Michigan Pro-Life Advocates Lobby Granholm on Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 2, 2008
Lansing, MI (LifeNews.com) — Michigan pro-life advocates are urging calls and emails to the office of Gov. Jennifer Granholm to urge her to sign a ban on partial-birth abortions. The state legislature signed off on the bill last week, but it appears Granholm will likely veto the measure and set up a showdown in the state House and Senate.
As LifeNews.com reported, the ban previously received approval from the Michigan Senate on a bipartisan 24 to 13 vote and got a 72-34 vote in the House.
S.B. 776 now heads to Granholm and she will have 14 days to either sign it, veto it, or allow it to take effect without her signature.
Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, a local pro-life group in the pro-life area, is alerting pro-life advocates there to contact Granholm.
"Please begin now to mobilize your pro-life friends to contact her office immediately and ask her to sign Senate Bill 776 – the ban on partial birth abortion – into law," the group said in an alert sent to LifeNews.com. "The job is not done – but we’re making progress. So help make it law by contacting Governor Granholm today."
However, it appears Granholm, who has previously vetoed a partial-birth abortion ban, will likely veto this one as well.
In October 2003, Governor Granholm vetoed Senate Bill 395, the "Legal Birth Definition Act," which sought to outlaw partial-birth abortion by granting full legal status to the child as soon as any part of his or her body emerges from the mother.
She appears likely to veto the revised ban claiming it doesn’t have a health exception, even though the three-day-long abortion procedure is never needed to protect a woman’s health.
Deborah Pawloski of Caledonia is one Michigan resident who hopes that doesn’t happen. She challenges the governor to do more research before vetoing the bill.
"I am horrified to think that Gov. Jennifer Granholm would veto the ban on partial birth abortion if passed by both the Senate and the House. I would like to ask one request of her — would she go and watch this horrific procedure before she signs that veto?" she wrote in a letter to the Detroit News.
"Could she sleep at night or hug her own children after having watched? When will she ever call this what it is — the murder of the most innocent," Pawloski writes.
"I challenge Gov. Granholm to watch and pray before she does this. I will pray for her soul; maybe she can pray for forgiveness from these little children if she sentences them to death," she concludes.
Although Congress approved, and the Supreme Court upheld, a national partial-birth abortion ban, state legislatures are looking to approve bans on the state level to allow state and local officials to assist in enforcing it.
The new Michigan partial-birth abortion ban calls the procedure "gruesome and inhumane" and says its "disturbing similarity to the killing of a newborn infant promotes a complete disregard for infant human life that can only be countered by a prohibition."
ACTION: Contact Gov. Jennifer Granholm and ask her to sign the partial-birth abortion ban into law. Contact her at: P.O. Box 30013, Lansing, MI 48909, (p) (517) 373-3400 or (517) 335-7858 or fax 517-335-6863. You can also click here for additional contact information.
