Henry Hyde
represents Illinois in the House of Representatives
In politics, you win by addition, and we need every Republican vote we can muster to maintain our majority in the House and Senate. If we lose our majority, it will be the death knell of pro-life legislation for as long as Democrats are in power. The single most important thing we can do to protect the unborn is to maintain our majority! If the past really is prologue, our loss of control means we lose the pro-life cause too.
We are still three votes short in the Senate and we need “converts.” If we deny party support to those we need to persuade, as some proposed banning Republican Party funding to candidates who do not support a ban on partial-birth abortions, such candidates will never join us, as it will look like they capitulated on a matter of principle for money. This would kill our chances of getting an override of the president’s veto of the ban on partial-birth abortions.
A loss of any members would seriously damage our momentum. There must be another way to express our party’s condemnation of this barbaric procedure without reading our dissenters out of the party. We can win an override vote, but not by exclusion of those whose support is essential to retain our majority.