LETTERS: GOP CONGRESS GIVES STORE AWAY

To the editor:

Once again the pro-life agenda has been abandoned for the sake of expediency, thereby handing our illustrious president and the pro-death movement complete victory so that all of the politicians who claim to be pro-life can go home to their constituents and tell them how pro-life they all are in time for the elections. Republican leaders in Congress simply gave the president just about everything he wanted. Unfortunately, innocent babies, the helpless and the elderly are the victims as the Republican-led House, which abandoned most of the pro-life legislative agenda thereby giving the abortion lobby the grand prize, the Lowey Amendment. The Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan now mandates that participating insurers must cover all prescription drugs approved by the FDA, including abortion-causing contraceptive drugs and devices. Although the House managed to pass the Istook/Manzullo Amendment to Title X requiring parental notice before minors could receive contraceptives from federally funded family planning clinics, it was dropped at the last minute from the omnibus spending bill. Also dropped was the Coburn Amendment to the Agriculture Departments spending bill, preventing the FDA from using our taxpayer funds for approval of RU-486. Newt Gingrich last year promised the pro-life caucus leader, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), that the International Monetary Fund would not be bailed out unless Clinton agreed to a watered-down Mexico City policy, prohibiting taxpayer funding of international population control agencies that lobby to overturn pro-life laws in foreign countries. Well, I guess he thought we would all be caught napping, as he gave Clinton $17.9 billion of our money for the IMF, while the Mexico City provisions were buried. As a result, $400 million in foreign aid will go to the International Planned Parenthood Federation and other population-control agencies. In the Senate, the Child Custody Protection Act, prohibiting the transportation of a minor from a state that has a parental consent or notice law to another state to obtain an abortion, was killed. Rep. Todd Tiahrt managed to get his amendment into the omnibus spending bill requiring that overseas population control programs cease to be coercive and instead become voluntary. It also defunds the United Nations Population Fund. A provision proposed by Reps. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) and Istook (R-Okla.) requires that federally funded family planning clinics comply with state child abuse reporting laws. While the pro-life movement is grateful to all pro-life congressmen and women who have all worked so very hard to promote pro-life legislation, I cant help but wonder just what happened. How did a House with a Republican majority manage to give Clinton the country store? Voters in the coming elections should know that there are many candidates who still think that abortion is acceptable and legal in the cases of rape or incest. As tragic as these cases are, we must never forget that the woman is a victim. And the child, who is also a victim, does not deserve to be murdered. The people who are responsible for these horrible crimes are the ones who should be punished. Pro-death adversaries are united and serious in their efforts to keep all forms of abortion, including partial-birth abortion, legal. They continue to force agendas onto the ballots in more and more states, asking that assisted suicide be made legal. And so it goes, for another year. It would seem as though the Teflon president has won it all even in the midst of all this scandal. Monica has cost us dearly.

CHRISTINE E. STEPHENS

Cape Girardeau