National Right to Life Committee president Carol Tobias has declared North Carolina Republican Congresswoman Renee Ellmers a “pro-life traitor” in a blistering new email to NRLC members.
Ellmers is an ostensibly pro-life lawmaker with a 100% NRLC voting record. However, she won the ire of many pro-lifers in January 2015, when she raised objections to a bill banning abortion at five months of pregnancy (at which point science shows babies are capable of feeling pain) on the grounds that its rape exception was too burdensome.
The move incensed pro-lifers, as the derailed vote on the bill was scheduled to coincide with the annual March for Life, the country’s largest pro-life demonstration. Ellmers eventually said she could support the bill if the exception’s requirement to report a rape to police was changed to reporting it to the abortionist, which pro-life critics noted would create a wide loophole.
“Ellmers was the most outspoken representative opposing the bill, even though she had previously pledged to support it – and had even voted for the exact same bill in the previous Congress!” Tobias argues. “Nothing has the potential to do more damage to pro-life efforts than people who run as pro-life candidates back home in their pro-life districts and then stab the babies in the back when they come to DC and work against pro-life efforts.”
Instead, the NRLC Political Victory Fund has endorsed Representative George Holding, who is competing against Ellmers in the GOP primary due to redistricting. Tobias calls him “a pro-life stalwart who was always taken a pro-life position” and “the kind of congressman the babies can depend on.” The pro-life Susan B. Anthony List and North Carolina Values Coalition have also endorsed him.
Holding has a 100% pro-life voting record, and NRLC notes that he “co-sponsored and consistently supported the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”
