By Dave Andrusko
Editor’s note. This appears in the current digital edition of National Right to Life News. Please read the entire 40-page issue and pass its contents along to pro-life family and friends.
Not because of who I am
But because of what you’ve done
Not because of what I’ve done
But because of who you are
—From “Who am I” by Mercy Me
Wednesday morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham, the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led a hearing on one of National Right to Life’s highest legislative proposals, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The abortion industry and its congressional allies, of course, oppose S. 160, as surely as night follows day. It’s what they do, it’s who they are.
In the Big Picture, the objective for pro-life forces is always the same: move legislation along that will, when passed, save the lives of vulnerable unborn children at the same time setting before the American the brutal truth that Democrats’ have an insatiable thirst for killing unborn babies up until birth—and, increasingly, beyond. There is no safe harbor for born-alive babies who escape the abortionist’s clutches, which is why the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is essential.
Protecting pain-capable unborn children has been a priority item since 2010. Beginning with Nebraska, such laws, based on NRLC’s model legislation, have passed in 16 states and are in effect in 15.
The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act are two examples of the aggressive push by pro-life Republican forces.
Last week. Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) introduced the Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act of 2019. This legislation would prohibit physicians from dismembering living unborn children.
Also last week, as you know from reading our daily NRL News Today, Congressman Mike Conaway (R-Tx.) introduced the Second Chance at Life Act. This bill requires doctors to inform women seeking a chemical abortion that the abortion can potentially be stopped and reversed in order to save the baby, if she changes her mind after taking the first of the two drugs that make of the chemical (“medication”) abortion technique.
Also, as Ingrid Duran, NRLC’s director of state legislation, explains in stories that appeared last month and this month in NRL News, our state affiliates have not slowed down in their campaigns to protect the most vulnerable among us.
Recently , Meghan Keneally, of ABC News, wrote, “[M]ore than 250 bills restricting abortion have been filed in 41 states since the start of 2019, according to a new report issued by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group initially formed under Planned Parenthood that has been operating separately for years.
“While some legislators have been working to restrict abortion access since the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case that codified the right to abortion in 1973, the rate at which restrictive laws have been filed in recent years has picked up.”
For its own PR purposes, Guttmacher, the abortion movement’s in-house think-tank, habitually exaggerates the number of pro-life proposals. But the figure, while inflated, documents how pro-life momentum is alive, well, and surging.
Our benighted opposition, seeing the handwriting on the wall, is doing its level-best to pass the most daft, demented, and deranged
legislation possible. In some cases, such as New York, there were and are so many pro-abortion Democrats in both houses that it proved impossible to turn back the Reproductive Health Act.
Pro-lifers are fighting similarly unhinged proposals in states such as Vermont, Illinois, and Rhode Islander, and the sledding is tough going. What we can say is after the fever breaks, the public in these states will wake up to discover their elected Democratic officials fervently believe in abortion up until birth and little-to-no care for babies who survive the abortionist’s best efforts to kill them.
At that point, the “mainstream media’ and the abortion industry (but I repeat myself) will recalibrate the excuses they used for their viciously inhumane proposals but without retreating a step. It’s what they do, it’s who they are.
If we do our job well, however, the public, and not just pro-lifers, will understand who the genuine “extremists” are.