By Dave Andrusko
Early voting for the city of Albuquerque’s “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Ordinance” ended last Friday with almost 44,000 voters casting ballots. Today is the last opportunity for pro-lifers to say “No!” to aborting unborn children capable of feeling pain, which scientific evidence demonstrates to be no later than 20 weeks fetal age.
Whatever the results—and they are expected to be very close—the education process begun with National Right to Life’s model legislation continues. If the city of Albuquerque votes in favor, it will be the first municipality to do so, joining ten states and the United States House of Representatives. Pro-Life Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has introduced a companion Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in the Senate.
There are only a tiny handful of “facilities” that perform late abortions. Two of them are in Albuquerque– the Southwestern Women’s Options clinic and the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health, according to CNN.
Over the past year we have posted several stories about Curtis Boyd’s Southwestern Women’s Options clinic, most recently at nrlc.cc/1irIptY and nrlc.cc/19DqyID. They were based in large measure on the outstanding undercover work done by Live Action.
If the voters of Albuquerque had seen these posts—or the investigative videos they were based on—what would they know?
· An abortion at 25 weeks not only takes a WEEK to perform, it costs $8,000—with the price going up $1,000 each subsequent week.
· That Southwestern Women’s Options has worked out a deal with a local inn to give women a “deal” on a room and transportation to and from the airport, to and from the abortion clinic.
· That if a woman goes into labor in the hotel room, don’t look for a ride to the abortion clinic. As the woman answering the phone at the hotel told an uncover Live Action investigator, “Most these cases, you guys actually transport yourself, either taxi or you’ll call an ambulance. I don’t think you even go to the clinic. I think you wind up going to the hospital.”
· The truth surrounding what happens in a second and third trimester abortion is extremely unsettling. The investigator asks the counselor “does it [the baby] feel that?”—a reference to the needle injected into the baby to kill him or her. After hemming and hawing, the counselor says “You know, I’m not sure…I don’t believe so. I don’t know if it’s developed enough to feel that.” A second later, a remarkable aside: “It might be.”
· Finally, abortions in Albuquerque are virtually unregulated. According to one video there is a brief exchange with Carmen Landau, an abortionist. Landau tells the investigator that she has performed “lots” of abortions on women as far along as the investigator says she is “because in most places you can’t get an abortion after 24 weeks.”
New Mexico “has laws,” Landau says on the video. She pauses: “It doesn’t have a lot of the restrictions.”
Voters in Albuquerque have the opportunity to say, “Not in our town.” Let us hope and pray that they do.
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