The House:

The House voted on the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) on May 31.  While the final vote for the bill was 246-168, it did not pass because it was brought to the floor under the suspension calendar which requires a two-thirds majority.  Click here to see how your representative voted.  

PRENDA would ban sex-selection abortions. There are over 160 million "missing girls" in the world who were killed simply because they were girls.  According to a 2006 Zogby poll, sex-selection abortions are opposed by over 86 percent of Americans.

Because of gendercide, there are now approximately 37 million more males living in China than women. However, this is not an issue that only impacts countries like China.  Sex-selection abortions are occurring here in the United States.  According to a University of California Berkeley study which looked at 2000 Census data, there was a male bias, especially for third children, of U.S.- born children of Chinese, Korean, and Indian parents.

Recently Live Action, a pro-life organization which leads undercover investigations into Planned Parenthood, captured this gendercide on video. Click here to see their video on sex-selection in America.   

The Senate:

Next week the Senate will vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act. While discrimination is abhorrent, the Paycheck Fairness Act is not the cure.

Proponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act assert that the 1963 Equal Pay Act has failed because women earn approximately $.70 for every dollar a man earns.  However, the wage gap is not necessarily the result of discrimination. 

A 2009 study commissioned by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the issue of the wage gap found no conclusive evidence that would demonstrate that women's wages were lower simply as a result of discrimination.  The study did, however, find that women were more likely than men to leave the workforce to take care of children or older parents. It also found that women tended to value family friendly workplace policies more than men and often accepted lower salaries in exchange for more benefits. 

Congress should not use the disparity in wages between men and women as a basis to justify corrective action.