For a short time earlier this year, Congresswoman Renee Ellmers was public enemy number one of the pro-life movement.
Congressional leaders had planned for weeks to bring up a bill to ban abortions after 20-weeks on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. But Ellmers sabotaged the bill by insisting that broad rape and incest exceptions needed to be added to the bill that many pro-life groups were worried would undermine the bill entirely and render the ban moot.
Ellmers caused a firestorm of controversy to the point that multiple pro-life candidates are running against her next year in the Republican primary in an attempt to put the seat in the hands of someone who is consistently pro-life.
Now, Ellmers is attempting to redeem herself in preparation for the 2016 election season by campaigning hard to be on a new panel investigating Planned Parenthood.
Today, the House is expected to approve a Select Panel on abortion and the sale of aborted baby body parts that will spend a year thoroughly investigating the Planned Parenthood abortion business amid the brewing scandal of it selling aborted babies and appearing to break multiple federal laws in so doing. The Select Panel is being formed in response to the information revealed by the videos released by Center for Medical Progress and it will consist of 8 Republicans and five Democrats. The work of this panel will be in addition to the ongoing investigations at the Judiciary Committee and Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
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Speaker John Boehner will appoint members of the new panel and Ellmers in campaigning hard to get a seat on it. But, she is facing opposition from pro-life advocates who have long memories and recall how she almost sabotaged the pro-life bill earlier this year.
“Last January, Renee Ellmers launched an outrageous public campaign against the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which contributed to a four-month delay in House passage of that bill,” said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. “She sought changes in the bill that were truly extreme, including allowing abortions after 20 weeks for consenting adults who voluntarily enter into incestuous relationships (fortunately, this change was not accepted). To now reward her with a seat on the special panel would be inappropriate, to put it mildly.”
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told LifeNews she strongly opposes Ellmers’ appointment.
“Congresswoman Renee Ellmers had her chance to put into action her supposedly pro-life beliefs but instead she torpedoed a bill that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks gestation, blaming Millennials – my generation and the generation that Students for Life of America works most closely with – for their lack of support of the measure. Rep. Ellmers’ bogus excuse for not supporting something that has broad support among Americans was a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of young Millennials who were in Washington, DC that day for the March for Life – and whose age group actually supports the ban the most. Because of Rep. Ellmers’ lack of courage, conviction and fortitude, pro-lifers failed to even get a vote on that bill for months and months.
“Now that the North Carolina congresswoman has thoroughly discredited herself with pro-lifers, she is angling for a position on a committee that will investigate Planned Parenthood. What a complete farce. In an open letter after the backlash after the March for Life, she actually called the tactics of pro-life groups ‘childish and abhorrent’ – now she wants our support? If House leadership listen to her pitiful request, it will be a slap in the face to pro-lifers everywhere who have worked day and night to elect officials who hold life to be the most important right and who have fought for pro-life bills and against spineless representatives who would rather let tiny babies be pulled apart and dismembered than take an unmovable stance for those cannot speak for themselves.”
“We demand that the House Leadership refuse Rep. Ellmers request and move to appoint fearless advocates of the preborn,” Hawkins concluded.
The pro-life blog RedState is also on board the anti-Ellmers effort.
“Ellmers publicly betrayed the pro-life movement during the embarrassing debacle over the 20-week abortion ban – a bill which enjoyed broad, bipartisan support but which failed due to the political cowardice of Ellmers and others. Ellmers already knows that due to this and a number of other high profile votes, she is likely to face a stiff primary challenge,” it said.
“Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) 60% already had a chance to do something for the pro-life movement, on a bill that’s much more popular than defunding Planned Parenthood, and she blinked. She does not have legitimate interest in defunding Planned Parenthood or taking any actual substantive action against them. What she wants is television commercial material during her upcoming primary campaign,” it continued.
