Chip Chip Chip

The U.S. Senate voted 61-38 last night in approving the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, sending the law to the president for his signature. (The U.S. House had already passed it by a margin of 254 to 163.) Opponents denounced the bill as an effort to undermine the constitutional right to abortion by recognizing the fetus as a person. (New York Times coverage here.) John Kerry, amazingly, was present to vote against it. So was John Edwards, we're relieved to note. But the following Democrats voted WITH the Republican majority:

Bingaman of New Mexico
Breaux of Louisiana
Carper of Delaware
Conrad of North Dakota
Daschle of South Dakota (gimme a giant break!)
Dayton of Minnesota
Dorgan of North Dakota
Landrieu of Louisiana
Miller of Georgia
Nelson of Nebraska
Pryor of Arkansas
Reid of Nevada
Rockefeller of West Virginia (!)

Take a good long look at these Democrat sell-outs, including the two top-ranking Democratic leaders in the Senate, Daschle and Reid.

And then send a note of thanks to the single brave Republican, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who voted against this bill.


Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, herself a notorious turn-coat on other issues including last fall's Medicare Bill, said she believed that once the definition of fetus ("child in utero": "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb") was written into federal law, it would ultimately be used as an argument to overturn existing laws protecting abortion rights.

"This will be the first strike against all abortion in the United States of America," Ms. Feinstein said. She said a federal statute declaring that life begins at conception could ultimately lead to a court finding that "embryonic stem cell research becomes murder and abortion in the first trimester becomes murder as well."

Duh.

"That's where this debate is taking us," Ms. Feinstein said, "that's the reason for this bill."