Wendy Davis Channels Pelosi: Abortion Is 'Sacred Ground'

Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) said in Washington D.C. this week that abortion is “sacred ground” and a fundamental necessity for women’s “liberty.” Davis repeated the view of abortion as part of the religious fabric of women’s life, set forth by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Speaking about late-term abortion in June, Pelosi said, “As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don’t think it should have anything to do with politics.”

Abortion at any time is against the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

During a press conference at the National Press Club on Monday, Davis, who led a filibuster that ended chaotically at the hands of a mob-like crowd against a Texas bill that bans abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy, said that she would either run for re-election or for Texas governor.

The Texas Tribune reports that Davis said, “People do feel we need a change from the very fractured, very partisan leadership we’re seeing in Texas right now.”

However, as Ed Morrissey at Hot Air observed:

Ah, yes… because nothing says bipartisanship like blocking a bill barring late-term abortions that 62% of voters — and 61% of women (page 416 of crosstabs) — supported. Independents supported the 20-week ban by a 61/29 margin. How does Davis explain that kind of stubborn positioning in light of her commitment to changing the “very partisan” leadership in Texas? By quoting Nancy Pelosi, of course!

In an email statement to Breitbart News, Maureen Ferguson, Senior Policy Advisor with The Catholic Association, said, “The majority of American women know what the ultrasound image of a 20-week baby looks like and view the idea of late-term abortion with heartbreak and horror, not as the ‘sacred ground’ Wendy Davis spoke of at the National Press Club.”

John McCormack at The Weekly Standard asked Davis during the press conference:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD: The supporters of these bans, they argue that there really isn’t much of a difference between what happened in that Philadelphia case with abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell [killing born-alive infants] 23 weeks into pregnancy and legal late-term abortions at 23 weeks. What is the difference between those two, between legal abortion at 23 weeks and what Gosnell did? Do you see a distinction between those two [acts]?

SEN. WENDY DAVIS: I don’t know what happened in the Gosnell case. But I do know that it happened in an ambulatory surgical center. And in Texas changing our clinics to that standard obviously isn’t going to make a difference. The state of the law obviously has to assure that doctors are providing safe procedures for women and that proper oversight by the health and human services department is being given. It sounds as though there was a huge gap in that oversight, and no one can defend that. But that’s not the landscape of what’s happening in Texas. 

Pelosi also refused to answer the same question in June, as did Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards in July.

Asked what she thinks of polls indicating that most women support restrictions on abortions, Davis told McCormack that people “don’t really understand” the issue.

However, Lila Rose, president of Live Action, the pro-life organization that exposed the horrific late-term abortion practices of clinics around the country, told Breitbart News in an email statement:

Wendy Davis told the National Press Club yesterday that Texas mandating ambulatory surgical center requirements of abortionists ‘obviously isn’t going to make a difference,’ because Kermit Gosnell broke those laws in Pennsylvania. Doesn’t that mean that the problem is with enforcement of the laws, rather than with the laws themselves?

When logic like this – ‘people will break the law, so let’s not have laws’ – is how abortion-proponents like Davis champion their cause, it’s clear that women’s safety is nowhere on their list of priorities. Davis seems to think that American women, the majority of whom disagree with her abortion stance, ‘don’t really understand’ the issue – in other words, that we’re stupid. But unlike Davis (‘I don’t know what happened in the Gosnell case.’), we paid attention to the horrifying Gosnell trial. We know what Planned Parenthood has done to Tonya Reaves, Ayanna Byer, and countless others. And we’re not going to put up with an industry that destroys women and children for profit.”

At the press conference, Davis was also asked what legal limits on abortion she does support. She responded, “The Supreme Court has made that decision, and it’s one of the protected liberties under our Constitution, and I respect the Constitutional protections that are in place today.”

As McCormack noted, however:

That was a dodge because the Supreme Court has never established a gestational age-limit on abortion. What the Supreme Court said in Planned Parenthood v. Casey is that states may limit abortions after viability, which the Court said in 1992 occurred at “23 to 24 weeks” into pregnancy. Medical advancements have moved the point of viability up to 22 weeks into pregnancy (20 weeks after conception), the point at which the Texas law and bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives would ban most abortions.

Ben Johnson, writing at LifeSiteNews, also observed:

Davis closed today’s event by saying her defense of late-term abortion stemmed from her love of “liberty, the freedom to choose what your future will hold.” That phrase, too, seemed to be borrowed from Judge Wickham Corwin, who stands accused of sexually harassing a court reporter. He ruled that a North Dakota law outlawing the off-use of misoprostol to induce an abortion violates the right to “liberty” and the “pursuit of happiness.”

To protest the mainstream media’s censorship of the horrors of abortion, Live Action is launching a Life March on the Media Twitter Rally (#MARCHONMEDIA) on Thursday, August 8th, to coincide with its March on the Media Rally in Washington D.C.