By Dave Andrusko
Editor’s note. This appeared in the September digital edition of National Right to Life News. The entire issue can be read at www.nrlc.org/uploads/NRLNews/NRLNewsSept2015.pdf.
While I’m 200% aware we still have plenty of challenges ahead, it’s impossible not to be excited about the flurry of activity that is taking place in our nation’s capitol.
Take yesterday. After debating the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act on Monday, on Tuesday a majority of the Senate voted to advance the bill but not with the 60votes required.
However, thanks to what’s taken place, particularly over the last week, there is an increased clarity to the debate over just how far Democrats are willing to go to protect the Abortion Industry. In a word, there appears to be no limit, none whatsoever.
Let’s begin with the issue of banning abortions on babies capable of experiencing excruciating pain during an abortion. Since pro-abortion Hillary Clinton remains the frontrunner for her party’s presidential nomination, what she said Sunday in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation is very much worth noting.
Asked by host John Dickerson, “Do you support a federal limit on abortion at any stage of pregnancy?” (“Any.”)
Clinton responded with pseudo-concern, evasion, and misstatements. “ This is one of those really painful questions that people raise. And, obviously, it’s really emotional. I think that the kind of late-term abortions that take place are because of medical necessity. And, therefore, I would hate to see the government interfering with that decision. I think that, again, this gets back to whether you respect a woman’s right to choose or not. And I think that is what this whole argument once again is about.”
At NRL News and NRL News Today, we’ve discussed for decades the canard that “late-term abortions that take place are because of medical necessity.” The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack has also done some of the finest work on this.
In a piece that ran Monday , McCormack patiently pointed out that some abortionists, like LeRoy Carhart, openly say they will perform “purely elective abortions” 28 weeks into pregnancy. Another study, by pro-abortionists no less, looked at 200 women who had abortions after 20 weeks for non-medical reasons.
McCormack explained that according to Michelle Goldberg, writing in the Daily Beast, “ [T]wo thirds of them were delayed while they tried to raise money to pay for a termination. Twelve percent were teenagers, some of whom went months without realizing they were pregnant.”
McCormack added, “The fact that one professor could find a sample of 200 women who had late-term abortions for “nonmedical reasons” indicates that the total number of elective late-term abortions is quite large.
McCormack offered further evidence, as could we, including the impact of sloppy or non-existent state records, but the point does not need to be belabored. There are an untold number of late abortions performed for non-medical reasons, surely in the thousands, at a minimum.
But there is much more that is raising pro-life hopes and pro-abortion fears. Last Friday, the House of Representatives passed two important bills–one to extend federal legal protection to babies who are born alive during abortions [H.R. 3504] , and another to suspend all federal funding to affiliates of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America [H.R. 3134].
Add to that another protective bill. The Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act (H.R. 3515) was introduced in the House September 16 by Congressman Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, with Vicki Hartzler (R-Mo.), Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), and Trent Franks (R-Az.) as original cosponsors. It is based on a model state bill proposed by National Right to Life, enacted this year in Kansas and Oklahoma.
The bill defines “dismemberment abortion” as “knowingly dismembering a living unborn child and extracting such unborn child one piece at a time from the uterus through the use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors or similar instruments that, through the convergence of two rigid levers, slice, crush or grasp a portion of the unborn child’s body in order to cut or rip it off . . .”
This definition largely overlaps with what those in the abortion trade currently refer to as “dilation and evacuation” or “dilation and extraction” (D&E) abortions. The method is commonly used starting at about 14 weeks of pregnancy, and extending into the third trimester.
We posted last week about the President’s promise to veto the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act because he thinks the bill (HR 3504) “would likely have a chilling effect” on access to late abortions.
What Mr. Obama is promising to do is to shield abortionists who kill a baby who is born alive during an abortion, either through overt acts of violence or gross neglect. This is astonishing, no lesser word will do.
But, regardless what Mr. Obama and his fellow pro-abortionists in the House and in the Senate want, pro-lifers believe there is an irresistible awakening taking place. It is gathering speed, accelerated by the attention the dismemberment abortion bills are gathering and the pit-of-the-stomach revulsion to the scandalously dehumanizing language of assorted Planned Parenthood officials captured in undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress.
And as the public learns more about elected officials who would allow abortionists to kill babies who survive abortions and who are wedded to the idea there is no better use of your tax dollars than filling up PPFA’s coffers, the campaign will pick up even more momentum.