By Dave Andrusko
Where have you seen/read this before? “The new law amounts to a near ban because at six weeks many women may not know they are pregnant.”
This happens to have appeared as part of an April 16 Wall Street Journal editorial but ever-so-slight variations have appeared hundreds/thousands of times whenever the subject is the Heartbeat Law. As NRL News Today readers know, this can be an honest mistake but it repeats a radically false pro-abortion talking point to the American public.
Question: is the Florida law–SB300, The Heartbeat Protection Act –a “near ban” (or as it alternatively described, a “total ban”) on abortion? Florida has just passed its protective legislation on April 13, so there is no data to go by. But we can say the following.
#1. SB300 allows abortion later in pregnancy to protect the life of the mother or in cases of reported rape, incest, medical emergency or when the child has a fatal condition. But it will protect unborn children from elective abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy, the developmental point at which the baby’s heartbeat can be detected.
#2. In 2020, 45.3% of abortions—nearly half–were performed at or before 6 weeks, according to the CDC.
#3. In Texas, the Heartbeat Protection Act took effect on September 1, 2021. The month prior, August, 5,706 abortions were recorded. The number for September had dropped to 2,251.
Further, as Texas Right to Life explained, “From September 2021 to June 2022, the Texas Heartbeat Act decreased the number of abortions to 2,500 per month on average.”
The pro-abortion agenda is transparent. Every protective pro-life law is a “ban” or “total ban.”
Dr. David N. O’Steen wrote about that truth and what it means for pro-lifers in great detail recently.
“The public overwhelmingly wants abortion available for the reasons cited in these polls,” he wrote. The four are rape, incest, life of mother, and maternal health emergencies.
This support has not wavered in fifty years. Knowing this, the abortion industry, with its seemingly unlimited financial resources and the relentless support of the pro-abortion media, keeps the public debate focused on precisely these issues where they have such strong support: rape, incest, and maternal health emergencies, whenever those issues are left on the table for debate.
However, as Dr. O’Steen wrote, the same respondents
were then asked if they would support allowing abortion only in those four circumstances: to save the life of the mother or in case of a medical emergency on in cases of rape or incest.
72% said yes with 51% strongly agreeing.
As we have said for 50 years, the American public is far closer to our perspective than they are to the abortion-on-demand, paid-for-by- the-public posture of The Abortion Industry.