By Dave Andrusko
Paul Ranalli
If you’ve been in the Movement more than an hour and a half, you know that pro-abortionists rely most heavily on “tough” cases and on misdirection. Nowhere is that more the case than with the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (now the law of five states).
On its face that might seem to be an unusual, if not nearly impossible, application of these pro-abortion standbys. After all, what does this law do except say you can’t abort kids capable of feeling pain?!
There are two retorts, both of which are either flatly wrong, or misleading. One is that there is no scientific evidence that the unborn can experience pain by 20 weeks post-fertilization, the juncture typically mentioned in the legislation.
We have shown on many occasions that there is plenty of evidence (for an overview go to www.doctorsonfetalpain.com). We have also shown that the alternative explanations (that this takes place much later in pregnancy, or not until AFTER birth) are either comically inept, inconsistent, or miss the boat (see www.nrlc.org/abortion/fetal_pain/nrlcrebuttaljama.html and www.nrlc.org/news_and_views/July10/nv071510.html).
The other way to try to neutralize the power of this legislation was on display yet again this week in the New York Times. Headlined “Several States Forbid Abortion after 20 Weeks,” the story focuses on one tragic case to argue that the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act is wrong-headed, cruel, and (of course) unconstitutional.
I will not rehearse what we have written about the very unfortunate case of Danielle and Robb Deaver except to say that the information that led them to desire an abortion was incomplete, incorrect, and out-dated. As Dr. Sean Kenney, a maternal-fetal specialist, explained in an op-ed that appeared in the Omaha Herald, “Tragic as the outcome was, the pessimism that predicted inevitable death for the baby was certainly unwarranted” (www.nrlc.org/news_and_views/March11/nv031411.html).
Dr. Kenney knows of what he speaks. He has had success in saving babies facing the condition Mrs. Deaver was diagnosed with–pre-viable premature rupture of the membrane.
One concluding thought. Nancy Northup, president of the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Times, “These 20-week laws are absolutely unconstitutional.” So why haven’t they challenged these laws?
“[I]n part because they are so new that few potential plaintiffs have emerged”—absurd on its face—but also because “advocates for abortion rights are also proceeding warily, fearful that a weak case could end up in the Supreme Court and upend the legal structure established by Roe v. Wade in 1973 and subsequent decisions, with fetal viability as the all-important dividing line between access to abortion and stringent limits.”
What, pray tell, is a “weak case”? A more honest answer would be that they are afraid the Justices may rethink their abortion jurisprudence in the light of new knowledge about the emotional and psychological aftershocks of abortion; the emotional impact of the “window on the womb” (sonograms) which are now in color and real-time; and the evidence that unborn babies can and do experience unimaginable pain when torn to shreds.
How would you like to defend that barbarism in front of all of America?
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