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Pro-Life Legislation
Advancing on Different Fronts in Many States
By Dave Andrusko
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State Sen. Chuck Winder |
Like most major
media outlets, NPR operates as an uncritical megaphone
for the pro-abortion side. I found the headline to
yesterday’s story— “States' Abortion Legislation
Questioned By Critics”—hilarious [would you expect PPFA
to side with us?], and the content a backhanded
compliment to the aggressive push by pro-life state
legislators.
Near the end is this telling quote from the pro-abortion
Guttmacher Institute, which spun off years ago from its
original home in the bosom of PPFA.
"This past
November, a whole new crop of state legislators came
into office, and these legislators tend to be more
conservative," says Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher
Institute, which tracks abortion laws. "And they're not
only pushing the envelope on abortion restrictions;
they're even taking it further to try new approaches to
restricting abortion."
Clearly, they are
nervous. And why not? Thirteen states have introduced
the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” inspired
by Nebraska’s 2010 law that bans abortions on babies 20
weeks or older, based on the scientific evidence these
children can feel pain.
“Idaho’s Senate
State Affairs Committee passed SB 1165this morning,”
NRLC Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch
told me. “The vote was 7-2 and we lost no legislators we
had counted on even though there were plenty of hostile
questions from unsympathetic state senators and an
amendment offered by the state Medical Association.”
That amendment
would allow abortions of babies 20 weeks old “unable to
survive.” Idaho RTL responded that (a) this amounts to
prenatal euthanasia; (b)in supposedly allowing an
exception for “terminally ill unborn children” to spare
them from a short life, in fact you shorten their lives
even more by aborting them; and (c) “this invites unduly
pessimistic prognoses, so that in practice children who
stand a realistic chance of long-term survival will be
aborted instead of being given the chance to beat the
odds and live.”
At the 2 ½ hour
long hearing the bill was defended by a “dream team”
trio of experts, according to Balch: Constitutional
Attorney Teresa Collett, J.D., Dr. Sean Kenney, a
maternal-fetal medicine specialist, and anesthesiologist
Dr. Ferdinand Salvacion. [Editor’s note. As I was about
to post this blog, I learned that Minnesota’s
pain-capable bill had passed the House!]
There are, of
course, many other pro-life initiatives. Yesterday a
House and a Senate committee in Minnesota passed a bill
to ban cloning—not a phony ban, but a real ban. (See
Wesley Smith’s analysis.)
Also on Monday,
the Idaho House State Affairs Committee on Monday
approved SB 1115 that would ban plans offered in the
state exchange required under ObamaCare from providing
abortion coverage. The Florida Senate did likewise when
it approved SB 1414.
The Senate had
previously voted 27-7 in favor of SB 1115. Arizona,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee have
similar bills in place.
Meanwhile
negotiations are underway in Texas on an ultrasound bill
passed in different forms in the House and Senate. “At
least 20 states have passed laws requiring physicians to
either offer or perform ultrasounds on women seeking
abortion, and seven others are considering bills that
would mandate an ultrasound before an abortion,” NPR
reported.
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Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six |
