Bills Related to Abortion, Fetal Pain Are Necessary

Opinion   |   Luis Zaffirini   |   Feb 8, 2011   |   6:02PM   |   Washington, DC

The following was written by director of National Right to Life’s Department of State Legislation, attorney Mary Balch, and is definitely worth a read:

Paul Benjamin Linton has recently written an article criticizing National Right to Life’s Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in the current issue of the Human Life Review.

Keep in mind that this bill is law in Nebraska, has ended abortionist Leroy Carhart’s practice of killing older unborn children there, and has already saved lives.

This bill has re-opened a national discussion about the humanity of the unborn child and  has allowed us to continue the discussion that was started by the partial-birth abortion debate. And that discussion changed a generation. The kids who grew up during that discussion are more pro-life than any generation before them since the infamous decision of Roe v. Wade.

We lost the first partial-birth abortion ban (also a Nebraska law) at the Supreme Court level, we saw Clinton veto the federal partial-birth abortion ban a number of times — all the while talking about the unborn baby who was being killed by abortion and changing the hearts and minds of that generation. We didn’t just change the way they thought about viable babies, we got them to see the humanity of the unborn child throughout pregnancy.

The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act has the same built-in opportunity. We don’t talk about the age of the unborn child, rather we discuss the explosion of human development that is happening in secret — in his mother’s womb. The bill provides a window to that womb and will — if given the opportunity– change the next generation on how they view killing that developing child — regardless of age.

Viability focuses on the age of the unborn child which must be irrelevant if we are ever to win this fight.

As for the Court, I think we have a good argument on why at least five Justices can see that the state has an interest in protecting these pain-capable children. We now have information that wasn’t available to the Court when they recognized a state’s interest in the viable child (Roe v Wade). We now can show that pre-viable unborn children who are capable of feeling pain are now treated as patients and can undergo surgery for corrective procedures. They are anesthetized during the surgery because we know that they can feel pain. This is all new information that has never been presented to the court.

Now is the time to have this discussion! The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act saves lives and educates another generation.