By Dave Andrusko
Abortionist Leroy Carhart
The fun part [loosely defined] of reading pro-abortion posts is to contrast their headlines and thesis statement with what the body of the article actually makes clear. For example, “Who’s winning the abortion war?” ran on Salon.com and was answered by its author Irin Carmon, “frustratingly…. no one.” Really?
Is she saying that the state legislatures haven’t passed a rising tide of pro-life measures. No! In fact, she bemoans it [“In all of this, pro-choicers are still putting out fires”] and cites the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute which concluded, ”For the moment, at least, supporters of reproductive health and rights are almost uniformly playing defense at the state level.”
If you read with your eyes open what she admits is that the reason supposedly neither side is “winning” is because a handful of judges have enjoined various laws, decisions that kept those evil pro-lifers at bay.
At the federal level, the barrier to “the wild anti-choice posturing of the House” is a combination of a pro-abortion President and a pro-abortion Senate. However that is small comfort to Carmon who adds, “[B]ut next year, of course, is an election year.”
So, if one of the most egregious errors (from the pro-abortion position) is passage of five Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Acts– and the medical rationale for it is utterly without basis– why haven’t they challenged any of the laws in court?
“I don’t think we’re rolling over and playing dead,” [abortionist LeRoy] Carhart says. “It’s just that we need to go with a slam-dunk winner.” Carhart performs late/late/LATE abortions, the kind that make all but the hardest core abortion supporter gasp. He shifted his trade to Maryland when Nebraska passed its Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in 2010.
This failure of nerve has been a bone in the throat of the pro-abortion blogosphere. Those who are looking [in vain?] for a “slam-dunk winner” blame fear of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who they believe might support such a law, giving the law the necessary five votes on the High Court.
And that may be true. But a more revealing comment is from Carmon herself, who opines, “But if a challenge backfires, it could make it even harder for Carhart to take on those difficult cases while driving unpopular, little-understood later abortions back into the spotlight.”
Put more directly, what if the public really understands the following? The CDC’s “Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2007 report puts the percentage of abortions (for selected states) at 21 weeks or later at 1.3%. If applied to the 1.2 million abortions the Guttmacher Institute says are performed in the U.S. each year that would be at least 15,600 abortions each year at 21 weeks or more. Given that there is incentive to minimize the age of the baby, the number might be considerably higher
Indeed, whether the Court upheld or struck down the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, most Americans would be horrified as these numbers gradually worked their way into the public conversation. “Backfired”? Indeed!
Two other points belie the notion that neither side is “winning.” First, state attorneys general are taking the lower court decisions up the judicial ladder. They aren’t browbeaten by the opinion of a single judge or even a single three-judge panel.
Second, pro-abortionists loathe the Hyde Amendment. They are angry because even some Democrats in Congress understand that the public doesn’t want to pay for abortions. And they are infuriated that a least a million people are walking around today that otherwise would have been disposed of at abortion clinics, had it not been for the Hyde Amendment.
We are winning because the “consensus” is different than the imaginary one constructed by Irin Carmon. Look honestly at polling data and the majority opposes the reasons 90%-95% of all abortions are performed. Moreover, only in the precincts of PPFA and NARAL and the pro-abortion PAC EMILY’s List do you find acceptance of abortions performed later in pregnancy.
Please remember that the next time you hear pro-lifers described as the “extremists.”
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