By Dave Andrusko
Pro-abortion President Barack Obama
Granted, sometimes it can be confusing—after all, President Obama is a master of obfuscation—the threat yesterday that the White House would veto the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act was utterly predictable. Without rehearsing the long, LONG story of Obama’s history of non-support for legislation that would require that abortion survivors be treated, we can safely summarize Obama’s position this way. He can turn any limitation, no matter how reasonable, no matter how supported by public opinion, and even when the baby has survived the abortion, into an “attack” on Roe v. Wade.
Of course it helps when reporters such as Janet Hook of the Wall Street Journal write, “The bill sets the 20-week limit on allowable abortions based on some scientists’ theory that fetuses can feel pain at that stage of development.” Get it? A couple of loony tuners have concocted this “theory” that at 20 weeks fetal age (equivalent to “22 weeks of pregnancy”), the beginning of the sixth month, unborn babies can feel it when their arms are torn off and their heads crushed.
Of course, there is an entire arsenal of literature demonstrating that the unborn CAN feel pain by this juncture, if not earlier. Some of the extensive evidence that unborn children have the capacity to experience pain, at least by 20 weeks fetal age, is available on the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org/abortion/Fetal_Pain/index.html and also at www.doctorsonfetalpain.com.
We’ve written a number of times about the science behind the bill’s findings which we heard at a recent subcommittee hearing. To list just three– http://nrlc.cc/11JAkFf; http://nrlc.cc/11JAw7t; and http://nrlc.cc/11JAI6N. For a more in-depth explanation, you can read their testimony at www.nrlc.org/abortion/Fetal_Pain/Witnesses1797Hearing052313.html.
To return to the veto threat, here’s the first paragraph:
“The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 1797, which would unacceptably restrict women’s health and reproductive rights and is an assault on a woman’s right to choose. Women should be able to make their own choices about their bodies and their health care, and Government should not inject itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctor.”
We know how Obama and his advisors would respond, but I wonder how Obama’s pro-forma language would go over with the average America if he or she looked at a medical illustration of one common method of late abortion (“D&E”). It’s posted at www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/DEabortiongraphic.html. Before you read further, click on and look for yourself.
H.R. 1797 is strongly supported by National Right to Life, reason enough for Obama to threaten a veto. But my guess is that Obama, an adroit politician, appreciates the “danger” posed by what NRLC says is “the most significant piece of pro-life legislation to come before the House since the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2007.”
The debate over H.R. 1797 comes as what may someday come to be seen as a pivotal moment. We just witnessed on specialist in late abortions, Kermit Gosnell, sentenced to three consecutive life sentences for murdering three unborn babies after he aborted them alive.
Live Action has conducted undercover investigations in which the abortionist’s utter contempt for the unborn is revealed in all its brutality and heartlessness.
As we have reported in NRL News Today over the past few months, a number of abortion clinics, including those that are Planned Parenthood affiliates, have come under investigation. Some have been closed, while the final verdict for others is still to be determined. The cavalier—when not mind-numbingly brutal—behavior of abortionists is ever-so-gradually being brought out of the shadows and into the sunlight.
In a word, this has been a disastrous few months for the abortion industry, including its leader, Planned Parenthood.
Add to that the research (much from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute) which is demonstrating that there are far, far more late abortions than the public would ever have suspected. As NRLC described it,
“[T]he same pattern of eagerness to minimize painful late abortions is found in some recent media coverage surrounding the Gosnell trial and revelations regarding other late-abortion practitioners. News stories often assert that late abortions are ‘rare’ and sometimes assert that late abortions usually involve serious medical problems of the mother or fetus. Yet these ‘facts’ are not supported by hard data, and indeed run contrary to much of the evidence that is available.”
Taken together and you may be approaching the perfect storm.