By Dave Andrusko
As state legislatures reconvene for the 2017 session, pro-abortion sites are running stories under such headlines as “A Wave of Anti-Abortion Laws is About to Hit This State” [Mother Jones magazine, talking about Missouri] and “The Scariest Abortion Restrictions To Watch For In 2017:How states are chipping away at reproductive rights—right now” [the Huffington Post].
Since Catherine Pearson’s Huffington Post piece is not specific to one state, let’s see what insights she has to offer.
Pearson’s trio of “scary restrictions” are “#1: Fetal burial rules”; “#2: Twenty-week abortion bans”; and “#3: ‘D&E’ bans.” What do we say?
#1 simply refers to treating the remains of aborted babies with respect–through burial or cremation. Texas has such a proposed regulation, which has been temporarily restrained by U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks. Amy Hagstrom Miller, a plaintiff and president of Whole Woman’s Health, which runs three abortion clinics in the state, told Sparks that such a requirement is “offensive.”
According to Texas Right to Life, while discussions were taking place about the proposed rules
One of the most revealing quotes from opponents of the proposed rules revealed the ethical core of the debate over how we treat the bodies of preborn children after abortion. One abortion advocate argued, “I don’t think you can be inhumane to something that isn’t human.”
Opponents cite “steep costs,” which as proponents note is preposterous.
#2. Is the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which is already on the books in 15 states. Such a humane law requires only that abortionists not take the lives of babies capable of experiencing pain–by 20 weeks, if not earlier. Pearson quotes the usual litany of pro-abortion sources who respond (A) such abortions are “rare”; they are not. There are at least 10,000 to 15,000 babies who are in this category annually who are aborted. Besides if the child experiences unimaginable levels of pain, what does the number have to do with this abomination?
And (B), we are told, such abortions essentially only take place “because of fetal abnormalities or threats to their own health.” NRL News Today has disposed of that canard–which is just an update of the untruth told when the ban on partial-birth abortions was debated — on multiple occasions.
#3. The “D&E bans” refer to the Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act, which is the law in six states. In a dismemberment abortion, the abortionist uses steel tools to tear apart a living, well-developed, unborn child by brute force. The measure introduced in Congress
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 . . .”
How do Pearson and her sources handle something this grotesquely brutal?
Again, the all-purpose escape clause–it’s “rare.” And, supposedly, if a woman does want a dismemberment abortion (roughly at 14 weeks and later), it’s likely because she needed to get money to go to an abortion clinic that would perform the abortion.
We’ve discussed that evasion on many occasions. Overwhelmingly women get second (and third) trimester abortions, not because of genetic anomalies or threats to their “health,” but for social reasons, including not wanting to tell their parents or their partner or because they misjudged how far along they were.
These are solid pieces of pro-life legislation which will continue to be introduced in states this session.