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It was a pro-life, pro-family sweep today at the reconvened “Veto” session of the General Assembly tonight. In addition to a dramatic abortion limiting 21-20 vote within the last hour, the Virginia Senate earlier voted by the same margin to concur with Governor McDonnell and the House of Delegates to restore abstinence education funding that former Governor Tim Kaine cut out of the state budget. As with the vote to ban taxpayer dollars from use in elective abortions in the ObamaCare state run health insurance exchanges, all 18 Republicans were joined by pro-life Democrats Phillip Puckett and Chuck Colgan to get to the magic number of 20 votes and a tie in the chamber allowing pro-life Lt. Governor Bill Bolling to break the tie in favor of the amendment.

The funding, match money corresponding to a federal grant, was initially presented in the House budget but, in the final days of session, Senate conferees stripped it out in budget negotiations. But today, the House reiterated its position by a 69-29 vote, which sent it to the Senate. Senator Colgan (D-29, Manassas), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, introduced the amendment and urged its passage. Pro-abortion Senator Mary Margaret Whipple (D-31, Arlington) rebutted the argument, parroting Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League, which claim abstinence education is ineffective (despite an Obama administration study that says otherwise).

The Family Foundation thanks Governor McDonnell, Lt. Governor Bolling, and the members of the House and Senate who ensured the success of these two important pieces of legislation that soon will become law, as well as all committed pro-life, pro-family Virginians who answered our call to contact their state legislators this week. More to come tomorrow about today’s exciting developments.

Last week, Governor Bob McDonnell added a pro-life amendment to an ObamaCare induced bill — Delegate Terry Kilgore’s HB 2434, that directs the Commonwealth to set up health insurance exchanges in accordance with the new law. (Under ObamaCare, if states don’t act to establish their own exchanges and rules, the federal government will do ti for them.) The governor’s amendment would restrict the proposed and mandated health insurance exchanges from covering abortion services, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at risk. Without such change to the bill, pro-life citizens will be coerced into funding the unethical destruction of human life. His amendment also would prohibit insurance companies from selling optional riders that cover those same abortion services. Typically, NARAL went ballistic (see the Washington Post VIrginia Politics Blog, a Post news article and the Richmond Times-Dispatch; we’re quoted in all three), although the amendment reflects decades-old federal policy under the Hyde Amendment.

Now, the General Assembly must accept the governor’s amendment at next Wednesday’s veto session. During this year’s General Assembly session, similar health insurance abortion funding opt-out language was passed by the House of Delegates twice with overwhelming majorities, but was defeated in the Senate. The Senate voted on a procedural motion, at the end of session, to strike a bill almost identical to Governor McDonnell’s language. It succeeded on a 22-18 party line vote. Since the governor’s language strictly is a policy vote, not a procedural vote, we hope to urge at least two pro-life Democrats to support the amendment.

Of course, this is nothing new. Whether it is a widely-passed bipartisan House bill or a governor’s amendment, the Senate remains the body that blocks nearly every pro-life effort, and has done so for several years. Over the last several days, The Family Foundation has mobilized citizens across Virginia to contact key senators so that they know Virginians want this amendment passed. It is clear that it will not be until the Senate reflects the values of Virginia that we will see many victories. The opportunity to make those changes is quickly approaching, as all 40 Senate seats are up for election in November.

We believe the key to sustaining the amendment lies with five key senators: Fred Quayle (R-13, Suffolk), John Watkins (R-10, Midlothian), Roscoe Reynolds (D-20, Martinsville), Chuck Colgan (D-29, Manassas), and Phil Puckett (D-38, Tazewell). Contact these senators now and urge them to vote yes on Governor McDonnell’s abortion funding opt-out amendment for health insurance exchanges on HB 2434.

You can contact them by calling their district offices (numbers below) or by clicking on their names for their e-mail addresses:

Senator Quayle: 757-483-9173

Senator Watkins: 804-379-2063

Senator Reynolds: 276-638-2315

Senator Colgan: 703-368-0300

Senator Puckett: 276-979-8181

It’s a safe assumption that most of you knew that last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and Sunday morning marked the start of Daylight Savings Time. But are you aware there was another day last week that some consider noteworthy and worth celebrating? Don’t feel bad if you are not. No one here was either until we were appalled to learn, thanks to the NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia blog, that Friday was the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers. 

We wish this was a joke. Sadly it’s not. The pro-abortion group Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice even produced a video to to promote this “holiday:” 

What? You didn’t know? Friday was thank your abortion provider day! What’s next, abortion gift certificates during Christmas? Wait, Planned Parenthood has that covered, too.

This is a twisted “celebration” — the sacrifice of innocent life — especially during the 40 Day Season of Lent, when people of faith are reminded of our Savior’s sacrifice. Instead, NARAL is urging its supporters to send a note of thanks to those who staff these life-depriving centers and perform abortions. (It’s not the first time a pro-abortion group has mocked a holy season. Remember this from Planned Parenthood?)

This reminder of our culture’s disrespect for Life makes us especially grateful for your stand for Life in the face of such depravity. So, during Lent, we encourage you to consider a more appropriate note of thanks — a note of thanks to those who are on the front lines of protecting innocent life —Virginia’s Pregnancy Resource Centers. Here’s a testimonial from a couple of years ago by U.S. Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) on his local PRC, but it could apply to any PRC in the country. Hensarling is the fourth ranking member of the House Republican majority. 

Rep. Hensarling paints the life affirming contrast between PRCs and pro-abortion groups such as Planned Parenthood.

Or, participate in the 40 Days for Life campaign: 

Stand up for life and the real ideals of the season. 

The General Assembly’s recent passage of a bill requiring the Board of Health to create regulations for Virginia’s abortion centers is a great first step in our attempt to return a respect for Life to Virginia. While others uplift a celebration of abortion in the name of “freedom” and “choice,” we hope you will be encouraged by this recent win and remain committed to the cause of Life.

In just a few days, from March 9 to April 17, Virginians will unite with thousands of others around the world for the largest coordinated pro-life mobilization in history — the worldwide 40 Days for Life campaign (click here for more information).

40 Days for Life, which has grown exponentially in recent years, is a focused pro-life campaign that has generated measurable lifesaving results (see its blog) in every community where it has been implemented. For example, here in Richmond:

» At least seven children have survived their trip to the abortion center as their mothers chose life and left the center without going through with their scheduled abortions.

» The Virginia Commonwealth University Students for Life organized sidewalk counseling training, assembled and distributed informational packets and conducted a very successful diaper drive on campus and in local churches to benefit the local pregnancy resource center.

» Dozens of new members joined the pro-life network and together spent hundreds of hours in prayer for an end to abortion.

The 40 Days for Life campaign is made up of three key components:

» Prayer and Fasting: Inviting people of faith throughout your city to join together for 40 days of fervent prayer and fasting for an end to abortion.

» Peaceful Constant Vigil: Standing for life through a 40-day peaceful public witness outside a local abortion facility.

» Community Outreach: Taking a positive, upbeat pro-life message to every corner of your city through media efforts, church presentations, petition drives and public visibility.

For more information about events in your area, please go to one of the following Web sites:

Alexandria

Fairfax

Manassas

Newport News

Richmond

Roanoke

Virginia Beach

We encourage you to get your church involved as well. Volunteers are needed to take part in each aspect of 40 Days for Life. Along with prayer and fasting, people need to sign up for the vigil at a local abortion center, and for community outreach. Please consider joining this important effort.

There also are several kick-off and organizational events scheduled around the commonwealth in preparation for 40 Days for Life. Find these events on the Web page for your area.

This unique opportunity does require a commitment of your time. But I truly believe that we need God’s direct intervention if we are going to ever rid our nation of abortion. We hope you join the thousands of citizens from across the nation (and around the world) and be a part of 40 Days for Life.

Governor Bob McDonnell today set March 8 as the date for the special election to fill the 91st district House of Delegates seat suddenly vacated last week when Delegate Tom Gear (R-Hampton) resigned for health reasons. Delegate Gear’s multiple sclerosis is worsening and his wife and sister both have cancer (see Rosalind Helderman at the Washington Post’s Virginia Politics blog). That date ensures that 91st district voters will not be represented in the House of Delegates this 46-day session. The earliest the election could have been set, by law, was 45 days after Delegate Gear’s resignation. 

We will miss Delegate Gear. Quick witted and always genial, his great sense of humor frequently was on display, especially in the small chat world of General Assembly Building elevators and waiting areas, and often timely to relieve certain stress over upcoming committee votes those elevators were taking us to. An unwavering conservative, he is a public servant committed to principle. We wish him and his loved ones well and the restoration of their health.

Of course,  just because he resigned doesn’t mean he’s gone inactive. There are three Republicans running to succeed him in a largely GOP district (no word on whether the Democrats will field a candidate) and he’s already thrown his endorsement to Teresa Vanasse Schmidt, a day-care assistant director from Hampton, calling her “a rock-solid conservative. She’s pro-life. She’s big on the Second Amendment. And she doesn’t believe in raising taxes” (see the Post). 

Also running are Hampton City Councilman Chris Stuart, who owns a security company, and attorney Chad Green, the second vice-chairman of the York County Republican Committee. Stuart today released a statement announcing that he is the first of the three to sign the Americans for Tax Reform “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” which states that a candidate will never vote for a tax increase.

We all remember the rhyme “sticks and stones,” and those of us in the pro-family movement are certainly used to being called just about every name in the book. So the recent attack by the far left Southern Poverty Law Center (see Christianity Today) on Americans who believe in the sanctity of human life and traditional marriage certainly doesn’t bother me — but it does reflect the desperation of the far left.

Unfortunately, SPLC and other leftist organizations have gone as far as urge that pro-family spokespersons, such as the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, be denied the opportunity to be guests on national news programs. In response to the SPLC’s labeling of pro-family organizations and leaders as “hate groups,” The Family Foundation has joined with nearly 150 other national and state organizations to denounce the SPLC’s attack and call for a civil debate on the merits of the issues.

Name-calling reveals a lack of strength and character — and of valid arguments. By dismissing debate and dialogue, SPLC and its liberal funders simply are avoiding having their assumptions challenged.

The Family Foundation and the other pro-family groups that have signed on to the response welcome the debate. We have the truth, the facts, on our side. To read more about the response, go to startdebatingstophating.com. You also can sign onto the response at that site (and share this link to encourage others to do so).

We are proud of our association with Focus on the Family, The Family Research Council, the Alliance Defense Fund and the other nearly 40 Family Policy Councils around the country! It is indeed sad that the divisions in our country have brought us to the point where believing that marriage as we have always known it — between a man and a woman — is viewed as hateful. It is even more distressing that there are organizations working, literally, to silence voices that carry the pro-family, pro-life message.

We are blessed with tens of thousands of people across Virginia who support The Family Foundation and our pro-family message! You and I know that our principles, our values, make society stronger and more stable. That is a message that will not be silenced!

Stem cell research has been at the center of one of the hottest debates in the 21st century where science and ethics have clashed. Additionally, many lab procedures flirt with the bounds of ethics and morality — cloning, genetic engineering, in vitro fertilization, and preimplantation genetic diagnosis to name just a few. Some scientists see new lab procedures as holding the answer to many of medicine’s most difficult challenges. They see a future with the ability to clone, cure the most noxious of diseases — perhaps, even, the ability to achieve genetic perfection.

But such a utopian vision dismisses the spiritual side of the equation, overriding it with the “absolutes” of science. This vision ignores the moral and ethical questions surrounding medical research:

What are the potential human costs of these so-called “advances in medicine and technology?”

Are some humans “disposable” if their destruction leads to medical advances?

As science moves into uncharted territory, Americans are caught between the hope it provides and the quickly fading morals that guard against sacrificing human life. Responding to these challenges, The Family Foundation has produced, Do No Harm: Ethics in the Laboratory, a new policy paper. In this paper, we address the oft-asked questions of

When does life begin?

Is embryonic stem cell research ethical?

Is in vitro fertilization a choice that respects life?

I encourage you to read Do No Harm as I believe you will find it instructive and enlightening. Click here to read the report in its entirety. It also is archived in our Publications and Position Papers section in the right margin on this site.

The Family Foundation has worked with pro-life allies for several years to educate the public and legislators on this important topic. We have successfully amended legislation that attempted to funnel your tax dollars into unethical research to ensure that Virginians are not forced to subsidize these questionable programs. There is still work to be done and too many politicians in Richmond are willing to waste our money on unethical and unproductive research. Our hope is that this paper will provide information to citizens, the media and elected officials they may not otherwise know.

To help us continue to produce research that produces policy papers such as Do No Harm and our previous papers, and to help us disseminate it to legislators, policy makers and the media, click here.

So the fissure between some in the “Tea Party” movement and “social conservatives” continues to fester beneath the surface of American politics, revealing itself periodically, but not quite coming to a boil — yet.

Yesterday, Politico ran a story about a letter sent by GOProud, a homosexual activist group, some tea party leaders and various bloggers, urging Republican leaders in Washington to avoid putting forward any legislation on those nasty little  social issues the Tea Party seems so bent on ignoring. Focus, they say, solely on limiting government. 

Mitch Daniels, your office is calling.

Truce. Let’s bury the hatchet for a while and just focus on the issues where we agree. We’ll get back to the “divisive social issues” later. There are more important things to deal with. 

We’ve heard it all before.

Now, there are many possible responses to this foolish line of thinking, not the least of which is the polling that shows an overwhelming majority of tea partiers as socially conservative, and the fact that pro-life and pro-marriage candidates dominate the class of new Congressmen that will arrive in Washington in January — many of whom ran campaigns that touted their socially conservative leanings. 

But you know all that already. 

I have some other reactions (not all printable!). For instance, this truce that’s being pushed, does it include, say, GOProud’s friends at the Human Rights Campaign and their state chapters like Equality Virginia? Or Planned Parenthood? Or NARAL? Will they cease and desist from pushing their agenda’s during the “truce”? No more coming to the government for grants? No more money to Planned Parenthood? No more attempts to legislate same-sex marriage? 

Yea, that’s what I thought. So we’re being asked to just play defense? Sorry, I’ll pass.

And why can’t we focus on more than one issue at a time? Is it really that difficult? Honestly, social conservatives, who are also overwhelmingly fiscally conservative, have no problem working on lowering taxes and decreasing the enormity of government at the same time they seek to restore some ethical standards that once under-girded our culture. Is it so bad that our politicians can’t think about two issues at once?

Don’t answer that.

Frankly, this whole debate is wearing thin. News flash: social issues aren’t going away. They aren’t going away because for a large segment of the electorate, on both the left and the right, these issues matter. They matter a lot. They matter to those of us who believe that strong, stable, two parent families will reduce poverty a lot faster than any government program. They matter to those of us who understand that losing 50 million people from the population since abortion was made legal has had a $35 trillion negative impact on our economy (not to mention the fact that those are 50 million human beings we’re talking about!). They matter to those of us who understand that our freedom to say what we believe and exercise our faith in the public square is threatened by the relentless march of secularism.

So no, I won’t be joining any truce. The Family Foundation isn’t joining any truce. We aren’t going away. No matter how badly some in the “Tea Party” wish we would.

Yesterday, I was honored to receive Focus on the Family’s 2010 Family Policy Council Family Champion Award in recognition of our successful Winning Matters 2009 campaign. Winning Matters was the largest voter education and mobilization campaign in our 25-year history. I received the award while attending Focus’ annual Family Policy Council Leaders Conference in Chicago.

We are particularly flattered to have been selected from nearly forty family policy councils from around the country to receive this special recognition from Focus on the Family. In presenting the award, Focus on the Family Action (CitizenLink) Vice President Tom Minnery said:

Because the results of their successful efforts were so decisive, Victoria Cobb and The Family Foundation of Virginia have distinguished themselves as a 2010 Family Champion Award recipient.

Winning Matters proved that with the right plan and the right message, values focused voters can be motivated to turn out and can make a difference in any election. We plan to use what we learned from our successes in 2009, combined with the instruction I am receiving this week in Chicago regarding campaigns, to begin formulating our strategy for next year’s crucial state Senate elections.

You may recall the Winning Matters campaign included eleven staff, nine that were in the field working with churches across Virginia, meeting pastors, attending community and political events, and using social networking to educate and mobilize our voters. Together, they contacted more than 4,000 churches, distributed nearly 125,000 General Assembly Report Cards — more than twice as many as ever before — and conducted or initiated hundreds of voter registration drives. The Family Foundation Action also produced Get Out The Vote phone calls with Chuck Colson, Mike Huckabee and Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Family Foundation Action mailed thousands of voter education pieces to key House districts and distributed nearly one million non-partisan Voter Guides for the three statewide races and 38 House races, to educate voters — including Spanish and Korean statewide Voter Guides for the first time. In another first, the non-partisan organization created a video Voter Guide as well, to distribute virally through social networking sites.

According to exit polls, the number of evangelicals who voted in 2009 surpassed the previous 2004 Virginia election benchmark, and 83 percent of these voters voted for pro-life, pro-family candidates. Consequently, nearly half of all Governor Bob McDonnell’s votes came from self-identified evangelicals.

I would also like to express my appreciation to all of you who supported Winning Matters either financially or through your hard work on the campaign!

I am also pleased to report that there were no protests at today’s award presentation!

It’s refreshing when our opponents are honest about what they’re actually trying to do. A pro-life legislator forwarded me a recent blog post by NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia that proved to be especially revealing. Reporting on its recent “Legislative Debriefing 2010″ meeting in which it discussed its successes and failures of the 2010 General Assembly session, NARAL’s blogger writes:

In the last part of the evening, we had an enlightening impromptu discussion about ceding battles of language to anti-choicers. Although we know that they are not “pro-life” (as one attendee said, we are pro-life, we are the ones who care about saving lives), we often use other anti-choice word choices without realizing it or considering the consequences.

Here comes the interesting part. Read carefully. NARAL’s blogger continues:

There is no such thing as a “partial-birth” abortion. Humans are not “babies” until they are born alive. We are PRO-CHOICE, not “abortionists.” Pregnant women are women who happen to be pregnant, they are not “mothers” until they have children. When we allow the anti-choicers to shift the debate using words like “life” and “unborn,” we give them power. If you haven’t before, it’s time to become more cognizant of the words you use.

Did you get that? “Humans are not ‘babies’ until they are born alive.” Interesting that NARAL even used the word “human“! Then, this gem: ”Pregnant women are women who happen to be pregnant, they are not ‘mothers’ until they have children.” What an insult to expectant mothers!

Can you imagine a pregnant woman going in for an 8-month check up only to be told, “The human inside you is not yet a baby and you’re not yet a mother. But be sure to take your pre-natal vitamins and go to a Lamaze class just in case that human becomes a baby and just in case you become a mother.” Is a woman only a “mother” if she chooses to want her child?

This is the mindset our opposition operates under. Planned Parenthood is no different from NARAL. In an e-mail alert sent to their constituents, Planned Parenthood advertises a training they’re offering that teaches “how to talk the pro-choice talk.” No wonder it necessitates training — you have to learn to set aside logic and reality and take on a nonsensical language!

No matter how NARAL and Planned Parenthood redefine their terms and massage their language, the truth is still the truth. We still know what their intent is no matter how they adorn their words. But just as important, another thing that won’t change — The Family Foundation will remain committed to being your advocate in the General Assembly and in the public square to defeat NARAL and Planned Parenthood’s anti-life goals.