Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Pro-Birth But Not Pro-Life

Tomorrow is crunch time for SCHIP, and surely, the streets will be filled with Georgians who are pro-life and advocating for an expansion to SCHIP. No strangers to public demonstrations, these advocates normally carry signs depicting aborted fetuses, meant to shock, but tomorrow, surely their signs will be depicting the older children who need access to the health care, equally shocking. I bet they've been burning up the phone lines of Georgia's "pro-life" congressmen, too, telling them to vote override the President's veto. Surely they will, because if you're don't care about children as they grow, you're not pro-life. You're just pro-birth.

Catholics United and others are asking a valid question. How can members of Congress who claim to be pro-life fail to vote for greater access to health care for the children of the working poor? Are they pro-life, or just pro-birth? Or maybe they're just pro-republican. That sounds about right. (Check this summary on Kos, and below you can read more about the efforts of Catholics United to press "pro-life" congressmen to vote to override the President's veto. You can listen to the ads, too.)

In Georgia, Sadie Fields, Chair of the Georgia Christian Alliance, hasn't just been quiet-she's been vocal in her opposition to this bill, claiming it "destroyed the core mission of the plan." Well, I don't know about you, but I thought that the core mission of SCHIP was making sure working parents can take their kids to the doctor. The call to "stand in the gap" is a powerful biblical principle. We are called to stand in the gap-to advocate for those who cannot advocate for themselves. We are to stand in the gap-not stand in the way. Right now, we need to stand in the gap for the 100,000 Georgia children who can be added to the PeachCare rolls if enough members of Congress will stand up to the President.

Do I have to ask you again to call Jim Marshall?

clipped from bravenewfilms.org

Catholics United has announced they will launch an advertising campaign on the radio next week, urging certain Congressional representatives to support the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, SCHIP. The ads target the ten members of Congress whose opposition to SCHIP stands in stark contrast to their pro-life voting records.

Listen to these ads expose these supposedly "pro-life" politicians as the disgusting hypocrites they are.

Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, Florida (listen)
Rep. Joseph Knollenberg, Michigan (listen)
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, Michigan (listen)
Rep. Tim Walberg, Michigan (listen)
Rep. Steve Chabot, Ohio (listen)
Rep. Gene Taylor, Mississippi (listen)
Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota (listen)
Rep. Sam Graves, Missouri (listen)
Rep. Thelma Drake, Virginia (listen)
Rep. John Peterson, Peterson (listen)

blog it

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2 comments:

Tina said...

Well, it's too bad that "we, the people" could not over-ride Bush's veto. Congress doesn't seem to be listening to us anymore. Also I am real tired of hearing conservatives holler "socialism" when the issue of health care for American children comes up. These are the same folks who think it's okay for the United State to be in debt to the world's largest communist nation....go figure....

Open+Transparent said...

Amy, did you see this? The SCHIP bill has provisions for military families. The mainstream media should have jumped on this important facet of the issue, but of course they didn't. So Jim Marshall and everyone else voting against SCHIP is also voting against military families. And I'm sick & f-ing tired of Tom Price, the real life Ned Flanders,
getting in front of the cameras every chance he can get to tell us why SCHIP and healtcare for kids is so bad.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-rieckhoff/schip-an-urgent-vote-to-_b_69003.html

Two largely overlooked provisions of SCHIP would address the urgent issue of protecting military families as outlined by the Dole-Shalala Commission. Sections 621 and 622, under Subtitle C, provide one year of employment discrimination protection to family members caring for grievously wounded troops, and extend permitted work leave for these caretakers from three to six months.