Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
A new and largely pro-life Congress is ready for battle with two lawmakers introducing a law that will ban abortion on babies 20 weeks or older to prevent fetal pain.
LifeSiteNews is reporting on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R.36) which was introduced in the House this week by Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). The bill would institute a national ban on abortion after 20 weeks.
“More than 18,000 ‘very late term’ abortions are performed every year on perfectly healthy unborn babies in America,” Franks said, adding that the babies are “torturously killed without even basic anesthesia.”
“Many of them cry and scream as they die, but because it is amniotic fluid going over their vocal cords instead of air, we don’t hear them,” he said.
Rep. Blackburn said Americans have a moral obligation to end dangerous late-term abortions “in order to protect women and these precious babies from criminals like Kermit Gosnell and others who prey on the most vulnerable in our society.”
The United States is one of the few remaining countries in the world that allows abortion after 20 weeks and the public is largely in favor of such a ban. Recent polls show 60 percent of the public supporting a law protecting the unborn from the pain of abortion. This support is surprisingly bipartisan with 56 percent of Independents and 46 percent of Democrats voting in favor of such a ban, which explains why 13 states have passed similar legislation.
Pro-life lawmakers have tried to pass similar laws in the past. The most recent attempt occurred in 2013 – just after the horrific Kermit Gosnell scandal at a late-term abortion clinic in West Philadelphia that shocked the nation. A law calling for a ban on fetal pain passed the House by 228-196 but the Senate version, introduced by South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, was blocked by the Democrat-controlled chamber and never came to a vote.
The current bill is expected to pass the House and Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) promises to bring it to the floor for a vote because he believes “a clear majority of women nationwide [are] in support of this common-sense legislation.”
The problem will be getting it past the president’s desk. Still waging the “war on women” rhetoric that won him re-election in 2012, President Obama has already refused to sign it, saying the bill “shows contempt for women’s health and rights, the role doctors play in their patients’ health care decisions, and the Constitution.”
Such a stance could provoke a backlash in the next election by stoking fears in most Americans who believe the Democratic party is drifting too far away from the mainstream.
As Rep. Franks said his bill “is one all humane Americans can support if they understand it for themselves.”
“Throughout America’s history, the hearts of the American people have been moved with compassion when they discover a theretofore hidden class of victims, once they grasp both the humanity of the victims and the inhumanity of what is being done to them,” Franks said. “America is on the cusp of another such realization.”
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