If you’re pro-life, you might ask, “How can our abortion laws get any more barbaric?”
After all, abortion is legal in all 50 states. In fact, we are one of only seven countries in the world that allows abortion on demand after 20 weeks of pregnancy – putting us in the ranks of notorious human rights violators North Korea and China. We are one of the least safe places on earth for babies in the womb.
And yet, our laws could still get worse. A lot worse. And soon.
It’s entirely possible that every single federal or state statute that protects women from being pushed into abortions without informed consent, or parents from abortionists who would perform secret abortions on their daughters, or taxpayers from paying for abortion despite their opposition to it, would be wiped off the books. It really depends on who gets elected.
If pro-abortion politicians gain office, they will work to repeal pro-life laws and appoint and/or approve pro-abortion judges who will strike down any law that limits or regulates abortion.
How do we know this? The Democratic Platform tells us.
It states, “We will continue to oppose—and seek to overturn—federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment.”
And what constitutes an impediment to abortion access? According to advocates of legal abortion, it’s anything that prevents a girl or woman from entering a clinic and receiving an abortion on the spot.
The Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions in 1973 made abortion for any reason legal through all nine months of pregnancy. But since that time, states have enacted various laws to try to establish parameters around the boundless, unregulated minefield created by the Court.
For instance, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, 19 states have enacted their own laws protecting children from partial-birth abortion. While the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure is a federal crime, state laws allow state authorities to prosecute those who would perform an operation that amounts to infanticide.
Forty-three states provide some protection for children in later stages of pregnancy, with exceptions for the mother’s physical or emotional health, after the child is able to live outside the womb.
Thirty-two states protect, with limited exceptions, taxpayers from being forced to pay for Medicaid abortions. Such measures have been shown to save 37 percent of the babies who otherwise would have been aborted had public funding been available.
Thirty-seven states let parents know when their daughters are seeking abortions; 25 require abortionists to obtain parental consent for this momentous, life-altering operation while 12 require parental notification.
Twenty-seven states provide a waiting period prior to an abortion, usually giving a mother a 24-hour reflection period after she receives information on the abortion procedure and fetal development.
Thirty-eight states require by law that only a licensed physician can perform an abortion.
All of these laws and more, along with the various federal restrictions on abortion funding, would be gone if the Democratic Party holds sway. What’s more, we can expect that Planned Parenthood, which kills over 325,000 babies per year, will receive even more than the over $500 million in taxpayer money that it’s already handed.
Beyond pro-life laws being eliminated, we could see more pro-abortion laws enacted and upheld.
The right of religious non-profit groups (including the ones I lead, like Priests for Life) to exclude abortion-inducing drugs from their employee health insurance coverage would be in jeopardy. The Supreme Court could revoke the First Amendment rights of pro-life sidewalk counselors if it were to overturn the McCullen v. Coakley decision. So-called “buffer zone” laws that persecute those who pray for women at abortion clinics could become the norm.
We are already seeing pregnancy resource centers being forced to refer women for abortions.
The list of potentially horrendous developments is almost endless, but the time to prevent them is short. Next Tuesday is not just Election Day, it’s the day you can help determine which direction our abortion laws take. Do not sit home — lives are depending on what you decide.
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