Phony 'Pro-Life' Groups Couldn't Save Them: Lawmakers Who Defected from Pro-Life Side on Health Care Paid a Big Price at Ballot Box

The first two years of the Obama Administration have been a time of multiple setbacks for the pro-life cause at the federal level. Behind smokescreens of soft, deceptive rhetoric, the Administration has pushed an abortion-expansionist agenda on both domestic and overseas fronts, employing executive powers, nominations, and legislative attacks. The single greatest pro-life setback has been enactment of the massive restructuring law ("Obamacare"). The version originally advanced in 2009 by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Henry Waxman, and other key House Democratic leaders, was loaded with abortion-expansive provisions--until the House corrected those problems by adoption of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment on November 7, 2009. However, that pro-life victory was denounced by President Obama and by key Democratic congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who succeeded in winning Senate approval on Christmas Eve of a bill that contained even more abortion-expanding provisions than the original Pelosi-Waxman bill.