Idaho Chooses Life

The now notorious abortionist Kermit Gosnell is in prison for the rest of his natural life. Given the difficult judgment facing him, one could imagine that he is hoping that prison time lasts for a long, long time. He was held accountable for but a fraction of the crimes committed, but we can give thanks for the fact that a jury of ordinary men and women had the strength of character to endure a horrific trial to render a guilty verdict.
Imagine for a moment the dire social consequences had they failed to find such a man guilty.

Now our attention can turn to the possible fallout from the Gosnell trial.

Many on the Left would have you believe that he was an evil aberration. Some would have you buy the notion that abortionists are simply kind, gentle souls rendering a public service. But abortion is, by its very nature, a grisly and bloody business. Gosnell is no by means an “outlier”. (In fact, several abortion operations have come in for public scrutiny since the Gosnell trial began – Texas and Delaware come to mind).

What is genuinely unique about the Gosnell case is that it has forced the public to see and hear the sordid details of America’s abortion culture. The nation, including media personalities impersonating journalists, have been cornered into actually seeing behind the dark curtain which surrounds abortion mills. We are collectively nauseated, our hearts hurt over the evil we silently tolerate.

Will the revulsion last? No. The nation is all too anxious to move along, to think of more pleasant things. But a deep crack in the foundation has nevertheless developed. For all our denial, somewhere in our minds the images and descriptions of industrialized child murder linger. Seeds of doubt have been planted in even the most virulent defenders of abortion. Some abortion supporters have even publicly changed their minds on the matter.

The fact that Gosnell was even tried proves that the nation’s conscience still exists, that there are boundaries of decency left.

We must take encouragement from this demonstration of decency and nurture the seeds into mighty shade trees of relief from this national scourge.

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Idaho Chooses Life

U.S. Federal Judge Edward Korman (New York) issued an order on Friday making “Emergency Contraception” available to girls without restriction. His order was a direct answer to the Obama Administration’s attempt to limit easy access to girls 15 and older.

By the terms of Korman’s order, girls of any age can purchase the potent drug without identification or prescription from the shelves of any drug store. By the terms of his order, parents will, of course, be cut out of the process. And so will medical personnel, including pharmacists. Girls will have easier access to “Plan B” than adults do sinus headache medicine.

As we’ve noted before, this imperious social engineering will have devastating implications for the health and safety of America’s daughters. Allowing grade school girls to ingest these dangerous and powerful hormones without adult supervision is simply madness. Which is to say nothing about the deaths of untallied preborn children and the further erosion of parental authority.

Nearly every profound social ill is on display with this story: the abuse of power by our federal judiciary; disregard for the family; and an evil agenda by the American Left to destroy the lives of America’s youth by imposing a dysfunctional and degrading sexual ethic upon the culture.

With our federal and state authorities so compromised by this whole dynamic, pro-Lifers must focus significant prayer time on behalf of our nation’s vulnerable daughters.

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Idaho Chooses Life

The unrelenting campaign to allow children free and unaccountable access to the “Morning After Pill” is nothing short of an effort by evil to destroy the innocence of children, particularly female children. The manufacturer of “Plan B” has been pushing for years to allow unsupervised and unrestricted access to their deadly product in the cause of greater profits. They have been joined by zealots in the Abortion Rights movement who seek to unfetter America from any moral concerns about sex or its consequences. Those forces have recently gained invaluable allies in the Obama Administration and the federal courts.

The first victims of their campaign to make Emergency Contraception as easily available as Luden’s cherry cough drops will be the new human beings destroyed by the drug’s powerful chemical make-up.

But the collateral victims will be the girls who use their new “Green Cards” to engage in premature sexual activity. By order of the federal government, these children will now have official permission – even encouragement – to engage in self-destructive sex before they could ever possibly appreciate the emotional, spiritual or physical consequences. Parents will be officially banned from interfering in the matter. Even doctors won’t be allowed to obstruct access to the pills painted by the media as the “solution” to whatever consequences might follow premature sexual activity.

Could anyone concoct a more heinous plot to destroy innocence and future well-being?

Sadly, the dire consequences of this policy shift don’t end there. Not by a long shot.

Official permission to access the Morning After Pill – which, again, acts as an abortifacient – will almost certainly lead to higher rates of sexual activity among the nation’s children. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that this increased rate of premature sex will lead to higher numbers of STD’s, and higher rates of teenage pregnancies. With each destructive sexual encounter, innocence is wounded. Denigrated self-esteem and guilt is sure to follow, leading to other sexual encounters as a band-aid for the spiritual and emotional pain.

And we haven’t even touched upon the ‘predator dynamic’ – the easy availability of this deadly drug without medical and parental supervision is cause for celebration among those family members or neighbors who would prey upon the vulnerable and innocent.

And then there is there is the deadly matter of the health impact of the Morning After Pill itself. No long term studies have been performed on the consequences of ingesting these mega-dose hormones into the bodies of girls right in the midst of the most profound developmental changes. During the very period when they are maturing into women, the abortion-drug cabal would allow girls to freely add powerful hormonal cocktails into their bodies.

That cocktail contains mega-doses of the standard contraceptive pill, already shown to produce heart problems and even cancer in women who use the pill for extended periods of time. What happens to a young girl who uses “Plan B” on a repeated basis? No one knows. And no one – at least in official Washington circles – seems to care.

One could go on and on about the dire implications of this movement to normalize sexual activity among children. But be assured that countless future mothers, sisters, daughters, spouses will be forever changed by this sinister plot.

But there is one more dynamic which must be added to your consideration: the Idaho Legislature.

Last month we sought to insert a “Religious Liberty Amendment” into the language creating Idaho’s new Obama Insurance Exchange. It would have prevented the exchange from forcing any employer or individual from paying for insurance covering abortifacients – like the “Morning After Pill” – if that employer had moral or religious objections to participating in the destruction of the innocent(s).

Our efforts failed. A majority of Republican senators were more interested in helping Blue Cross build an insurance monopoly in Idaho than they were in protecting human life or our religious liberties.

As a result, it is entirely possible that not only will a 12 year old child be able to walk into an Idaho Falls Wal-Mart and purchase Plan B off the shelf – she may be able to do so without a dime in her pocket. Those deadly drugs may be “free” to her under the terms of her father’s group health insurance plan.

Lord have mercy upon those children we are publicly and willfully betraying.

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Idaho Chooses Life

The Gosnell trial in Philadelphia is coming to a close. But the trial is no longer just about a murderous abortion doctor who long ago abandoned any pretense of the Hippocratic Oath. The public revelations of what happens behind the heavy dark curtain has put the abortion industry on trial.
And make no mistake: Gosnell’s horror show is not some aberration.

Planned Parenthood has long fought for abortion at any place, anytime. They fought President Bush tooth-and-claw when he supported the Born Alive Infants Protection Act some ten years ago. It was their public policy to ensure that a doctor should have as many swings at the defenseless baby as necessary in order to guarantee a corpse is produced.

And don’t be deceived that the unhealthy, contaminated, barbaric treatment of women at Gosnell’s shop is unique. As a by-product of the Gosnell trial, nurses at a Planned Parenthood clinic have come forward to describe an abortion factory in Delaware as “ridiculously unsafe”. Former Planned Parenthood employee Joyce Vasikonis told reporters, “They were using instruments on patients that were not sterile.”

This is the way that these supposed “advocates for women” treat those they claim to serve; imagine the barbarity they use in treating those innocent babies, deemed “enemies” of their world view.

The Gosnell trial has also put members of the media on trial. They have been weighed and found wanting. Most of the main stream media simply turned its back on the story. Liberal writer Marc Lamont Hill admitted as much in a posting on the Huffington Post:

“I do think that those of us on the left have made a decision not to cover this trial because we worry that it’ll compromise abortion rights… there’ a direct connection between the media’s failure to cover this and our own political commitments on the left… I think it’s dangerous.”

Yes, dangerous for women and babies, certainly. But the failure of our nation’s 4th Estate to perform its basic function is dangerous to the nation on a very basic level.

But despite that unspoken conspiracy, the truth is leaking out. The conscience of the nation is being challenged. Even the ethics of journalists are being challenged by the facts of this Gosnell trial, hearts are being reached. (See the heart-moving interview of a journalist by Governor Mike Huckabee on his Fox News Show).

The truth shall set us free.

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Idaho Chooses Life

Sen. Marco Rubio has come under gentle pressure from some conservative quarters over his adoption of the term “undocumented ” in his bid to persuade Americans that the Rubio/McCain/Schumer plan to deal with illegal immigrants is good for the country.

The left has been using the power of language to manipulate Americans for many years, and this debate gives us an opportunity to examine how it is done, why it is done and the impact on public policy.

Breitbart traces the fight by the left wing to cleanse the media of the term “illegal immigrant” because it is “offensive”: As far back as 2004, academics have been pressuring the Associated Press to drop the terminology. For years, the AP resisted, saying that the term was accurate because it described a “person who resides in a country unlawfully”. But politics is everything.

Just this month, the AP announced that it would no longer use the term.

The same cleansing has occurred in the abortion debate, though over a much longer period of time. The media refuses to call groups like Idaho Chooses Life as “pro-life” – while having no trouble describing Planned Parenthood as “pro-choice”. Of course that is frustrating because it drains so much of the debate of its importance.

But the manipulation of language by the Left often has real-world consequences. During this past legislative session, abortion advocate John Rusche – Democrat leader in the Idaho House – “officially objected” to the use of the term ‘abortifacient’ during floor debate because “Emergency Contraception doesn’t cause abortions”.

Of course, what Rusche would not admit is that the Left – including members of the medical profession – have conspired to change definitions so that pregnancy no longer means what we all understand it to mean. By their cynical cleansing of the abortion debate, a new life simply doesn’t exist until the fertilized ovum manages to attach itself to the uterine wall. Since Emergency Contraception is specifically designed to interfere with that process, pregnancy doesn’t happen. And you can’t have an abortion if you don’t have a pregnancy to begin with.

Pretty slick, right? So slick in fact, that it is very difficult to even address Emergency Contraception in legislation because of the intentional abuse of language by operatives like John Rusche and the liberal media.

Even more important: Manipulation of language, words, has profound consequences because it is the medium of rational thought. An idea generally requires words to exist, and we certainly need words to communicate our ideas to another. Win the battle for the dictionary and you can sometimes deprive your fellow citizens of truth altogether.

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By Jesse Higgins

Dear Governor Otter,

As a longtime supporter and a conservative I am writing, and asking others that read and agree, to ask you to explain some recent actions. Note: Representatives and Senators may be contacted at www.legislature.idaho.gov.

Although I agree with your veto of H0121(smoking in bowling alleys) I am not sure I agree with all of your reasoning. Since you stated in your veto letter “Given legislative concerns about “social engineering,” particularly in regard to my proposal for targeted expansion of the grocery tax credit” (more about that later) it appears you are acting like a spoiled child, saying, if you will not give me what I want I will not give you what you want.

The supporters of the “Clean Indoor Air Act H0121 state “Public Place” as their justification. They confuse public and private property. Just because I allow the public on my property I should not be forced by government to relinquish what is left of my PRIVATE PROPERTY rights. As I look at the last few years of legislative action, I see an attempt by government to remove even the illusion of PRIVATE PROPERTY in Idaho.

House bill H081a is a different matter. How dare you veto a bill that will return 31 to 32.4 million dollars to the taxpayers of Idaho and claim the state cannot afford it! You were elected on a platform of conservative principles that include smaller government, lower taxes (this is what we are talking about), and less intrusive government. I am not even asking you to cut the budget of any government agency – just reduce the rate of growth by 1.5%. This is not you’re money. This money belongs to the people of Idaho. Give it back when you have the chance.

I am sending a copy of this letter to each of my legislators urging them to allow your veto of H0121 to stand and asking them to over-ride your veto or H081a. I am also asking the media to print this letter and asking each person that reads it to contact their legislator in support of these requests.

Sincerely
Jesse Higgins
Aberdeen, Idaho

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Idaho Chooses Life

It’s been about a week since the new Legislature finished the work they intended, with legislators returning to their districts.

So how did Idaho fare?

Democrats and powerful lobby groups are clearly happy with the session, to judge by their public comments and other press reports which show that Democrats have a new sense of power in the 62nd Legislature. That is particularly true in the House, where Democrats and moderate Republicans combined to impose Obama’s Insurance Exchange upon the people of Idaho.

Despite fierce protests from Idaho business leaders, citizens, pro-Life groups, agriculture and the Idaho Republican Party, Idaho is now a full-fledged junior partner in an unconstitutional scheme to remake the economy and culture under the guise of “health care”.

Idaho Chooses Life strenuously fought ObamaCare coming to Idaho, but we were simply overwhelmed by the immense resources Blue Cross and their allies brought to bear. We were further hamstrung by the large number of freshmen in the building who seemed dazzled by the attention given them by some of the state’s most powerful lobbyists. It proved nearly impossible to reason with some of these folks, who clung to the mythology that, somehow, Idaho would be able to protect its sovereignty by submitting to federal control of our health care industry.

Particularly disappointing was the failure of the Legislature to adopt our “Religious Liberty Amendment” – which would have at least pushed back at the Obama Administration’s evil plan to force Christian employers to pay for abortion-causing drugs as part of their company insurance policies. Many of those voting against our amendment proclaim pro-Life values, some even voted for a “memorial” to Congress just last year on this very topic; but when it really mattered, too many were apparently intimidated by the power of the insurance lobby or the federal government or both.
Idaho’s religious liberties, as guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions, remain unguarded.

All in all, it was a very disappointing session for the pro-Life movement. Not only did we suffer defeat on the Obama Exchange – this legislature failed to pass a single pro-Life bill. That has not happened since the late 1990’s.

We will have more to say about all this in coming days. But know that our resolve is strong to move Idaho forward in defending the innocent and their mothers from the scourge of abortion. It is too early to give up on this Legislature, despite its horrible beginning.

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Rep. Tom Loertsher, R-Bone

Every year we have what we call the “Going Home Bill.” Some years it is about how to balance the budget and this year it was the Education budget. While there were a few other bills that remained to be done in the final few days, this was the one that drew the most attention. This was the week that it took to do about a half of a day’s business due to the slow-down in the Senate the previous week.

History will be a better judge of how well we did this year than trying to evaluate the session at this time. But then why not try anyway? So here is a little run-down of what we did and some of the effects of all of these new laws.

The biggest and most controversial issue by far was the Health Insurance Exchange bill. It consumed the discussion for several weeks and may be the matter on which history will judge us the most critically. You may be asking just what the effects of this process will be? The only honest answer is that we just don’t know yet and won’t know until there are more answers from Washington, D.C. There are so many variables at this point and we are hearing new little unpleasant details almost daily, or so it seems.

Personal Property Tax has to be the number two big deal worked on, again over a several week time frame. At one time it looked like the issue would die altogether and then there was suddenly a bill that came forward from the counties. The process in the bill is cumbersome but should have a positive effect on small businesses.

One noteworthy outcome for the education budget this year is that the general fund increase this year was in excess of eleven percent, which is not bad for a year that general revenues are predicted to come in at an increase of under three percent. Even the minority party supported the budget.
Time will also tell if we should have looked more carefully at Medicaid redesign and the counties’ medically indigent responsibility and the Catastrophic fund. It is sure to be the most talked about issue over the interim.

There is a long list of other things that did not get the attention of the press much or even mentioned for that matter. Federal land management, horse racing purse enhancement, tribal liquor licenses, election law clarifications, and changes to Idaho road law just to mention a few.

It has been a session to remember and now that it has come to a close, the criticism and/or praise is about to commence. And as for me, I had a funny feeling Sunday afternoon in finding myself at home going through the cattle instead of heading back to Boise. I could tell that the Duramax had the same pangs because I had to chain it to the shed to keep it from taking off on its own.

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By Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

Last spring we were trying to finish up planting our grain and we had about 15 acres left when the bell housing in our Steiger tractor broke leaving us without a clutch and other problems. What that meant was that it took us another day to get another piece of equipment in the field and be able to finish the planting for the year. What happened here last week was much like that experience in that we were within a day of finishing our work when the “bell housing” broke. Thursday a big push was made to resolve the issues so that we could get out of town. No matter how close we were, we just didn’t have the wherewithal to fix the problems and adjourn.

The situation centered around the failure of the K-12 budget to pass the Senate and all of the items that the budget contained. Some thought there was not enough money in the budget. Others thought there was too much money in the budget. Some thought there was not enough flexibility for the school districts. Others thought there was way too much intent language (policy matters that had no public input). It’s quite frustrating to realize that the House had all but finished its business, and now we must wait upon the Senate for a solution to the problem they have created.

A bill that I have been working on for a good part of the session is one that makes some changes to road law. It has been a challenging task because there have been so many different groups in the room discussing what ought to be done. This is probably one of the most significant pieces of legislation that we will pass all year. The bill insures that private property rights are protected, that access to public lands is also protected and enhanced, and also provides for a new review by the court to include new information where something might have been overlooked during the commissioners hearing process. It is one of those rare bills that has the support of all concerned, highway districts, counties, irrigation districts, utilities, the Farm Bureau, and the Food Producers of Idaho, along with private landowners. It passed both Houses and is on the Governor’s desk.

We’ve also been instructed by leadership that there is to be no more talk about Medicaid expansion this session. The downside is that we will not be able to consider the companion piece of legislation, the repeal of our medically indigent law and the repeal of the Catastrophic Fund. Making those changes would provide lowering of property taxes statewide of about $478 million over the next decade. Even though the session has been extended for a few days, we have been told to leave it alone for this year.

And now we find ourselves facing another week at the capitol with only a few pieces of legislation to consider. These are the things that we are required to do by our state Constitution and that is to pass a budget. I was asked all weekend how long that would take, and the only way I can answer is that it is hard to tell because we have absolutely no idea at this point how long it will take to get the factions together. I sure hope it’s soon because the Steiger is fixed and ready to go and the ground is drying out rapidly. I don’t know about you, but I had a touch of spring fever over the weekend.

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by Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

I like to look at headlines and as I was looking at a list of headlines from the past week, I think you could agree that the legislature has been extremely busy. I know that I have been very busy and continue to work on some projects, before the legislature in the very near future comes to an end for this year.

One of the most talked about issues this year that will be before the full Senate is the personal property tax issue. The bill does provide for the removal of personal property taxation for approximately 90% of the businesses in Idaho. There have been so many editorials on the subject both pro and con, that the only conclusion you could draw would be that at a minimum it will reduce a lot of paperwork problems for small businesses. Likewise it would provide some relief for the County assessor in trying to get the list of all personal property from business owners every year.

This seems to be the year of the “informational” meeting. This last week I was involved in two of those, one was a joint meeting of the House and Senate State Affairs Committees and the other was a joint meeting of the House and Senate Health and Welfare Committees.

In State Affairs it was a presentation by the “Add the Words” group. In contrast to last year, the group conducted itself very well and gave only information on the subject of changing our human rights law to include gender identity and sexual orientation. It was not an official hearing on legislation, but was meant to be informational for members of the legislature.

An early morning session of the Health and Welfare Committees was a listening session with no public testimony, on the repeal of the County Medically Indigent law in addition to the repeal of the Catastrophic Healthcare Cost Program. I was asked to make presentation on that item and then the director of Health and Welfare gave a presentation on Medicaid Expansion, which he labeled Medicaid Redesign. There were a lot of questions and some eagerness by some committee members to move forward. These two items should be a very hot topic for the coming week.

While I served in Germany and as I learned the German language, I was told that you could tell how well you had learned to speak, if you dreamed about your mother speaking German to you. I guess you could say around this place that the session had gone on just about long enough if you are dreaming about passing legislation all night. So I guess that time has arrived because I find myself thinking about what is going on in the House during my sleeping hours. At least I think I was asleep. How did that old saying go? “I dreamed that I was awake, and then I woke up and found out I was asleep.”

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