ERLC Unveils Legislative Agenda for 2006
- Mar 1, 2006 - comment
Significant progress in 2005 has set the stage for more legislative gains in 2006. Last year, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission was able to help secure passage of a bill providing federal funding for umbilical cord blood banks to store stem cells. The stem cell debate remained a hot topic throughout 2005, but only non-embryonic stem cell research has shown any promise to relieve human suffering. The umbilical cord stem cell bill marks pro-life progress in this important area. We also witnessed passage of the End Demand for Sex Trafficking Act. This bill targets sex trafficking in the United States by focusing law enforcement on those who traffic women and children in the United States and on the pimps and johns who abuse them. We are very pleased that modern-day slavery in our country will begin to feel the pressure of justice.
Hampered by protracted liberal grandstanding during the Supreme Court hearings for Samuel Alito at the start of the year, Congress found little energy or focus to take up anything else. Now that Judge Alito is Associate Supreme Court Justice Alito, Congress is back to its regular routine, and the ERLC is ready to advance our legislative agenda for the second half of the 109th Congress. We will work for passage of bills on a number of fronts.
SANCTITY OF LIFE: On the sanctity of human life front, we will press for passage of more life-respecting legislation. There are at least a couple of sanctity bills we will focus on. We will make a priority of the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, S. 51. This bill requires abortion providers to share with mothers the fact that unborn children feel pain and to offer anesthesia to the unborn child. We consider this a must. Until we have rid our nation of the current abortion tragedy, we must at least make sure innocent unborn humans don’t suffer from the pain caused by the abortionist’s gruesome trade. We will also press for passage of the Child Custody Protection Act, S. 8. This important bill will make it illegal for someone to transport a child across a state line to circumvent parental involvement laws. Parents should know if their child is planning on obtaining an abortion. No one should be allowed to prevent parents from assisting their child at this crucial time in their lives. In addition, we will continue to resist all legislative efforts to expand federal funding to include more embryonic stem cell lines than President Bush originally allowed. We will also persist in our call for a ban on all forms of human cloning, regardless of intent. So-called therapeutic cloning still involves the killing of a human being in the earliest stage of development. It must be banned along with reproductive cloning.
HUMAN RIGHTS: There are also very positive signs that we will see real progress on human rights legislation. The House of Representatives passed the ADVANCE Democracy Act last year. This bill will make peaceful promotion of democracy around the world a major focus of U.S. foreign policy. The bill has the potential to help rid the world of its last dictatorships in the next 20 years through peaceful means. We must persuade the Senate to pass this world-changing legislation. North Korea will also remain on our agenda. Passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act was a very positive step forward for the beleaguered people of North Korea. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has failed to provide any funding to implement the law’s many promising programs. We will work to change that. Additionally, we will work to stop China’s gross violations of the rights of North Korean refugees who enter their country. We look forward to the introduction of legislation that will penalize China if it continues to send North Korean refugees back to their home country, where they face certain inhumane imprisonment, torture and even murder. We will also call for movement on the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, S. 677, which will restore some protections to people of faith in the workplace. The rights of people of faith have been slowly eroded by the courts over the years. This bill will regain some of that lost ground.
MARRIAGE: Finally, protecting marriage will remain on our list of highest priorities. We will continue to work with like-minded groups and legislators to bring the Marriage Protection Amendment to a vote as early as possible this year. The mounting pressure from special-interest groups around the country to legalize same-sex marriage makes it imperative that we secure passage of this amendment and then take it to the states for ratification.
The second half of the 109th Congress offers many opportunities for us to make significant gains in other areas as well. We will work on such important issues as assuring greater freedom for religious organizations and individuals to exercise their free speech rights, restrictions on gambling and FDA oversight of tobacco products. Finally, we will continue our efforts to assure the nomination and confirmation of conservative, strict-constructionist judges at every level. May God grant us the power, the resources and the wisdom to give voice to Southern Baptist convictions and interests in our nation’s capital effectively and in the Spirit of Christ.
Richard Land is president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Barrett Duke is the ERLC’s vice president for public policy and research.
Further Learning
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