Pro-Abortion Obama HHS Nominee Tom Daschle Attacks Bush Pro-Life Policies

From http://lifenews.com/nat4721.html

Pro-Abortion Obama HHS Nominee Tom Daschle Attacks Bush Pro-Life Policies

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 8, 2009
addthis_pub = 'sertelt';

Email RSS Print
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Tom Daschle, the pro-abortion former senator Barack Obama nominated to become the next health secretary appeared before the Senate HELP committee Thursday. There, he attacked President Bush for his pro-life policies on bioethics issues such as stem cell research and the morning after pill.
Daschle criticized the Bush administration and the FDA for its policies -- making the pro-abortion claim that it interjected politics into science.
“I want to reinstate a science-driven environment,” Daschle said. “I want to take ideology and politics, as much as humanly possible, out of the process and leave the scientists to do their job.”
Daschle will also play a large role in shaping Obama's health care plan -- which pro-life advocates worry will promote abortion and do so at taxpayer expense.
During the hearing, Daschle said the formulation of the plan will not be like that of the Clinton administration, where Hillary Clinton devised the plan in secret and pro-life advocates had to work diligently to find the pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia aspects of it.
Groups on the pro-life side of the debate will be holding Daschle accountable to those remarks.
He will also be held accountable for including pro-life members of Congress and Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming asked him to keep the health care plan bipartisan.
"It's the only way we're going to get something done," he warned Daschle, who promised to do so.
Enzi also said Republicans would not be open to a government-run plan like the pro-abortion one Clinton crafted.
“Any new insurance coverage must be delivered through private insurance plans,” he said.
Daschle would also be in a key position to rescind the protections the Bush administration put in place for pro-life doctors and medical centers. They provide better enforcement of existing federal laws protecting medical professionals form being pressured to do abortions.
The Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee interviewed Daschle but the Senate Finance Committee, which has not yet held a hearing on his nomination, will take the confirmation vote that will send his nomination to the full Senate.
Pro-life groups are calling on pro-life advocates to ask members of the panel to vote against him."Citizens who care about family values should be concerned about Daschle's nomination," Ashley Horne, federal policy analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said. "Constituents should make their opposition heard on this nominee."
Daschle has a long pro-abortion voting record as a member of Congress.
In March 2003, Daschle voted for a Senate resolution endorsing Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that allowed virtually unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy and ushered in an era of nearly 50 million abortions.
While Daschle voted for the national partial-birth abortion ban that the Supreme Court eventually upheld, he cast two votes on pro-abortion measures that would have weakened it to the point of being ineffective.

Daschle also supported making taxpayers fund abortions in a variety of circumstances, including funding groups that promote and perform abortions overseas and the performance of abortions at military base hospitals.
He also voted for an alternative to the Unborn Victims Bill, the measure that provides protection and justice for women and children like Laci and Conner Peterson who are victims of violence, that would have been far weaker.
The measure Daschle backed would deny that the baby had suffered any injuries or death in such an attack.
Daschle's record was so poor that the National Right to Life Committee gave him only a 27 percent pro-life voting record from 2003-2004, a 0 percent record in 2001-2002, an 11 percent record in 1999-2000, and a 20 percent record from 1997-1998.

ACTION: See a list of the members of the Senate Finance Committee at http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/committee.htm and contact them to urge strong opposition to Daschle's nomination.

Buzz up!