Pro-Abortion Radicals’ Position on Late-Term Abortion Is Disgraceful and Disrespectful of Life

The 2013 trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the late-term abortionist convicted of murdering babies who were born alive after undergoing abortion procedures, presented the public with graphic descriptions of the abortions, and even photographs of many of those babies. What words might describe such atrocities: Disgraceful? Lacking compassion? Disrespectful? Inhumane? Appalling?

Ironically, these are the very words being used by abortion proponents, including Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, NARAL Pro-Choice America’s President Ilyse Hogue, and the Obama Administration, to describe not the gruesome slaughter of living human beings, but rather legislation that would prohibit most such abortions.

Abortion radicals are decrying last week’s  passage by the U.S. House of Representatives of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act—a bill that would outlaw most abortions after 20 weeks gestation but still allows exceptions for abortions in the cases of rape and acts of incest against minors, as well as when necessary to save the mother’s life. They claim the law will “hurt women” and be “harmful to women’s health.” President Obama has already threatened to veto the legislation if it passes the Senate and finds its way to his desk, and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, speaking on behalf of the President, described the law as “disgraceful.”

Such sentiments, and those espousing them, ignore the undeniable reality that while women seeking the abortions prohibited by this law may be making decisions about their own health, they are also making decisions about another human being’s life, specifically to end it. This legislation acknowledges the profound nature of this fact and draws the bright, and humane, line of prohibiting that decision from being made on behalf of defenseless human beings who can actually feel the pain of their deaths.

What is actually disgraceful, appalling, and utterly disrespectful here is the ability of these abortion advocates to turn a blind eye to the torturous and barbaric procedures used to perform excruciating late-term abortions.

Only four countries in the world allow abortions at any point during pregnancy up until birth.  And only seven countries allow elective abortions after 20 weeks. In this regard, the United States can boast that it keeps company with some of the world’s worst violators of human rights, including China and North Korea. A nation heralded as the world’s leading bastion of human rights and democracy should find this association wholly unacceptable. A majority of our elected officials in the House obviously do, and will hopefully be joined by a majority of the Senate.

The pro-abortion opponents of this legislation have also denounced it as a congressional overreach that is out of step with the will of a majority of Americans. But this claim has been flatly contradicted by recent figures. And, as is the beauty of our democratic form of government, we the people have the opportunity to continue to elect officials who refuse to kowtow to the giants of the abortion industry.

At the ACLJ, we are grateful, in the midst of a culture of death in which abortion is foisted upon vulnerable women in the guise of “reproductive health,” to have elected officials who recognize that all humans have a right to life and are willing to stand in defense of that right on behalf of so many who cannot do so for themselves.