Your view: Pro-life a priority

I am a mother of two and am adamantly pro-life. I am disappointed by our Republican-majority Congress, our President and Supreme Court, seven of the nine justices having been appointed by Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr.

I believed the 2000 election was the chance to obtain a constitutional amendment guaranteeing life to unborn babies. I was shocked to read in the April 20, 2001, USA Today that the pro-life issue was "not a policy priority" for this Bush administration.

Before the 2000 election campaign, the mostly Republican Supreme Court overturned a Nebraska pro-life statute on partial-birth abortion because it did not include an exception to allow this procedure when needed to protect the mother's health. President Bush knew this when he promised in 2000 to appoint judges with a pro-life view.

I am disgusted that the recent Partial Birth Abortion Act passed by Congress did not include the necessary language to insure its durability. Democrats had offered the exclusion for protecting a woman's right to an abortion if her health was threatened. But the Republican majority eliminated that section, thus dooming the bill to be unconstitutional.

Democrats, under the Clinton administration, sponsored the Daschle Amendment that would have eliminated far more abortions than the partial-birth abortion ban. Something to reduce abortions is better than nothing.

People are without health insurance, living beneath the poverty line and unemployment is high. The war in Iraq has taken numerous lives and a recent worldwide poll reported the world no longer sees the U.S. as a peace-loving nation.

This is not a pro-life administration.

S.N. Marshall,

Sikeston