A Maryland county council narrowly defeated a resolution Tuesday to recognize the humanity of unborn babies.
Anne Arundel County Councilman Michael Anthony Peroutka introduced the resolution on July 18, but abortion activists got word of the effort and launched an intense protest against the council.
On Tuesday, the council voted 4-3 against the non-binding resolution in a crowded meeting, according to the Capital Gazette.
Local news reports indicate local officials expected abortion activists to be unruly and had police and fire officials at the meeting to control the crowd. At least 200 people showed up Tuesday, and some commented prior to the vote.
Peroutka emphasized that his resolution recognizes scientific facts about unborn babies, facts that even abortion activists acknowledge to be true. He said “preborn” babies are human beings and abortion is an act of “destruction,” according to the local news.
“While these efforts have saved lives and won souls, they have not been able to overcome the evil scheme perpetrated by pro-abortion forces and sustained and validated by a judicial system which has abandoned the Biblical principles on which it was founded,” Peroutka said.
His resolution stated, in part, “RESOLUTION recognizing and declaring humanity of preborn children and urging the citizens of Anne Arundel County to encourage the humane treatment of all human beings, including the preborn children, as well as promote and defend the dignity of all human life.”
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Abortion activists pushed back against the resolution, wrongly claiming it would give “more rights’ to embryos than women.
According to the report:
One of those speakers was Senate District 33 candidate Eve Hurwitz. The Democrat is facing Republican state Sen. Ed Reilly in November.
She detailed her personal abortion story in which she terminated a pregnancy after she asked her partner to use a condom and he did not.
The resolution gives “more rights and respect to zygotes and embryos than women” and implies that women are solely at fault for becoming pregnant, she said.
“What happened to me -and what happens to millions of women in America and around the world – amounted to reproductive rape, or reproductive coercion,” Hurwitz said. “I had never consented to being impregnated. In fact, I specifically and repeatedly asked not to be.”
Peroutka’s resolution was not binding, and it simply stated a scientific fact: Human life begins at conception. Dozens of textbooks and medical experts have confirmed that human life begins at conception.
