by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• A girl from Arizona with hypotonia (aka Floppy Baby Syndrome) is walking after receiving a transplant of her own cord blood stem cells and physical therapy.
• In other cord blood stem cell news, a Florida newspaper has a long story on a toddler who is part of an FDA-approved clinical trial to see if children’s own cord blood stem cells can help them with sensorineural hearing loss.

Yesterday the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, a bill that would ban sex-selective abortions in the U.S., garnered an overwhelming majority vote in the House, 246-168.

But PRENDA still failed. Why?

Simply, the vote procedure used (“Suspension of the Rules”) required a two-thirds majority to pass.

Why not go for majority vote?

If such an overwhelming number of congresspersons were known to support PRENDA, why didn’t Republican House leaders follow a route to passage that only required a simple majority?

by Kelli

We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

• Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life dissects and debunks the Guttmacher Institute’s disagreement with a recent Chilean study which showed that “[m]aternal mortality in Chile… is ‘not related to the legal status of abortion.'”

UPDATE 7:25p: A breakdown of the votes:

• Voting yes: 226 Republicans and 20 Democrats (Altmire, Barrow, Boren, Cooper, Costello, Critz, Cuellar, Donnelly, Garamendi, Holden, Kissell, Lipinksi, Lynch, Matheson, McIntyre, Peterson, Rahall, Reyes, Ross of AR, and Shuler)
• Voting no: 161 Democrats and 7 Republicans (Amash, Bass of NH, Bono Mack, Dold, Hanna, Hayworth, and Paul)
• Absent: 8 Republicans (Burton, Fortenberry, Guinta, Lewis of CA, Mack, McCarthy of CA, Roby, and Young of FL) and 9 Democrats (Chandler, Doyle, Ellison, Heinrich, Napolitano, Pascrell, Rangel, Slaughter and Velazquez

2:37p: The heartbreaking, infuriating bottom line: The Prenatal Discrimination Act has failed. Vote tally:

This afternoon the House will vote on the Prenatal Discrimination Act, a federal ban against sex-selection abortion. A two-thirds majority vote is needed.

Following are Democrat congresspersons to focus on. If you live in their district, your call is urgently needed to request support for PRENDA:

Michigan Rep. John Conyers [pictured], the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said the bill “tramples (on) the rights of women under the guise of nondiscrimination, while doing absolutely nothing to provide women with needed resources for their babies, female and male.” Citing opposition to the bill from groups such as the American Congress […]

In a surprise move, House Republicans announced this past Friday they would call for a vote on a federal ban against sex-selective abortion, aka the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, H.R. 3541*, tomorrow, May 30.

PRENDA will be considered under “suspension of the rules,” meaning no amendments can be added. The bill must be voted on as is, straight up or down, and a two-thirds majority will be needed to pass it.

The new frontier in abortion restriction is writing laws governing why women are allowed to terminate their pregnancies. And they’re more popular than you might think…. So-called “motivation bans” have started small and without much controversy; at the federal level, a bill known as PRENDA aims to outlaw abortion based on the race or sex […]