Post-Election Life-Related Headlines and Stories You Didn’t See

From the reality-based Life News:

• Nov. 10 — Pro-Life Advocates Won Majority of Races Against Abortion Advocates

Though numerous pro-life lawmakers were defeated in the Congressional elections on Tuesday, pro-life groups say they did better than some political observers forecasted. They also say that pro-life candidates would have done worse if not for their stands against abortion.
In a statement provided to LifeNews.com the National Right to Life Committee said it was involved in 87 highly contested races for the House and Senate and the group won 53 percent of those contests.

“Unfortunately as the races developed almost all of these races involved protecting incumbent pro-life Republicans,” Darla St. Martin, the associate executive director of National Right to Life, told LifeNews.com.

With the tenuous political climate for Republicans on other political issues, that made it more difficult to defend their seats.

Another pro-life group, the Susan B. Anthony List, said that, for the fifth consecutive election in a row, more of its candidates own than lost.

• Nov. 10 — Terri Schiavo’s Former Husband Michael Campaigned for Losing Candidates

After he successfully won a court order to kill Terri Schiavo via euthanasia, the disabled woman’s former husband Michael pledged to take on pro-life advocates and formed a political action committee to defeat them. However, the candidates Michael campaigned for during the 2006 mid-term elections didn’t fare very well.

In fact, every candidate Michael personally campaigned for during the election cycle went down to defeat.

• Nov. 10 — Pro-Life Democrats Win Elections, But Abortion Advocates Still Rule

….. one new pro-life Democrat will join the Senate, Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, and six new pro-life Democrats will head to the House.

However, the election of these new pro-life Democrats doesn’t mean they will replace abortion advocates.

Some pro-life groups are upset that most of the candidates ran against established pro-life lawmakers with long-standing voting records.

Casey, for example, simply knocked off pro-life leader Rick Santorum, the sponsor of the partial-birth abortion ban, while candidates running for the House — such as Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth of Indiana — merely defeated pro-life lawmakers who had already been pushing for a pro-life agenda.

Darla St. Martin, the associate executive director of National Right to Life, told LifeNews.com that the pro-life Democrats elected Tuesday have no record and she worries their voting habits won’t match their rhetoric.

“As for those Democrats who were elected after running as ‘pro-life,’ the pro-life movement will judge them based not on the label they chose to wear, but on how they vote in the confrontations to come,” she explained.

NRLC, which surveys Congressional candidates on their views on a myriad of pro-life issues, sent Schuler a candidate questionnaire to complete. He didn’t return it — which has St. Martin concerned.

Other groups are unsure altogether whether the pro-life Democratic candidates are truly pro-life.

• Nov. 10 — Poll: Stem Cell Research, Michael J. Fox Ads Didn’t Help Candidate

Fox News asked Missouri voters whether the embryonic stem cell research ad campaign made voters more or less likely to vote for McCaskill, who Fox endorsed in the commercials.

A whopping 71 percent said the ads made “No difference” in their vote.

Only 7 percent said the ads made them more likely to support McCaskill but a larger group of voters, 18 percent, said Fox’s commercials made them less likely to support her.

Of those voters who said it made them less likely to vote for her some 94 percent ended up supporting pro-life Sen. Jim Talent, who opposed embryonic stem cell research funding.

As a result, the Fox ads provided Talent with a 10 percent edge on the issue of stem cell research because they turned off more voters than they encouraged to back McCaskill.

The Fox News poll also found that the issue of stem cell research in general didn’t provide any advantage to McCaskill.

Almost half of voters said embryonic stem cell research made no difference in how they voted.

And among the 25 percent who said the issue was extremely important to their vote, 59 percent favored Talent while just 39 percent backed McCaskill.

….. The poll found McCaskill was victorious only because she prevailed on other issues that had nothing to do with stem cell research.