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NRL News
Partial-Birth Abortion Legislation: After so many years of hard work, having the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act go into effect is important in many ways. Real lives may be saved, we have seen the first visible cracks in the legal facade built on Roe v. Wade, and our country has finally made a statement that certain barbaric acts are beyond the pale of civilized society. Not to be overlooked, moreover, is the enormous long-term educational value of partial-birth abortion legislation. Thanks to the tireless efforts of pro-lifers, the public has a much better idea of what abortion is, what the status of the law is, and just how far out of the mainstream are those who support abortion.” Lesson 1: Abortion Takes the Developing Life of an Innocent Child For years, the pro-life community has told the public that every abortion stops a beating heart, even at just three weeks after conception. We’ve told people how the unborn child’s arms and legs, hands and feet begin to develop by the fifth and sixth weeks, how brain waves have been detected at 42 days after fertilization. We shared how that every organ system is in place by the 10th to 11th week and told everyone how that the baby at that age has eyelids, fingernails, and even fingerprints. But when people saw the simple line drawings of the partial-birth abortion procedure, and had the medical community admit that they were scientifically accurate, no amount of pro-abortion euphemism, spin, or diversion could deny that abortion kills another human being. Lesson 2: You Can’t Necessarily Trust the Abortion Industry When people learned the truth about partial-birth abortion, many wondered if the abortion industry had been lying all along. During 1995–96, the pro-abortion advocacy groups insisted that the method was used only hundreds of times annually, and only in the most dire medical circumstances. Organs of the institutional news media repeated such claims as fact, again and again. But that misinformation campaign ultimately collapsed. Reporting on an interview with Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (a trade association of hundreds of abortion providers), the New York Times reported (Feb. 26, 1997), “As much as he disagreed with the National Right to Life Committee and others who oppose abortion under any circumstances, he said he knew they were accurate when they said the procedure was common. . . . In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along, Mr. Fitzsimmons said.” Fitzsimmons said in another interview, “I just went out there and spouted the party line.” The “party line” referred to, of course, was the “party line” disseminated by the leaders of the major Washington-based pro-abortion lobbies—the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), and the National Abortion Federation (NAF). The “blob of tissue” argument had already shown to be stunningly false, but it also raised questions about other pro-abortion pronouncements. What about denials of a link between abortion and breast cancer? Claims by those in the abortion industry and their allies in the social science establishment that there was no such thing as post-abortion syndrome? Assurances that the new abortifacient RU486 would make abortions safer, simpler, and easier? That pro-abortionists lied was no surprise to longtime pro-lifers, but it was a revelation to many in the public and even some in the media. Lesson 3: The Extremism of Roe v. Wade In survey after survey prior to the campaign to ban partial-birth abortion, the American public demonstrated how poorly it understood the Supreme Court’s abortion decision in Roe v. Wade and exactly what it really allowed. Many thought that Roe allowed abortion only in the first three months of pregnancy, or allowed abortion only in such rare circumstances such as rape, incest, or the life of the mother. With such confusion, it is understandable why majorities often told pollsters that they didn’t believe Roe should be overturned. But the existence of partial-birth abortion showed people just how extreme Roe v. Wade was and how far the Court had gone. It was a rude (and gruesome) awakening. Even many of those not ready to ban abortion began to realize that the status quo was far more extreme than any civilized society would ever accept. Lesson 4: The Extremism of Abortion’s Defenders When the American public began to see that the abortion lobby and its pro-abortion allies would defend even the most barbaric of practices, it changed public opinion. (See editorial, page 2.). Abortion’s defenders have often tried to focus on the so-called “hard cases.” Their defense of partial-birth abortion, however, showed that they considered abortion, any abortion, no matter how vile or barbaric, virtually sacrosanct. Whether their callousness was the cause or the consequence of their corrupted consciences, partial-birth abortion made their cold inhumanity visible to all. Last Lesson: The Truth Will Prevail When pro-lifers saw Bill Clinton twice veto bans on partial-birth abortion and witnessed the Supreme Court strike down a state ban, pro-lifers could have been forgiven if they raised the question, would this barbaric practice ever be outlawed? But they persevered, and today we see that those efforts were not in vain. The truth about partial-birth abortion came out, and the public quickly opposed it. A pro-life president signed the bill banning it, and his administration brilliantly defended the law before the Supreme Court—a Court on which the pro-abortion extremists no longer can depend on mustering an equally extreme majority, as they could in 2000. Pro-lifers know that there is still a long way to go. But in the end, we have seen that the truth will prevail. So we must keep telling the truth about abortion, about what it does to the unborn child, what it does to their mothers, and what it does to us as a society. It has been an invaluable lesson and one that must be re-taught and re-learned day in and day out. It will make a difference! |