WASHINGTON—On Tuesday, February 4th, National Right to Life President Carol Tobias attended President Trump’s State of the Union speech as a guest of pro-life Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Senator Graham is the lead sponsor in the U.S. Senate of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Since 2010, National Right to Life and its state affiliates have led the effort to protect pain-capable unborn children, starting with the enactment of model legislation in Nebraska. Sixteen states have enacted the National Right to Life model legislation and the law is currently in effect in 15.
Like the state bills, the proposed federal law (S. 160) would generally extend legal protection to unborn humans beginning at 20 weeks fetal age, based on congressional findings that by that point (and even earlier) the unborn child has the capacity to experience great pain during an abortion.
“It was an honor to sit in the gallery as a guest of Senator Lindsey Graham, our great friend and a great friend to unborn children and their mothers,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “It was inspiring to hear President Trump speak of Ellie Schneider, one of the earliest surviving premature babies, and listen to the President call on Congress to pass legislation protecting innocent unborn babies.”
In his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, President Trump told of how Ellie Schneider was born in 2017 at 21 weeks and 6 days, weighing less than a pound. Today, she is a healthy and active 2-year-old girl. In celebrating the story of Ellie Schneider’s amazing survival and calling on Congress “to provide an additional $50 million to fund neonatal research for America’s youngest patients,” President Trump affirmed, “that every child is a miracle of life.”
President Trump then said,
That is why I’m also calling upon members of Congress here tonight to pass legislation finally banning the late-term abortion of babies. Whether we are Republican, Democrat, or Independent, surely we must all agree that every human life is a sacred gift from God.
“Since taking office, President Trump has been unapologetically pro-life—both in word and in deed,” said Tobias. “His commitment to protecting the right to life of our most vulnerable members of the human family will have a lasting impact on our nation.”
Founded in 1968, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of 50 state right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters, is the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots pro-life organization. Recognized as the flagship of the pro-life movement, NRLC works through legislation and education to protect innocent human life from abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia.