Clark County (The Evening News)
Candidates turn attention to abortion issue
Sodrel, Hill tout voting records
The 9th Congressional District campaign trail shifted focus toward the abortion issue this week.
Republican Incumbent Mike Sodrel held two press conferences Friday — one in Jeffersonville, one in Jasper — touting the endorsement he picked up from Right to Life PAC.
Sodrel said the endorsement was significant to him because he considers preventing abortions a top priority.
“It is our duty as a government and as a society to protect the lives of those who are the most vulnerable among us,” Sodrel said.
Meanwhile, Democratic Party challenger Baron Hill went to Jasper earlier this week with former Indiana Congressman Tim Roemer to hold a town hall meeting to discuss the 95-10 Initiative.
The 95-10 proposal seeks to reduce the number of abortions by 95 percent in the next 10 years.
“I am against abortions,” Hill said. He has said in the past that it should be safe and legal but rare.
But he noted that it will take sound policy to reduce the number of abortions.
The 95-10 Initiative would:
• Provide federal funding for pregnancy counseling and daycare on university campuses;
• Make adoption tax credits permanent;
• Ban insurance industry discrimination against pregnant women; and
• Prohibit the transport of a minor across a state line to obtain an abortion.
Both Sodrel and Hill have their respective voting records on the abortion issue.
Sodrel has co-sponsored measures to declare that life begins at conception; supported legislation to prohibit the transportation of a minor to another state to perform an abortion; voted for a complete ban on cloning; and co-sponsored the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, to ensure that women seeking an abortion are fully informed of the pain experienced by their unborn.
Hill voted for a ban on partial-birth abortions except in the situation in which a mother’s life was at risk; voted to make it a federal crime to transport a minor across state lines for an abortion; voted in favor of making it a federal crime to harm a fetus while committing a crime; supported withholding funding to foreign organizations that promote abortion as family planning; supported prohibiting funds to be used by the Food and Drug Administration for the testing of any drug for the chemical inducement of abortion; and voted to make it illegal to execute a pregnant woman.
In his last term, Hill got a 45 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee. Sodrel got a 100 percent score from the same organization.
Libertarian candidate Eric Schansberg has never been in Congress so he does not have a rating with the organization.
He discribes himself as “unabashedly pro–life.” Ideally, he would like abortion to be illegal except in the case where the mother’s life is in danger.
He advocates a cultural approach of persuading more and more people about the pro-life position.
He says taxpayer funding should never be used to finance an abortion and federal money should never be allocated to abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.
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