The following comes from a Sept. 23 ABC-TV (Channel 23) story.
The Bakersfield City Council will hear a resolution approved by the council’s Legislative and Litigation Committee, but the ordinance restricting abortion was tabled.
The resolution praises groups that want to inform the public about “alternatives to abortion” and points out that the city “maintains that there are many positive and feasible alternatives to abortion,” the Bakersfield Californian reported.
The resolution was drafted as a compromise after City Attorney Ginny Gennaro said an ordinance under consideration earlier this year could open the city to litigation. If the resolution is approved, it still needs a majority vote from the City Council. Since resolutions don’t carry the weight of law, it would not be enforced.
Monday’s meeting was moved from a conference room to the council chambers across the street to accommodate the expected crowds.
Anti-abortion advocates have favored an ordinance restricting abortion. Others maintained that public officials should stay out of the issue….
Gennaro said the issue can’t keep coming up for debate.
“At some point, there’s a need for closure. We can’t keep bringing this back to the committee,” Gennaro said. “I think, on both sides of the spectrum, the people are expecting the council to make a decision.”
To read the original story, click here.
The following update on the story comes from a Sept. 24 blog by Tim Palmquist.
At Monday’s meeting of the Bakersfield City Council’s Legislative and Litigation Committee, the resolution written by City Attorney Ginny Gennaro was passed with a vote of 2-1. The motion, presented by Councilmember Russ Johnson, also stated that the committee would “table the [Human Life] Ordinance indefinitely until such time as the majority of the Council chooses to bring it back.”
Although all three committee members spoke not only of their own pro-life views but of the community’s pro-life views, only Councilmember Jacquie Sullivan boldly advocated the Human Life Ordinance and stood against the misleading resolution, saying “it’s not ready.”
Committee Chairman Terry Maxwell rushed the dozens of public speakers, cutting them off abruptly after two minutes, so that the entire public comment time was over in less than 45 minutes.
Even attorney Katie Short, who has been an essential part of the Human Life Ordinance effort since the beginning and who had traveled to Bakersfield to share important legal information which would have effectively refuted the City Attorney’s statements against the HLO, was limited to only two minutes. ”The genius of this ordinance has not been fully appreciated,” Short told the committee. ”It never uses the word ‘abortion.’ ” She went on to say that if someone wished to file a lawsuit against the HLO, “the first thing that person would have to do is stand up and say… ‘I kill human beings for money.’” Short also emphasized that all of those who spoke in opposition to the Human Life Ordinance implicitly recognized the fact that abortion kills human beings….
To read the entire Palmquist blog, click here.
In case anyone is wondering, Kern County is one of the most Republican counties in California. In the last two presidential elections, Kern County voted for McCain against Obama 58% to 40% (2008) and for Rommey 56% to 40%.
Its Congressional Representative, Kevin McCarthy, is the House Minority “Whip”, the third-ranking member of the Republican House leadership. Like his pro-abortion Republican predecessor and mentor, Bill Thomas, Mr. McCarthy exercises considerable influence in local poltitics.
This debacle is emblematic of what kowtowing to the republican party has netted pro-lifers.
If the first obligation of any government is to protect its citizens, how is it defensible that every governmental entity in the United States and its possessions and territories does not have laws protecting the lives of its most defenseless citizens?
Babies, born and unborn, constitute no threat to society; au contraire, they are its lifeblood. It is for children and the advancement of human existence that human beings associated, thus creating early societies, which developed into governmental entities.
These entities are committing a form of slow suicide, such as the United States is presently doing, by sanctioning the murder of more than 50,000,000 of its own citizens in their own mothers’ wombs.
I’m surprised that Syria, or some other country that sees itself as more highly moral than we are, isn’t discussing bombing us for crossing that bloody red line and killing our own citizens.