Pro-family activism that makes a difference!
 
 

Public hearing on outrageous new “buffer zone” bill
announced for today, July 16, 10:00 am -- at Mass. State House

Life in the banana republic known as Massachusetts . . .

POSTED: July 16, 2014

The nasty Obama Administration tactics to subvert and oppress religious believers are not confined to the federal government. It’s certainly happening in Massachusetts.

This is the REAL high-crime zone in Boston!

Late on Monday, July 14, State Sen. Harriette Chandler (D-Worcester) surreptitiously filed a new abortion clinic “buffer zone” bill on behalf of Gov. Deval Patrick and Attorney General Martha Coakley, working closely with Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). As we’ve reported, the bill was filed by our pro-abortion political leaders in response to the US Supreme Court ruling striking down the 2007 Mass. buffer zone law.

Public hearing TODAY!

Wednesday morning at 10:00 a.m. there will be a public hearing before the Joint Judiciary Committee in Gardner Auditorium at the Massachusetts State House.

The hearing will likely last all day, possibly into the night. There is no question that the abortion lobby will be there in full force. But of course, we are encouraging all pro-lifers to come, too!  If you can’t make it, we’ve been told that it will be streamed live on the Mass Legislature website. (Note: We've been told you can arrive at any time during the day and sign up to speak.)

As of Tuesday evening, the text of the bill is still not available to the public via the State House website or other regular sources. However, we were able to get a copy of it. See the text of the bill and our analysis of it here.

The State House website actually lists two hearings -- one at 10 a.m. and a second at 3 p.m. According to a Judiciary Committee staffer we spoke with, it’s actually the same hearing. It’s just a sleazy trick to “officially” stay within the minimum 48-hour timeframe after the bill was filed required by the rules. The bill apparently was filed Monday afternoon, but they want to start the hearing earlier. The staffer admitted to us that it’s because they want to “rush it through” as fast as possible.

So far: A thoroughly corrupt process

In our experience, the text of every bill is immediately available in the House or Senate Clerk’s office. It's a no-brainer. And all public hearings are posted on the website several days in advance.

But toensure this horrible bill goes through as fast as possible, this corrupt group of powerful politicians has done everything it can to keep opponents from effectively participating in the process.

Here’s what we’ve experienced so far:

The bill was filed on Monday and the public hearing was quickly scheduled for Wednesday. The news media, abortion lobby, and some others published some of the details that evening. But the State House website did not post the text of the bill and there was no mention of a public hearing.

Here's what we had to go through just to get the normal information:

  1. On Tuesday morning MassResistance called the Senate Clerk’s office for a copy of the bill. They told us they had no knowledge of the bill (even through it was filed with them) or of the public hearing. They told us to call the sponsor, Sen. Chandler’s office, for a copy of the bill.
  2. We called the sponsor, Sen. Chandler’s office. We were told they did not have a copy of the bill’s text (even though Sen. Chandler had filed it) but they would send it to us when they could get a copy of it. We were also told that Planned Parenthood was using this time to get co-sponsors for the bill.
  3. We called the office of the Senate Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. The staffer we spoke with said they didn’t have the bill text, either (even though they’re hearing testimony on it the following morning) but he confirmed there would be a public hearing on Wednesday. He acknowledged that it was not posted on the State House website. But he told us it would start at 3 pm in Gardner Auditorium.
  4. We called the office of the House Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. They had no idea about anything, and told us to call the sponsor.
  5. We called another State Senator’s office for help. The staffer called us back and said he was told that the bill was being re-written and they had no idea when it would be ready. (This turned out to be untrue.)
  6. Finally, on Tuesday afternoon we received a copy of the bill text from a staffer in Sen. Chandler’s office. The document’s filing date was listed as Monday, July 14, so it had obviously been in existence the whole time.

Later that afternoon, we noticed that the State House website had added the two times for Wednesday’s hearing. No one has ever seen two listings, of different times, for the same hearing. And the obvious question: Why not wait until Thursday and give people some time to study this? (The answer isn't too hard to guess.)

It's pretty clear that they wanted as few pro-life people as possible to know about the public hearing or have any time leading up to it to study the text of the bill.

This is life now in the banana republic known as Massachusetts.

We will let you know what happens.