The liberal press and abortion advocates are presently celebrating a victory – the $1.1 trillion spending bill passed by the Senate on Sat., December 13, 2014, which includes unprecedented abortion coverage for Peace Corps volunteers in cases of rape, incest and “life endangerment.” Think Progress reports: Government Spending Bill Quietly Resolves Peace Corps Abortion Coverage Debate . “Quietly” – because not one GOP member of the House Appropriations Committee spoke out against it back in June, 2014, although the Republican committee members had blocked the measure in 2013. In 2014, there was no debate to be had – the GOP committee members summarily wrote us off, allowing the discriminatory practice of targeting and killing innocent children for the crimes of our rapist fathers.
For the record, those silent Republican House Appropriations Committee members are as follows, with each one inexplicably enjoying a 100% approval rating with National Right to Life Committee on their scorecard, except for Frelinghuysen from New Jersey and Charles W. Dent from Pennsylvania who both have a 75% approval rating:
Harold Rogers, Kentucky, Chairman
Frank R. Wolf, Virginia
Jack Kingston, Georgia
Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, New Jersey 75%
Tom Latham, Iowa
Robert B. Aderholt, Alabama
Kay Granger, Texas
Michael K. Simpson, Idaho
John Abney Culberson, Texas
Ander Crenshaw, Florida
John R. Carter, Texas
Ken Calvert, California
Tom Cole, Oklahoma
Mario Diaz-Balart, Florida
Charles W. Dent, Pennsylvania 75%
Tom Graves, Georgia
Kevin Yoder, Kansas
Steve Womack, Arkansas
Alan Nunnelee, Mississippi
Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska
Tom Rooney, Florida
Chuck Fleischmann, Tennessee
Jaime Herrera Beutler, Washington
David Joyce, Ohio
David Valadao, California
Andy Harris, MD, Maryland
Martha Roby, Alabama
Mark Amodei, Nevada
Chris Stewart, Utah
Please do contact them, as well as NRLC to find out why they don’t keep score of votes in support of killing children conceived in rape. Are we really that negligible? Who is more important to protect – children conceived in rape, or congressional Republicans?
In a Lifesitenews article covering the committee vote last June, pro-life nurse and blogger Jill Stanek strongly condemned the GOP action: "This is outrageous. . . . The GOP, whose platform formally opposes abortion, just passed a pro-abortion bill through one of Capitol Hill's most influential committees. . . . This might be good politics in the Beltway, but all the GOP really did was cave to feminist rhetoric and decide that throwing more taxpayer money to the abortion industry is acceptable public policy.”
In the same article, Human Life International Communications Director Adam Cassandra vehemently defended children conceived in rape and their pregnant mothers: “further assaulting a woman who is a victim of rape with the violent act of abortion is in no way a humane or compassionate response to her situation, and taking the life of that child can never be justified."
The Peace Corps’ federal funding provision has had a no-exceptions rider in place since 1979 barring any of their funding from being used to pay for abortions – until now. A 35-year precedent, and the Republicans stood silent.
Reporter Dustin Siggins, in Lifesitenews’ most recent article on the passage of the “Cromnibus bill”, calls the Peace Corps abortion funding “the greatest loss for pro-lifers” within the huge spending package.
So is this now to be the standard protocol within Congress whenever a rape exception is introduced? No objection? None? Congressman Chris Smith introduced the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, with the rape exception already in it. Is this now the norm? I pray that it’s not.
My hope that pro-life activists will become more aware of the blatant discrimination within these congressional bills, and will rise up to object to the seemingly now-standard “exceptions.” It shouldn’t just be the voices of those of us who actually fit into the “conceived in rape” category, because our class of persons is small. But Jesus made it clear that it is every person’s duty to protect “the least of these,” and to leave the 99 to save the 1.
BIO: Rebecca Kiessling is a wife, mother of 5, attorney, international pro-life speaker, and founder and President of Save The 1, as well as co-founder of Hope After Rape Conception.