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PAST ACTION ALERTS -
2005 |
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Issued June
29, 2005
Do Not Fund Destructive
Embryo Research
As early as the week of July 11,
the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on a bill authorizing
use of federal funds to encourage the destruction of live
human embryos for stem cell research. From July 2 to July 10
the Senate is scheduled to be in recess. This time is an
excellent opportunity for pro-life leaders to schedule
meetings with Senators in their state offices.
Destroying human embryos to obtain
embryonic stem cells is both immoral and unnecessary. Stem
cells from adult tissues, umbilical cord blood, and other
morally acceptable sources are already producing treatments
for diseases. Embryonic stem cells have yet to benefit any
human patient. See:
www.stemcellresearch.org. Please note the "New
Resources" section. For other resources online also see:
www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/bioethic/stemcell/index.htm.
Administration Policy:
President Bush’s policy limits federal funding of embryonic
stem cell research to stem cells already derived from
embryos as of August 9, 2001.
House Action:
On May 24, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 238-194
to pass the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (H.R. 810).
That measure would rescind Administration policy so that new
embryos, initially created for reproduction, can be killed
for federally funded stem cell research if their parents
give consent. President Bush has stated that if H.R. 810
reached his desk, he would veto it. See:
www.whitehouse.gov/omb/legislative/sap/109-1/hr810sap-h.pdf.
House support for H.R. 810 fell well short of the two-thirds
vote needed to override a veto.
Senate Bill:
A bill identical to H.R. 810 has been introduced in the
Senate. On February 28, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced
S. 471. Supporters of destructive embryo research are
continuing to wage a skillful and well-funded legislative
campaign. It is extremely important that Senators with
pro-life and mixed voting records be urged to vote against
S. 471. The measure has 40 cosponsors. Please check for
your Senators at:
thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN00471:@@@P.
ACTION: In
addition to local meetings during the Independence Day
recess (see above), all pro-life constituents should contact
their two Senators by FAX letter, e-mail, and phone.
Activate phone trees. Call the U. S. Capitol switchboard at
202-224-3121, or call your Senators’ local offices. For
access to full contact information, see:
nchla.org/contcong.asp.
Also, through NCHLA’s Action Center, a person can send an
e-mail directly to their Senators at:
nchla.org/actiondisplay.asp?ID=233.
MESSAGE:
"Please vote 'no' on S. 471. Destroying human embryos for
research purposes is immoral and unnecessary. Please support
stem cell research that does not harm or destroy human life
at any stage."
WHEN:
During the week of July 11, the Senate may vote on S. 471.
Please act now! Thanks! 6/29/05 |
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Issued: June
15, 2005
Please welcome the Crossroads
walkers to South Dakota this week!!! Attached is a
PDF document explaining this initiative, including a
detailed schedule of their time while in South Dakota.
They welcome others to join them while they walk. If
they are in your area please do all you can to make them
feel at home, and show them that we are a pro-life
state!
We would also like to inform you of a
wonderful pro-life email news source, LifeNews.com.
This is one of the best respect life resources for daily
or weekly articles on current news stories from across
the country. You can either receive one email
in digest form - containing 5-10 news stories for that
day, or you can receive each article individually,
whichever you prefer. Please go to
www.lifenews.com
and view todays articles and quickly and easily sign up
for this news service.
Crossroads
Initiative - PDF
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Issued: June
13, 2005
Below is a reminder of the talk
by Fr. Tad at Avera-McKennan on Thursday evening.
Hopefully some of you are able to attend. And
attached is an article on Pope Benedict's promotion of
abstinence.
THE SCIENCE AND ETHICS OF STEM
CELLS AND CLONING
Thursday, June 16th at 7:00 p.m.
Avera McKennan Education Center
Auditorium at the Orthopedic Institute
810 E. 23rd
Street, Sioux Falls, SD
Presented by:
Rev. Tadeusz
Pacholczyk, Ph.D. (Fr. Tad)
Director of Education,
The National Catholic Bioethics Center
After earning a Ph.D. in Neuroscience
from Yale University, Fr. Tad did post-doctoral research
at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical
School. He subsequently studied in Rome where he
did advanced studies in theology and in bioethics.
Pope Benedict
Article |
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Issued: May
17, 2005
Please read the following Action
Alert carefully and act on it. Contact information
for Representative Herseth can be found on the
"National" page of our CAN website.
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Do Not Fund Research
Requiring the Killing of Human Embryos
Before Memorial Day the U.S.
House of Representatives may vote on a bill
authorizing use of federal funds to encourage the
destruction of live human embryos for stem cell
research.
President Bush’s policy limits
federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to
cells obtained from embryos as of August 9, 2001.
The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, introduced
by Reps. Michael Castle (R-DE) and Diane DeGette
(D-CO), would rescind this policy so that new
embryos, initially created for reproduction, can be
killed for their stem cells if their parents give
consent.
Destroying human embryos to
obtain stem cells is both immoral and unnecessary.
Stem cells from adult tissues, umbilical cord blood,
and other morally acceptable sources are far
outdistancing embryonic stem cells in producing
cures. See:
www.stemcellresearch.org.
Supporters of H.R. 810 are waging
a skillful and well-funded campaign to secure the
bill’s passage. In the short time before the vote,
it is extremely important that Representatives with
pro-life and mixed voting records be urged to vote
against H.R. 810. The bill has 198 cosponsors (two
of whom are non-voting delegates). Please check this
list to determine if your Representative is a
cosponsor:
thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR00810:@@@P.
For current resources online see:
www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/bioethic/stemcell/index.htm
and
www.stemcellresearch.org. On the latter web
site, note the "New Resources" section (far right
column of home page), which includes an excellent
letter sent by 57 scientists to Senator John Kerry
last fall and new one-page fact sheets refuting
current arguments.
ACTION: Please contact
your Representative by FAX letter, e-mail, and
phone. Activate phone trees. Call the U. S. Capitol
switchboard at 202-224-3121, or call your
Representative’s local office. For access to full
contact information, see:
nchla.org/contcong.asp,
where you can directly link to Representatives’
e-mail and to their web sites with addresses, phone
numbers and the like.
MESSAGE: "Please vote 'no’
on H.R. 810. Destroying human embryos for research
purposes is immoral and unnecessary. Please support
adult stem cell research."
WHEN: H.R. 810 may be
debated on the House floor before Memorial Day.
Please act now! Thanks! |
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Issued:
February 27, 2005
As we begin the final week of this
legislative session before the recess, the following
abortion bills are up for final vote in either the
Senate or House TOMORROW at 2:00 p.m.
Please pray that they successfully pass and that
Governor Rounds signs all of them:
HB 1166 - An Act to establish
certain legislative findings pertaining to the health
and rights of women, to revise the physician disclosure
requirements to be made to a woman contemplating
submitting to an abortion, and to provide for certain
causes of action for professional negligence if an
abortion is performed without informed consent.
HB 1233 - An Act to establish a
task force to study abortion and to provide for its
composition, scope, and administration.
SB 193 - An Act to revise
certain provisions regarding the performance of
abortions on unemancipated minors and those found to be
incompetent.
HB 1249 - An Act to prohibit
the performance of abortions, except to save the life of
the mother, and to provide a penalty therefor and to
provide for a delayed effective date.
Also,
HJR 1001,
Proposing and submitting to
the electors at the next general election an amendment
to Article XXI of the Constitution of the State of South
Dakota, relating to the definition of marriage, is
up for a vote in the Senate at 2:00 p.m.
While we realize that this is late notice, we are aware
that some Senators are now questioning whether they
should vote for it. Please try to contact any
Senators you can before tomorrow afternoon, and urge
them to vote "YES" for this Joint
Resolution. Here is the link to the LRC webmail:
Email a Legislator
Thanks
again for your dedication to CAN! |
Issued:
February 15, 2005
HB 1093, an Act to allow certain nonpublic school
students to participate in interscholastic activities at
other nonpublic schools, is in
Senate Education on
Thursday, February 17th at 7:45a.m.
Following is the entire text of the bill:
Any seventh or eighth grade
student who attends a nonpublic elementary or middle
school that is not affiliated with a nonpublic high
school may participate in interscholastic activities
at a nonpublic high school if the student meets the
same scholastic standards required by the South
Dakota High School Activities Association for high
school participation.
Right now, students in a nonpublic
school that is not affiliated with a nonpublic high
school are only allowed to participate in
interscholastic activities at PUBLIC high schools.
Out of fairness, students should be able to choose where
they would like to participate, whether public or
private.
Please contact the following Senators
and urge them to vote "YES" on this bill. Remember
to forward this Action Alert on to the other members of
your network.
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Issued:
February 15, 2005
On February 9, 2005,
SB 206, an act to prohibit the imposition of certain
death sentences if the defendant is not a serious and
continuing threat to the lives of others, was killed in
the
Senate Judiciary by a vote of 5-2. However,
today it was successfully recalled from committee (i.e.,
"smoked out" of committee) in an effort to allow the
full Senate to debate and vote on the bill.
Please contact the Senator in your
district, or Senators that you or your family members
have a relationship with but who are not in your
district, and urge them to support this bill.
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Issued:
February 12, 2005
A lot has happened since our last
Action Alert. Please review our CAN
Bill List to see where all the bills are in the
process. There is going to be a lot of activity
this next week, as all of the bills must be through the
house of origin by Wednesday, February 16th.
Unfortunately, some good bills have
failed to pass, and some bad bills have passed.
One of those bad bills that got out of committee is
SB 168, the Emergency Contraception
bill. This bill was amended in Senate Health &
Human Services, and then passed as amended 4-3.
The votes in committee were as follows:
We think we have enough votes to kill
this bill on the Senate floor, but to ensure that it
stops here, please contact the following Senators and
urge them to vote
"NO" on
SB 168:
Remember to put your concerns
about SB 168 in your own words, and then be sure
to forward this Action Alert on to the other members in
your network as is.
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Issued:
February 4, 2005
First, a reminder. Because we
are constantly updating the CAN
Website, please remember to hit the "refresh" button
on your Internet browser when you first open it, and
then once in awhile while browsing, especially if you
are working in the evening when we do most of our
updating.
Second, we realize that we are asking
you to email legislators that are not from your
district. This is because we unfortunately do not
have a Legislative Liaison at each parish, and therefore
do not have a contact person in each district.
Therefore, when we ask you to contact committee members,
if one of them is your legislator, please be sure to
tell them that you are from their district. If
not, please still email the other legislators. We
realize that hearing from someone in your district is
most influential, but hearing from someone outside your
district is better than not hearing from anyone at all.
And now for the action alert!
HB 1238, an act to
revise certain provisions relating to the aggravating
circumstances in death penalty cases, is set for hearing
in
House State Affairs tomorrow
at 10:00 am. Please see our Comments &
Talking Points/Fact Sheet under this bill on the CAN
Bill List for more information. In short, the
bill would limit the instances in which a jury can
sentence a defendant to death. Please email the
following legislators and urge them to vote "YES" on
this bill:
Update on
SB 168, the "Emergency Contraception" bill:
Testimony was taken last Wednesday,
but there will be further testimony taken tomorrow,
mostly from the proponents of the bill, and final action
will likely not take place until Monday. Please
pray that the committee members will not be led astray
and that they will vote against this bill. If you
would like to make a second contact with the legislators
that are undecided and urge them to vote "NO", those
legislators are:
Thanks again for all you are doing to
help our moral voice be heard in the Capitol!
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Issued:
February 1, 2005
SB 166, an act to provide that
"health education" be factual, medically accurate, and
objective, has been assigned to the
Senate Education Committee and is set for hearing on
Thursday, February 3, 2005 at 7:45 a.m.
While this bill seems relatively
harmless on its face, it is a high priority for Planned
Parenthood. Please review our comments under this
bill on the CAN
Bill List on the CAN
Website for more information, read the bill, and
then contact all of the legislators on the Senate
Education Committee and ask them to vote
"NO".
Remember, as always, to put the
concerns with this bill into your own words.
The Committee members are:
As we send out action alerts, please
try to do them ASAP. As with the last action
alert, this bill is set for hearing on Thursday
already. This will be the case with most bills, as the
hearing assignments are posted on the LRC website just
after 5:00 p.m., usually only a day in advance (i.e., 2
days prior to hearing). Remember, things must move
this quickly to get all of the bills through the process
in just 8 weeks!
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Issued:
January 31, 2005
Here we go.... Activity at
the Capitol is in full force and will likely not slow
down until the end of session. As you can see from
our CAN
Bill List, there are a lot of bills that we are
lobbying this year, and we will be adding more to the
list. We will try to update the information on
each bill every evening, after the LRC Website posts the
activites of the day, so try to check your email after
supper, before you go to bed at night, or first thing in
the morning (and periodically throughout the day, if you
are able to).
Please notice that we have provided
links to pertinant information throughout the text of
this email. We will try to have a link to anything
we want you to view on our CAN Website or elsewhere.
Hopefully the links turn up blue in your email program.
Otherwise, they should at least be underlined.
Please review our
¯Talking
Points/Fact Sheet thoroughly, and then
email and/or call all the legislators on the Health and
Human Services Committee and tell them to vote
"NO" on SB 168. Remember
to state the reasons in your own words using the talking
points as guidelines.
The members of the Health and Human
Services Committee are:
(Click on their names to read their
bios, if you want.)
If you haven't entered all of the
legislators in your personal email address book, we
suggest emailing them from the LRC website by clicking
on this link:
Email a Legislator
Once in the webmail program, you
can enter your email address, select the legislator to
email from the drop down menu, enter your subject, and
then type out the text of your email and send it. You
should then be able to send it to the other legislators
on the committee by simply clicking on the "Back" button
in your Internet Browser, choosing the next legislator,
and sending it again. It should retain your email
address, the subject, and the text of your email.
Do this until you have emailed each legislator.
It should give you confirmation that your email has been
sent after each one.
We suggest that you either print
out your email before you send it, or draft it in a word
processing document that you can save (and then just cut
and paste into the email) so that you have it if you
want to look back at it, use it again, or share it with
others.
Don't forget to then send
this email on to all of your CAN members, and anyone
else you think would help lobby to kill this bill.
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