THE NATION; Congressmen; Draw the Line at; New 'Hit List' (original) (raw)
Week in Review|THE NATION; Congressmen; Draw the Line at; New 'Hit List'
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THE NATION
June 7, 1981
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June 7, 1981
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The National Pro-Life Political Action Committee last week unlimbered its political guns for next year's Congressional elections - and promptly shot itself in the foot. Within hours after the group published a list of ''targets'' for defeat, four members of Congress on its advisory board, including two of the most outspoken Congressional opponents of abortion, resigned in protest.
''Members of a group's advisory board should be asked to advise, and since I was not I intend to resign,'' Senator Jake Garn, a Utah Republican and a sponsor of a proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion, was said to have remarked. Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, author of the legislation that prohibits use of Federal funds for abortions for women on welfare, also quit the board.
They said they were opposed in principle to the ''hit list,'' a tactic used increasingly by single-issue political groups to marshal money and manpower against legislators opposed to their causes. The device is all but universally opposed in Congress, since any member is susceptible to its use. In the case of the antiabortion group's list, moreover, the cooperation needed to pass legislation of any sort probably would have been impossible between those on the ''hit list'' and those on the group's letterhead.
Peter B. Gemma Jr., the organization's executive director, confessed he was stunned by the resignations, but said the group would not change its plans, which call for spending as much as $650,000 this year and next.
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