Dear Friends,

Below are a couple of items that need your action now!

1. Protect Pro-Life Doctors

Should a woman have to get prenatal care from an abortionist? Abortion groups think so. Federal laws protect the right of healthcare providers not to participate in abortion. But the laws are ignored, or not fully enforced for lack of clear regulations.

The Bush Administration will soon propose regulations to protect healthcare professionals from being forced to provide controversial procedures or drugs. Astonishingly, abortion proponents vehemently oppose this. They are against the right of doctors to choose not to do abortions.

The right to follow one's moral conscience is basic to any free and ethical society. Yet doctors can be forced from jobs if they will not do abortions. What would that do to patients? If providers who respect human life at all stages are squeezed out of the profession, patients could lose the right to choose ethical doctors.

While lobbyists, reporters, and pro-abortion politicians are desperately trying to frame these new regulations as an attack on contraception, the proposed regulations merely allow for a medical professional, in their medical judgment, to decide that abortion is an action that terminates a human life before or after implantation. If abortion advocates call this "contraception" this proves that their definition of contraception includes abortion.

Abortion advocates are causing a ruckus about a rule that simply requires health agencies to follow the law not to discriminate against people who object to participating in unethical actions such as abortion, assisted suicide, or other actions contrary to Biblical or ethical convictions. Unless we counter the distorted claims of abortion advocates about the new regulations, those regulations could be blocked. If healthcare professionals are denied the right to live out moral beliefs, patients will suffer the consequences.

Action:

1. Call the White House to issue new regulations protecting conscience rights in health care: 202-456-1414.

2. Call the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) comment line with the same message: 202-205-5445.

3. Contact your Senators and Representative at 202-224-3121 and urge him/her to support the HHS regulations protecting the conscience rights of health care providers.

4. Educate others - write op-eds and letters to the editor of your local media.

Your message:

"HHS needs to issue federal regulations protecting conscience rights in health care now. Health professionals have a right to serve their patients without violating their deepest moral convictions. And women in need of prenatal care have a right to choose a health professional who will respect them and their unborn children."

P.S. If you know of a health professional being discriminated against now because of moral and religious convictions, he or she should contact the HHS Office of Civil Rights or the appropriate regional office. See www.hhs.gov/ocr/discrimhowtofile.html. Such complaints could become part of the record showing a need for new regulations.

2. Showdown Over Coburn Omnibus

Pro-family Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) and liberal Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) are at loggerheads and a showdown is likely to happen this weekend or early next week!

Senator Coburn has used a time-honored Senate tradition to put "holds" on 36 different bills to prevent them from being passed without a full debate. Senator Reid has rolled these individual bills into one big bill that will create 34 new federal programs and cost over $11 billion in new spending.

While some of these bills are worthwhile, others should be fully debated and amended. And Senator Reid is determined that these bills will not be fully vetted, but be given only an up-or-down vote. This will not allow our friends in the Senate to offer any pro-family amendments. Ultimately, Senator Reid would rather circumvent the debating process and pass the bills without the American people knowing what's in them.

One of the bills in the Coburn Omnibus is the Captive Primates Safety Act. This bill would make it illegal to import, export, transport, sell, acquire or purchase non-human primates (such as monkeys and apes.) If Senator Reid would allow this bill to be fully debated on the floor, it is likely that one of our friends on the Hill would offer an amendment to prohibit transporting minor girls across state lines for an abortion to circumvent parental notification laws.

Instead of helping America, Senator Reid wants to politicize the process, spend your money and hurt Republicans during an election year. If Senator Reid succeeds, we will have a more difficult time getting our friends on the Hill to support a pro-family agenda!

Action: Please call your Republican Senators at 202-224-3121 and urge them to oppose cloture on the Coburn Omnibus. If they do not all stand together, the pro-family agenda will be vastly undermined.

Sincerely,

Wendy Wright
President