Family News in Focus reports on what are now two attempts to attach a poison pill amendment to the Unborn Victims of Violence Act:
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act is likely to come up for a vote in the Senate next week, and it's still anybody's guess what final form it will take by the time that happens.
That's because liberal senators, while promising not to filibuster the legislation, are expected to introduce a pair of amendments that would water it down. One comes from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and would remove the bill's key provision -- classifying a preborn child as a victim in an attack on his or her mother. Feinstein's proposal would merely increase penalties in such attacks -- while not recognizing the child in the womb as a separate victim.
Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said what Feinstein hopes to do runs counter to what Americans want done.
"We believe, and over 80 percent of the public believes, that that criminal is claiming two victims, the mother and the unborn child," he explained. "So there's a great fundamental divide between the Feinstein amendment and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act."
The other provision liberals hope to add to the bill has been offered by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. It is an attempt to promote domestic violence programs by requiring employers to spend millions on them, and it does so by spelling out 157 pages of procedural issues.
"This huge bill is being offered as an amendment only for the purpose of trying to mire the Unborn Victims bill in a host of unrelated issues and to get it into a procedural dead end," Johnson said. "Therefore, we regard a vote for the Murray Amendment as a vote to kill the bill."
Jayd Henricks, director of congressional relations for the Family Research Council, said the votes on the amendments are going to be close.
The article contains a link to the CitizenLink Action Center where you can ask your senators to vote for the Unborn Victims of Violence Act but against the Feinstein and Murray amendments.
(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)
