State Senator Wendy Davis stood for over 12 hours before the
Texas Legislature this month, a final attempt to hold back the pro-life tidal
wave. Her dramatic
filibuster temporarily stopped a Republican bill that would restrict
abortion in Texas, but her efforts, and those of her raucous supporters, demonstrate
the hopeless nature of their fight. To oppose a bill that would require
abortion facilities to be clean is a
desperate measure. President Obama tweeted, “Something special is happening in
Austin tonight.” Yes, Mr. President, something special is happening. The logic of abortion has failed and
our nation will soon be one that protects all life.
In America, abortion law is a tangled web of legislative and
judicial decisions. Choruses of “well, I’m personally opposed, but…” show
increasing discomfort with abortion and over half a million young people flock
to the capital every January for the march for life. The
fetal pain bill and three high-profile fetal murders that came to light this spring highlight untenable
inconsistency in our laws.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Pain-Capable Fetal
Protection Act, a measure that would restrict abortion once the fetus is
able to feel pain. Overwhelming
medical evidence has found that by 8 weeks, a fetus responds to touch. By
20 weeks, an unborn baby recoils from pain and releases a stress hormone like our
bodies do when we get cut, bruised, or burned. Carol Everett, a former owner of
an abortion clinic, appeared before the House
State Affairs Committee in Texas. She testified, “I was in the abortion business
for six years, and I watched babies under sonography pull away from the
instruments when they were used on them…babies do have nerve endings; they do
feel pain.”
So why does pain matter? Why do abortion advocates so
quickly change the subject to talk of a woman’s privacy? Pain makes us uneasy,
and for good reason. If babies feel pain when their lives end (the procedures
are more gruesome than one might think) and if it is our duty as a nation to be
as accepting, as compassionate, as humane
as possible, then ignoring the pain of unborn babies contradicts these
ideals. Their silence does not mitigate their physical agony.
The trade-off between violating an unborn child’s life and a
woman’s privacy rests on a single question: is the fetus a person who deserves
protection?
If so, the government cannot deny unborn babies equal
protection under the law. If women and unborn children are both persons, the
latter cannot be killed in order to alleviate a woman’s distress. If fetuses are
merely masses of tissue, they should be lawfully treated as part of the woman’s
body, something she can do with as she chooses. Three recent fetal-murder cases
provide the country's most recent consensus.
In Florida, John
Andrew Welden tricked his girlfriend into taking abortion pills. Although
he was the father of the child, he disagreed with his girlfriend’s decision to
keep the baby and took action to end the pregnancy. The fetus was only six
weeks old, a stage of pregnancy at which abortion is legal. Welden is charged
with first-degree murder.
In Cleveland, three women and a young girl were freed from Ariel
Castro’s house after a decade of horrific captivity. One woman testified
that he raped her and, after discovering she was pregnant, starved and punched
her in the stomach until she miscarried the baby. In addition to numerous
accounts of kidnapping and rape, he is charged with murder for the unborn child’s
death.
The recent high-profile trial of Kermit
Gosnell publicized, to the near-universal horror of Americans, his
deplorable abortion practices. The image of a doctor snipping the spinal cords
of fully developed babies who survived abortions has made Americans think twice
about what abortion really entails. Surely, those women felt they had no other
choice, but the deaths of their newly born children are a grave injustice.
In 2003, Congress passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act:
Whoever engages in conduct that violates any of the provisions
of law…and thereby causes the death of, or bodily injury to, a child, who is in
utero at the time the conduct takes place, is guilty of a separate offense
under this section…the punishment for that separate offense is the same as the
punishment provided under Federal law for that conduct had that injury or death
occurred to the unborn child's mother.
This is profound. It marks a movement toward protection of
unborn children and growing discomfort with inconsistency in the laws. But why
should elected officials care at all? Shouldn’t they allow individuals to
debate this issue in order to focus on more important issues in politics?
I am not so naïve as to think the Democratic Senate will
pass the Pain-Capable Fetal Protection Act in the near future, but pro-life
politicians should not give up. If we are blind to the vulnerable members of
society – babies who writhe in the burning fluid of a saline abortion, pregnant
women who fear the future, men who regret lost fatherhood – then we have failed.
If the honorable politicians of the United States of America abandon abortion
legislation for the sake of “pressing” issues, to whom should the good people
of this earth turn when those with power have looked away? If the government –
the institution designed to protect the lives of its people – deserts the most
vulnerable, it would be a moment of the highest shame in the history of
humanity.
Pregnant women should have choices – just like any other American
– but they should not have the choice to kill a unique human being who can
yawn, smile, itch his nose, and feel pain for which he is given neither an
epidural nor Novocain. These women do need support and options – options that
protect the emotional, psychological, and
physical dignity of the mother and the child. Politicians like Senator
Davis, who fight against requiring cleanliness
in abortion clinics, have shown their true colors and their disregard for the
lives of pregnant women, expectant fathers, and unborn children. The nation of
death is fading away. America is changing.
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