The final countdown has begun! With only days remaining for the state house to complete their business, time is running out for pro-life Tennesseans to pass SJR 127.
Our last chance for passage rests with the effort of pro-life legislators to pass a motion to suspend the rules and allow SJR 127 to come to the full house floor for honest debate and an up or down vote.
A VOTE AGAINST SUSPENDING THE RULES IS A PRO-ABORTION VOTE SINCE IT WILL PREVENT THE RESOLUTION FROM BEING PLACED ON THE BALLOT AGAIN UNTIL 2010.
Truth be told, if we win the vote to suspend the rules and SJR 127 is brought to the floor, we win. Tennessee is a strongly pro-life state and few legislators want to go home defending a pro-abortion vote. However, if we are gaveled down, ruled out of order, or delayed in any way—we lose. Worse still, Tennessee’s women and unborn children are left without any safeguards.
Pro-life legislators are being heavily pressured, discouraged and intimidated into walking away from their pro-life commitments and being urged not to support the effort to ‘suspend the rules’ out of respect for the ‘sanctity’ of the committee system. However, the hostile House committee system has been weighted against pro-life Tennesseans for many years and we simply must place respect for the sanctity of every human life over the so-called ‘sanctity of any committee or system.
You have done heroic work in moving SJR 127 this far. Even today, your support has allowed us to unveil a statewide media campaign urging TV viewers and radio listeners in key districts to contact their legislators in support of SJR 127.
Now the rest is up to you. Whether or not the motion to suspend the rules succeeds or fails depends largely on whether or not pro-life Tennesseans stand up immediately and demand that we be given the opportunity to vote on this matter of life and death.
With only days left, key decisions are being made right now by legislators who are deciding whether or not to support the motion to suspend the rules and call SJR 127 up from the hostile sub-committee where it died on a vote of 5-4.
Only the people of Tennessee have the power to restore common sense balance to our state’s abortion policy—and only the people of Tennessee have the power to make their views known in such an overwhelming fashion that their elected officials have no other choice but to support the motion, suspend the rules and move SJR 127 forward.
The fate of SJR 127 is now in your hands. I implore you to make your voice heard one more time to move SJR 127 forward and allow the people of Tennessee to vote in 2006 to make our state constitution ‘abortion neutral’ once again.
Toward that Goal,
Brian Harris, President
Tennessee Right to Life
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