Congress to
provide $385 million in taxpayer dollars to international programs in
developing countries that promote and/or perform abortions.
In
retaliation against the
President's firm rejection of the pro-life amendment, Republicans also
dropped the portions of the bill authorizing spending authority for
reorganization of the State
Department, payment of $819 million in back dues to the United Nations,
and a $3.5 billion credit line for the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
requested by the Clinton
administration. They then rolled the State Department reorganization,
U.N. repayment and the $3.5 billion credit line together with the
pro-life amendment into a new bill,
which is expected to go nowhere, due to White House and Senate
opposition to the pro-life provision. We are watching with great
interest what happens next. In the end, will
President Clinton be denied the funding for the U.N., IMF and State
Department reorganization, or will the pro-life provision be dropped
entirely in the last minute shuffle
before Congress adjourns for the holiday recess, allowing him to have
his way?
Assisted Suicide
Oregon's legalization of physician-assisted suicide
may not be implemented, at least any time soon, due to a determination
by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) that federal narcotics law prohibits doctors from
prescribing lethal doses of medication to aid a suicide. The DEA
announcement came in response to
an inquiry by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), that
expressed concern about the law's implications. Hatch told The
Oregonian on Sunday, November
9, that he will encourage the Justice Department "to prosecute any
doctor that prescribes drugs to kill people." (The DEA is a division of
the Justice Department.) Vermont,
Michigan and Colorado are expected to introduce assisted suicide
legislation.
It's Called Chutzpah
Governor Pete Wilson (R-CA), whose entire
political career has been dedicated to promoting unrestricted
abortion-on-demand, whose administration
has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into funding of MediCal
abortions, and who, along with former Massachusetts Governor William
Weld and Governor Christine
Todd Whitman of New Jersey, led the failed effort to remove the pro-life
plank from the Republican National Platform, addressed the California
Christian Coalition on -
guess what? Family values! The fact that Gov. Wilson, who is thinking
about another run for the White House in 2000, recently reasserted his
desire to see the Republican
Party rid of its principled stance in defense of innocent life
notwithstanding, he appealed to the audience to set aside their
differences over abortion. The audience met his
suggestion with stony silence, although he was "accorded repeated hearty
applause by the Christian Coalition convention . . ." when he pushed
many of the
conservative-issues-buttons during his speech. Governor Wilson's record
speaks volumes about what he would do if he were President. In an
interview with the San Diego
Union Tribune (11/9/97), Chuck Cunningham, Christian Coalition's
director of national operations, said Wilson's appeal to set aside
differences over abortion would be as
much a non-starter as his attempt at last year's Republican National
Convention to remove the anti-abortion plank from the GOP platform. "He
tried that in San Diego last
year," Cunningham said. "Didn't work too well."
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