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States Getting More
Creative in Enacting Protective Legislation Part Three of Three By Dave Andrusko Periodically--actually make that more like every week or so--another media outlet discovers that pro-lifers have been especially creative this past state legislative season. The stories typically generalize about the types of legislation proposed and then offer some answers to the question "Why was abortion such a big issue in the states this year? " as Pamela Prah, a writer for Stateline.org, put it today. To pro-abortionists, ANY protective legislative by its nature is "extreme." So you weren't surprised when you read, "'Some of the laws enacted this year are more extreme than we have seen in a while,' says Elizabeth Nash of the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, which focuses on reproductive health issues and tracks state-by-state legislation."
But trying to hedge in an largely unlimited "right" to abortion and ensure that abortion clinics meet minimal health standards is reasonable, unless, of course, you believe there really are NEVER enough abortions and it doesn't matter if an abortion clinic is sanitary and staffed by competent people. So various states continue to establish different kinds of buffers. Women often abort out of sense of sheer panic, knowing only that they have a "problem." And the more information they have both about the development of their unborn child and their own options, the less likely they are to race into a lethal decision for their child. Thus, there's been a heightened emphasis on assuring that women contemplating abortions have access to ultrasound imagining of their child and some information about how far the baby has developed. This makes pro-abortionists (who believe in "the quicker the better") even madder than the existence of women-helping centers. But why now? Prah is surely partially right when she says, "The simple answer is the federal health law. The national health care reform debate put a spotlight on abortion to the extent that it nearly killed passage of the entire health care bill until President Obama issued an executive order promising no public funds would be used for abortions." She right in the sense that the spotlight was turned up because of ObamaCare and that Obama issued an executive order. But his administration has already shown he was totally insincere in issuing the executive order. That's why another major focus of state pro-life group is to take advantage of a provision in the health care "reform" bill that allows states to prohibit the inclusion of abortion in the state "exchanges" that the bill created. This is available because the final law explicitly says that the Department of Health and Human Services may not declare abortion to be an "essential" (i.e., required) benefit. Of course pro-lifers always work at both the state and federal level. There is no better illustration than ObamaCare. That is why you should be reading both "Today's News & Views" and "National Right to Life News Today." Please send all of your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are now following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha. |
