By Dave Andrusko
National Right to Life leaders with pro-life Senator Lindsey Graham (second from right) at a press conferencing Thursday morning where Sen. Graham (R-S.C.) announced he would introduce the landmark legislation that would provide nationwide protection for unborn children who are capable of feeling pain. Left to right: David N. O’Steen, Ph.D., NRLC Executive Director; Darla St. Martin, NRLC Co-Executive Director, Sen. Graham, and Carol Tobias, NRLC President.
The nature of communications today is that a news item is pre-reported, reported in real time (Twitter and Facebook, for example), reported immediately after the event, and then examined and reexamined. And so it is with yesterday’s official announcement that pro-life Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was introducing the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in the United States Senate, a companion measure to the bill that passed overwhelmingly in the House last June, 228 to 196.
(The 36 Senate original co-sponsors are listed at the end of this post.)
If you didn’t get a chance to read NRL News Today’s extensive coverage, take a few minutes and go to nrlc.cc/1fpxZZx; nrlc.cc/16Nu6uQ; nrlc.cc/1fpy9A3; and nrlc.cc/1fpybb0.
Susan T. Muskett, J.D., National Right to Life senior legislative counsel, was simply stating fact when she told NRL News Today, “Not since Congress voted to ban the brutal partial-birth abortion method has a more important piece of pro-life legislation come before Congress.”
We know this to be true not just because of what the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act would do: protect from abortion babies capable of feeling pain. There is also the response by those who will never in this lifetime ever find an abortion that they would ban, let alone condemn.
I don’t mean the level of hysteria; what else would you or I expect? I mean the curious (okay, predictable) response that it is pro-lifers who are the heartless ones.
Think about that for a moment. The Planned Parenthoods and the NARALs of this world simply slide right by the horror of tearing apart a baby capable of experiencing pain. Ah, not so, they haughtily tell us.
Understand, there is scientific evidence galore that unborn children have the capacity to experience pain, at least by 20 weeks fetal age. For example on the National Right to Life website at www.nrlc.org/abortion/fetalpain and also at www.doctorsonfetalpain.com.
But that entirely misses the point. If the ban were 39 weeks and 23 hours and if there was evidence strung out between here and the moon, PPFA and NARAL would find an exception to swallow the rule. That’s what they do—and (from their perspective), why not?
If abortion is about autonomy—“I got’s to be me”– and empowerment (an unqualified good) versus male chauvinism, religious kookery, and patriarchy (bad to the nth degree), why would a little thing like unimaginable levels of fetal pain possibly put a damper on a “right” that is, by its very nature, limitless and beyond judgment?
Too bad, kid, them’s the breaks.
But some of the second day reporting gets it. We can hope that just as most of the mainstream media finally understands that candor and honesty and humility are not President Obama’s strong suit, most reporters will someday grasp that killing pain-capable unborn children is the very definition of “extremism.”
Will it be easy? Of course not. But when has it ever been?
Yet the public is with us—and the babies. There is strong support for legislation like the Pain-Capable Unborn Children Protection Act, which means, of course, that there will continue to be a string of bogus polls attempting to minimize the depth and breadth of the opposition to aborting pain-capable unborn children.
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A great week for the cause of Life.
Senate original co-sponors
Sen Kelly Ayotte [NH]
Sen John Barrasso [WY]
Sen Roy Blunt, [MO]
Sen John Boozman [AR]
Sen Richard Burr [NC]
Sen Saxby Chambliss [GA]
Sen Daniel Coats [IN]
Sen Tom Coburn [OK]
Sen That Cochran [MS]
Sen John Cornyn [TX]
Sen Mike Crapo [ID]
Sen Ted Cruz [TX]
Sen Michael B. Enzi [WY]
Sen Deb Fischer [NE]
Sen Jeff Flake [AZ]
Sen Chuck Grassley [IA]
Sen Orrin G. Hatch [UT]
Sen John Hoeven [ND]
Sen James Inhofe [OK]
Sen Johnny Isakson [GA]
Sen Mike Johanns [NE]
Sen Ron Johnson [WI]
Sen Mike Lee [UT]
Sen John McCain [AZ]
Sen Mitch McConnell [KY]
Sen Jerry Moran [KS]
Sen Rob Portman [OH]
Sen James E. Risch [ID]
Sen Pat Roberts [KS]
Sen Marco Rubio [FL]
Sen Tim Scott [SC]
Sen Jeff Sessions [AL]
Sen Richard C. Shelby [AL]
Sen John Thune [SD]
Sen David Vitter [LA]
Sen Roger F. Wicker [MS]
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