Urgent!

Below is an urgent plea that a group of guys and myself put together, in the Seminary, involving an upcoming vote in the House. Please read it and consider taking action TODAY! Please excuse the wording as it specific to the handouts we made in the seminary (It is 12:25am- still have work to do- too late to change it for the blog).

If you do not know your representative, look him or her up click here:

Note- With this directory you can local up local congressional offices too. If you can take five minutes and call all the offices for your Representative.



Brothers,
As you know the Bishops have called upon Catholics across the country to speak up in defense of life and against the government funding of abortion (directly or indirectly) in the Healthcare proposals before Congress at this time.

As politics is politics there is going to be a lot of maneuvering in Congress over the next few weeks as everyone tries to gain the upper hand on the abortion issue. The first and critical vote involving abortion is expected to be Friday morning! The House leadership is expected to introduce a “closed rule amendment.” If passed the closed rule amendment would ban any future amendments from being added to the House Healthcare legislation. Translation= it would block pro-life amendments banning public funding of abortions from being included in the bill.

A coalition of Republicans and Pro-Life Democrats is working to block the “closed rule” and force a vote on a Pro-Life/Anti-Government Funding of Abortion amendment. Political analysts believe that the “closed rule” vote will be incredibly close and most likely will pass or fail by a margin of one.

Translation: We all need to call our congressman/women Thursday, November 5th (the vote is expected first thing Friday).

Every Congressional Office has people paid to take down your thoughts on issues they are considering. They use a check system and mark each call in favor or against an amendment, bill ,etc… and then use this in the final decision process. As many as 40 Democrats are considering crossing lines to support allowing amendments (pro-life ones) but need encouragements/reminders as such a vote will cost them dearly. Furthermore, some congressmen/women who support abortion might vote to allow amendments to be offered.

Earlier this week in response to Bishops’ statement to Catholics, Planned Parenthood released a statement calling on pro-choice Catholics to resist the Bishops’ instruction and calling on them to call Washington, DC en masse insisting on the public funding of Abortion.

Our Game Plan:

Attached is a list of everyone’s name matched to their congressman/woman and appropriate offices.

1. Set aside 5 minutes tomorrow (total) and call EACH of the numbers assigned to your name. (generally 2-4 offices for the same congressman- note: it is best to call the Washington office & each of the local offices as they keep separate totals and tallies of calls and combine them together at the end of each day)
2. When you call introduce yourself as
a. Hello my name is ______________, and I am a registered voter in Congressman _______ district.


3. Tell them you would like your representative
a. to vote NO on the closed rule amendment to HR 3962
b. And that you want them to allow a vote on the Stupak Amendment (it is the pro-life one--note it is important to mention this amendment by name )

4. Ask them if they would like your name and address because this shows you really live in their district, be prepared to offer it.