“There are some days in this congress where I feel like I’m in Alice in Wonderland, where logic has been turned on its head and we’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole,” she said. “Today is certainly one of those days. Here we stand on the 282nd day of the congress and the majority has not yet passed a jobs plan. We have spent all day long once again attacking women’s health with a bill that will never become law…”

The president has vowed to veto the bill and it is not likely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, which voted down a similar bill earlier this session.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a release celebrated the bill and tied it to main street pocket books. He implied it was a sort of insurance policy against tax-funded abortion. He also said it served as a signal to the public, bolstering the Republican brand as solidly anti-abortion.

“At a time when American families are facing enormous economic challenges, this bill ensures that their hard-earned dollars are not used to fund abortion coverage…. This bill demonstrates once again that our Republican Majority will always stand on the side of life.”

DeGette called on Republicans like Cantor to be more candid.

“There is no federal funding for abortion,” she said repeatedly, citing the Hyde Amendement, which effectively banned federal funding for abortion in the wake of Roe v Wade. The amendment was passed as an appropriations rider in 1976 and has been renewed every year since.

“When I listen to this debate, it’s really clear to me that the proponents of this bill, their main concern is not federal funding of abortion,” said DeGette. “Their main concern is they want abortion to be illegal, and so here’s my view– having debated this now for fifteen years in this body, here’s my view: If the majority wants to pass a bill banning abortion, pass a bill banning abortion and we’ll fight it out in the courts. Don’t make claims that there is somehow federal funding for abortion when in fact there is none in order to confuse the issues and to try to confuse the American public.”

The bill passed the Republican-controlled House 251 votes to 172. Fifteen Democrats crossed over to vote for the bill and three Republicans voted against it.

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Minnesota’s Catholic bishops sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Thursday urging her department to drop a mandate on health insurance companies to cover birth control as part of their health plans.

The bishops argue that entities like Catholic Charities would have to offer insurance plans to their employees that offer coverage for contraceptives or else stop providing health benefits to employees.“While we support providing access to those services which can truly prevent disease or disability for woman such as pap smears and mammograms, we join other persons of good will who strenuously object to mandatory coverage for contraceptives and sterilization procedures,” the bishops wrote in the letter (PDF).

In August, the Obama administration announced that it would mandate that private health insurance cover women’s health care services such as cancer screenings, domestic violence support and birth control. The Catholic Church believes that birth control methods other than the rhythm method are sinful.

The bishops said the rule would “require taxpayers and providers to act against deeply-held convictions regarding the sanctity of life, as the promotion and provision of drugs like “Ella” (ulipristal acetate) and other abortifacient agents are enabled by this mandate.”

Coverage of abortion services is not included in the mandate. Calling drugs like Ella abortifacients is not the legal definition; they don’t actually cause abortions. However, as Christianity Today noted, the Catholic Church and other conservative Christians view the drug as abortion-inducing from a moral perspective.

The bishops also object to the current “conscience clause” in the mandate.

A religious organization is exempt from the mandate so long as it “has as the inculcation of religious values as its purpose, primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets, and primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.”

The bishops worry that religious charities would either have to provide health coverage that offers birth control or opt not t cover their employees at all.

“By exempting only those who employ and/or serve persons of the same religious tradition from its mandates, Catholic health care providers—the safety net for many of our marginalized sisters and brothers—cannot enjoy the exception without abandoning our mission, to the significant detriment of those in need.”

“Requiring Catholic individuals and institutions to pay for and provide abortion drugs and contraceptives contrary to Catholic teaching in the name of ‘reproductive autonomy’ is an unprecedented attack on the cherished liberties of religious and associational freedom,” said Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the Roman Catholic Church in Minnesota.

Minnesota’s Catholic bishops are the latest in a long list of Catholic institutions that have spoken out against the policy, as have Catholic hospitals. At least 18 Catholic institutions of higher learning have come out against the rule as well as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

But, as our sister site the Florida Independent recently reported, not all Catholics agree with the hierarchy. In fact, some see the exception for religious institutions as dangerous for women.

“In allowing religious institutions to refuse to include contraceptive services in the health insurance plans they offer their employees, the Obama administration has once again sided with the Catholic bishops over the needs of women and their families,” said Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice. “The multi-billion dollar Catholic health care industry has a lot of influence with this administration, influence that it has now used to allow religious institutions to ride roughshod over the needs of their workers. Not only that, it ignores the consciences of those who decide that to use a modern method of family planning is what is best for them and their families.”

In fact, recent polling suggests that most Catholic women could benefit from the mandate. A poll released in April showed that only 2 percent of sexually active women followed Catholic teaching on birth control. Ninety-eight percent of Catholic women have used some form of birth control that is banned by the Church.

Politics in Minnesota’s Paul Demko notes that MCCL President Leo LaLonde went after House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, both of whom are Republicans. The letter notes that MCCL’s finances are at an all-time low.

“I am going to be brutally honest,” LaLonde wrote. “I am devastated by the fact that not only were we unsuccessful in enacting any new pro-life laws this session, but we lost an existing pro-life policy for the first time since Roe V. Wade legalized abortion on demand!”

LaLonde criticized Republicans for the group’s legislative failures.

“[We] felt confident that House and Senate leaders would insist that at least some of our protective measures would be included in the final budget,” he said. “Senate Majority Leader Koch and Speaker of the House Zellers quickly struck a deal with Gov. Dayton, and in the blink of an eye all five pro-life measures that has been passed by nearly two-thirds, veto-proof margin during the legislative session were negotiated away.”

He added, “The Republican leaders lost sight of what is truly at stake—the lives of innocent human beings.”

The letter asked supporters for donations because MCCL is struggling financially.

“The uncertainty of the economy has not been kind to MCCL. Donations are down,” the letter reads. MCCL also said that they spent a lot of money in the 2011 legislative session: ”Our coffers are at an all-time low-will you help us?”

“Not only would this proposed language undermine the self-governing rights of the people of the District of Columbia, it would deny low-income women access to basic, constitutionally protected, medical services,” DeGette, co-chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus, said in a release. “Congress should not violate the District’s right to use its own tax dollars as it sees fit in order to simply advance congressional Republicans’ extreme assault on women’s access to quality reproductive healthcare.”

The political right has long championed local government over federal government as best to represent constituent interests. The Tea Party has leaned on states rights arguments, for example, in its aggressive opposition to the federal health care reform law passed two years ago.

The debate over the abortion restriction references the long struggle to grant the District of Columbia statehood. DC residents have no true representatives in Congress yet Republicans have long opposed statehood for the fact that the District’s largely liberal population would add Democratic votes on Capitol Hill.

The language opposed by DeGette appears in the Fiscal Year 2012 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill and is one of several attempts on the part of Republican lawmakers this year to limit access to abortion.

“This intrusive initiative sadly sends a clear signal that this Congress does not believe vulnerable women are worthy of the same access to quality health as their middle-class and wealthy counterparts.”

One of the clear effects of the law would be to price out abortions for any government employee unable to foot the bill out of pocket.

DeGette made her case to the committees staffers in a letter signed by 59 members of the House, including Colorado Rep Jared Polis, and co-authored with New York Rep Louise Slaughter.

“Washington D.C. is not Congress’ petri dish,” Slaughter said. “We should not be using federal power to experiment with the rights of women, which is why I encourage every member of the Appropriations Committees to reject any effort to limit the District’s control of local funds. “Congress should not be in the business of punishing low-income women and stripping them of their constitutionally-afforded rights. I believe we’d all do well to remember that.”

On Wednesday the Senate is scheduled to mark-up or consider again the various provisions of the appropriations bill.

The DeGette-Slaughter letter:

Dear Democratic members of the House and Senate appropriations committees:

As you consider Fiscal Year 2012 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations legislation, we urge you to protect the District of Columbia’s right to self-government as well as the health and reproductive rights of low-income women in the District of Columbia.  We respectfully request that you ensure that language that undermines self-government is not included in subsequent legislation as it was in the House Appropriations committee-approved bill.  Specifically, we urge you to not adopt Section 810 of the House bill, which prohibits local tax dollars from being used for abortions for women whose insurance is provided by the District government.

The autonomy of the District is necessary for democratic self-governance, and Congress should be mindful not to violate District residents’ rights to control their own tax dollars.  The Home Rule Act of 1973 was a result of decades of efforts to protect the rights of District residents.  Republicans have spent much of the 112th Congress interfering in local District matters.  Each time Democrats accede to violations of the District’s home rule, we embolden Republicans to continue their attacks.

By failing to permit the District of Columbia to spend local government funds on abortion, we are sending the message that low-income women should not have access to the same medical services that middle- and upper-income women can access.  Ultimately, this prohibition may threaten the health of medically vulnerable women and deny patients the right to access constitutionally protected medical services.  We must strive to expand health care services for Americans throughout the nation – not place barriers in the road of a woman seeking medical care simply because of the state, city, or district that she lives in.

The District does not have a vote in the House or Senate.  But other Democrats do.  We urge you to stand strong and to protect the democratic self-government of the District of Columbia.

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The personhood proposal would criminalize abortion without exception and outlaw some methods of birth control. The rights of pregnant women would be curtailed. The bill would shut down much of fertility and stem-cell research industries in the state, a fact which weighed strongly against the proposal in Colorado, where the biotech sector thrives.

Most of Colorado’s major Republican candidates for office in 2008 rejected the proposal as overreaching. In the tea party election of 2010, however, all of the major Republican candidates endorsed it. Fourth District freshman Representative Cory Gardner at a tea party candidate forum said he had circulated copies of the initiative at his church.

The Republican and the Democratic candidate for governor in Mississippi have endorsed the proposal, as did the state legislature, which has to approve initiatives before they land on the ballot.

Indeed, Colorado has a much looser initiative system than does Mississippi. In the roughly 30 years that the initiative system has been in place there, only two initiatives have ever made it to the ballot, according to Stateline.

The personhood measure crossed Mississippi’s high procedural hurdles this week, another product of the Republican wave-election of 2010.

Stateline:

The ballot measure comes after a historic legislative year in which states enacted more than 80 new restrictions on abortion, according to a report from the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. This year’s flurry of laws is more than double the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions enacted in 2005, the institute says. But none are like the measure that Mississippi voters are expected to consider November 8.

Backers of the Mississippi measure are clear: If approved, they say, the initiative would ultimately outlaw abortion and human cloning, embryo stem cell research, and “other forms of medical cannibalism. would be effectively stopped.” Opponents say the measure could make in-vitro fertilization and certain forms of birth control illegal “and miscarriages could become suspect.”

The hard line drawn by the initiatve pleases its backers but it also raises alarm bells for pro-life strategists looking to successfully challenge Roe. They say the bill is sure to be struck down as violating federal law and that such a decision would create even stronger precedent in support of the legalized abortion status quo.

In its report today on the Mississippi proposal, Stateline echoes much of the commentary around the bill that emerged during the last two elections in Colorado. The organization quotes University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket.

“[Personhood] was widely seen as a radical proposal that would require massive changes in state law.”

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The group says that grandmothers comprise the bulk of the visitors to their booth.

“It’s a smart and fun way to start a conversation about sex with the grandchildren and children in our lives and let them know we care about their relationships and safety,” said Karen Law, the group’s executive director. “Every year some of the same grandmothers stop by our booth just to get condoms-on-a-stick. They make for wildly popular and unusual items in care packages.”

The group plans to hand out 7,000 of the condoms on a stick.

Minnesota saw a large increase in sexually transmitted diseases in 2010, up 5 percent over 2009. Chlamydia is a large driver in the epidemic which has hit rural, poor and minority communities the hardest.

The candidates pledged to appoint anti-abortion judges, to appoint anti-abortion cabinet members, to defund Planned Parenthood and to sign a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks gestation.

Bachmann went after Mitt Romney for not signing the pledge.

“It is distressing that Governor Romney refuses to sign the SBA Pledge, even while claiming to be pro-life,” Bachmann said in a statement on Sunday. “The excuses for not signing clearly continue the doubts about his leadership and commitment to ending the practice of abortion – particularly for a candidate who ran as pro-choice for the Senate and Governorship of Massachusetts. Any Presidential candidate seeking our party’s nomination should sign the SBA Pledge and vow to protect life from conception to natural death. Governor Romney should reconsider his decision not to sign the Pledge just as he reconsidered his position on the life issue during the last campaign.”

Deisher will present her findings at a hearing called, “Presentation on Vaccine Safety: New Considerations, Concerns and Insights.” According to her press release, she will present “a continuation of her public efforts to shed light on key elements regarding vaccine safety, specifically as regards the likely adverse affects of human DNA residuals in many widely utilized vaccines.” No one else is scheduled to testify.

Deisher contends that the MMR vaccine may cause autism in young children. She doesn’t assert that it does, only that it may and that she feels more research should be done. And her lab is soliciting money to do that research.

In 2008 testimony to the President’s Commission on Bioethics under President George W. Bush, Deisher proposed that DNA from human cell cultures used to make the MMR vaccine may be causing autism in America’s children.

“How might the human DNA contaminated vaccines contribute to human disease? First, there is the potential for the contaminating DNA to be mixed with our own genes by a process called homologous recombination,” she said. “We do not yet know if this occurs with the contaminating human DNA found in some of our vaccines, and if so, to what extent. Imagine the potential consequences of human DNA from a vaccine, a vaccine that is given to children at an average age of 15 months, being incorporated into a child’s developing brain. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to know that this potential has to be studied.”

The Minnesota Independent contacted several leading vaccine researchers who say Diesher’s claims are far from accurate.

Dr. Paul A. Offit, MD, is the head of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor of Vaccinology and Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, as well as the author of the book “Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure.”

“I don’t know where that comes from,” he told the Minnesota Independent of Deisher’s claim.

In the 1970s, vaccine producers switched from using animal cells for the rubella vaccine — a component of MMR — to human cells. Researchers derived those cells in 1961 from embryonic lung tissue, a bit similar to the embryonic stem cell lines used today to study and develop cures for chronic diseases. That 1961 line is still used today for vaccine production, and manufacturers list DNA from those cell lines as ingredients in the MMR vaccine.

Offit says that the amount of DNA in a vaccine is extremely small and unlikely to cause any problems: “We are talking picogram levels, or one trillionth of a gram.”

“There’s very little chance that a DNA fragment could cross the blood-brain barrier and insert itself into brain cells,” he said. “This would be the best news for gene therapy,” a process that seeks to use fragments of DNA to cure disease.

If incorporating DNA into cells — let alone brain cells — were as easy as Diesher says it is, Offit says it could revolutionize gene therapy research.

He says that the trivial quantities from vaccines make no difference. “You are injecting foreign DNA all the time” from the food we eat. “Look, if it worked that way, after eating at McDonald’s, we’d all turn into cows.”

The bottom line, he says, is that the science is confusing and people become skeptical. “It’s easy to take advantage of the fact that most people don’t understand vaccine science.”

Dr. Neal Halsey, professor of International Health and director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, concurred.

“This claim has no merit,” he said. “The scientific data is now overwhelming that MMR is not a cause of autism.”

He added, “There is no evidence that small residual amounts of DNA from any source contribute to the development of autism.”

Dr. Halsey said that past research on links between autism and vaccines has been debunked.

“As I’m certain you know, Dr. Andrew Wakefield was the originator of the hypothesis that MMR causes autism,” he told the Minnesota Independent. “We have known for more than 10 years that the science behind his studies was seriously flawed. We now know through recent publications, that the studies were based upon fraudulent evidence.”

Earlier this year, British authorities found Wakefield’s research unethical, noting four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts abuse of autistic children through invasive and unnecessary testing.

But, the skepticism raised by Wakefield — and now Deisher — has had consequences beyond bad science.

So far this year in Minnesota, eight children have been hospitalized after contracting measles, and in at least some cases, parents of those children have followed Wakefield’s skepticism. Measles can be fatal in young children.

Does the MMR vaccine cause autism? “The answer could not be clearer and that answer is ‘no,’” said Offit. He said the vaccine has been researched in 12 large studies on three continents, and findings show the risk for autism after vaccination is no greater than for those children who have not been vaccinated.

Deisher: “Our pro-life work is our top responsibility”

Deisher’s questioning of the MMR vaccine seems to come from two related sources: religion and opposition to abortion.

In an interview in 2008, when she first opened AVM Biotechnology, LLC — the acronym stands for “Ave Maria” — Deisher said, “It is our goal to develop human therapeutics that are morally acceptable and compatible with the magisterium of the Catholic Church.”

Her ties to the church remain close; last year, the Archbishop of Seattle, Alexander J. Brunett, conducted a blessing of Deisher’s lab — complete with holy water and solemnization.

Deisher’s original focus was on embryonic stem cell research, and she successfully filed suit against the Obama Administration in 2010. The suit halted funding for embryonic stem cell research for a period in August of last year before an appeal was filed and a stay issued to continue the funding.

Now, the focus appears to be on vaccines, and an embryo that was killed in 1961 to create cell cultures that assist in the production of vaccines. That embryo was donated to research and was not aborted specifically for vaccine production.

“Many vaccines in the U.S. are contaminated with aborted fetal tissue,” she said. “There are no ethical alternatives, putting parents,
physicians and pharmacists in a moral dilemma.”

Further, Deisher has said using research that involved embryonic stem cell research or fetuses would be akin to Nazism.

“It would be like using the research results on hypothermia from Nazi Germany that involved murdering people,” she said.

Diesher’s zeal in opposing human cell cultured vaccines and embryonic stem cell research has achieved for her star status in the anti-abortion movement.

“We are clearly unique in that we are open and upfront about our pro-life mission,” Deisher said in an interview with Xcomony Seattle. “Our pro-life work is our top responsibility. For most companies, fiduciary return is the top priority. We hope our investors will make lots of money, but that’s not our first objective. We won’t compromise our pro-life mission for economic returns.”

While it’s unclear who invited Deisher to testify at Thursday’s hearing, the committee is chaired by Rep. Steve Gottwalt, R-St. Cloud, the cosponsor of several abortion-related bills, including one that would criminalize embryonic stem cell research and another that would direct taxpayer funds to anti-abortion groups through sales of “Choose Life” license plates.

“This legislation would prohibit abortions on unborn children at the point the unborn child feels pain. The unborn feel pain specifically at 20 weeks after conception,” Andrea Rau of MCCL testified last week. “There is consensus that the unborn child at 20 weeks after conception can feel pain,” said Rau, pointing to the legislative findings portion of the bill.

Those findings contain a list of medical assertions concerning the ability of a fetus to feel pain and can be viewed in the original bill, SF649.

“And these findings have been backed up with abundant written documentation,” she said. “There are a number of facts that are not disputed in the medical community.”

But, in a March 30 letter to legislators, a team of experts in the field of gynecology and reproductive science evaluated the legislative findings promoted by MCCL and demonstrated that there is no medical or scientific consensus on fetal pain at any stage of development and that research continues to be contradictory.

“These findings are inconsistent with published science and thus should not be used to inform potential policy change,” wrote the letter’s authors, Prof. Philip Darney of the Department of Obstetrics Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California – San Francisco and Dr. Mark Rosen, who is the Director of Obstetrical Anesthesia at UCSF. Both are part of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

“[S]cientific evidence does not support the elimination of legal abortion at 20 weeks’ gestation based on concerns about the existence of fetal pain,” the letter concluded.

The letter points to two large studies of fetal pain that demonstrate that there is not agreement within the medical community. The first study, conducted in 2005, did an exhaustive review of existing research on fetal pain.

“This review concludes that based on the best available scientific evidence, a human fetus probably does not have the capacity to experience pain until the 29th week of pregnancy at the earliest.”

In 2010, another review undertaken by the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (RCOG) in the United Kingdom showed very similar results.

The letter’s authors found significant problems with the bill’s legislative findings and offered research that countered claims that a fetus at 20 weeks has the physical structures necessary to experience pain, that a fetus at 20 weeks reacts to stimuli, and that abortions at 20 weeks cause pain to a fetus.

But Rau and MCCL contend that those studies are biased.

“There have been a small handful of medical literature reviews that indicate that the unborn child may not be capable of feeling pain until later in the pregnancy, but these appear to contain biases,” said Rau. “Most, including the fetal surgeons who do these surgeries, agree with the consensus that the unborn child is capable of feeling pain by at least 20 weeks post conception.”

Rau is referring to the 2005 study that included an obstetrics researcher who performed abortions as part of her practice. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which was headed at the time by a Catholic who opposed abortion. According to the Chicago Tribune at the time:

Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, the journal’s editor-in-chief, said she wasn’t concerned by [Dr. Eleanor Drey]‘s failure to indicate she performed abortions. “That’s part of [an obstetrician's] scope of practice. They don’t have to reveal that.”

A Roman Catholic who opposes abortion, DeAngelis said she has been swamped this week with critical e-mails about the fetal-pain study from “people with no medical background, no science background, religious fanatics, people who are mean-spirited.” She stressed that the report was reviewed by several outside experts and thoroughly examined by her own staff.

“It is a peer-reviewed article,” DeAngelis said. “They are not reporting their own findings. It’s a review article based on what’s in the literature. … The references are there. Anybody who doubts the veracity can go to the original article and say they misinterpreted it.”

By MCCL’s account, its own research is biased. Of the experts the group mentions on its website about fetal pain, most are active within the anti–abortion rights movement.

For instance, Dr. Steve Calvin of the University of Minnesota has been involved with the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The late Dr. Robert J. White testified before Congress that he opposed abortion, and Dr. Paul Ranalli is a well-known anti-abortion activist.

In 2010, when Nebraska became the first state in the country to pass a fetal pain law (Idaho and Kansas have since passed such measures), Discovery News ran a feature on the debate. Stuart Derbyshire, a fetal pain expert at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, said, “Basing laws on this is really unreasonable. Abortion is not a scientific question. It is a moral and political question. To try and make science answer a moral question like that is just wrong. It’s cowardice on the part of lawmakers.”

In Minnesota, only 2 percent of all abortions are performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and in many cases those are the result of fetal abnormalities or a threat to the health of the mother. In 2009, fewer than 80 of the 12,300 abortions performed were after 20 weeks and none were later than 23 weeks.

The bill has passed committee in the House and awaits a vote in that body before being sent to Gov. Mark Dayton. In the Senate, the bill has advanced through one committee.

Here’s the letter that was sent to legislators: