As Kermit Gosnell starts his life sentence for murdering babies,
Congress is moving to create a federal law against abortion in the last
months of pregnancy.
Rep. Trent Franks made a sharp turn this
week, announcing his current bill to ban abortions after the baby can
feel pain at 20 weeks will not just apply to the District of Columbia —
as initially intended — but to all of the U.S.
The Arizona
Republican will amend his bill Thursday to broaden its scope during a
hearing of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, which
he chairs.
In an interview Tuesday, Mr. Franks told me that “Gosnell was a huge catalyst” for his shift to a national law.
“We’re
not trying to subjugate women or restrict freedom. We’re trying to
protect children,” explained Mr. Franks. “Many states don’t have
late-term abortion laws or don’t enforce them. Like here in Washington,
D.C., the mother can be in labor, and it’s perfectly legal to have an
abortion.”
Since 2010, 11 states have passed laws prohibiting
abortions after the midpoint of pregnancy. On Tuesday, the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Arizona’s ban as inconsistent with
U.S. Supreme Court precedents.
Mr. Franks dismissed the decision:
“The 9th Circuit Court is a collection of radical leftists who have seen
past rulings overturned 90 percent of the time.”
But Mr.
Franks’s bill is based on a different legal theory — that the baby has
the capacity by 20 weeks to experience pain while being aborted — which
the Supreme Court has yet to consider.
Americans’ tolerance for late-term abortions shifted as photos and testimony emerged from Dr. Gosnell’s trial.
While
Pennsylvania has a ban on abortions after 24 weeks — which the abortion
provider was also convicted of committing — the visual of babies who
could swim and cry being killed shocked the nation.
“It’s always
been my opinion that when Americans truly see the face of abortion on
demand for what it is, hearts and minds would change,” Mr. Franks said.
“Unfortunately, it took Kermit Gosnell to give us a glimpse inside that
tragedy.”
The Gosnell case was not an anomaly.
Douglas
Johnson, the legislative director of the National Right to Life
Committee, said that, “The abortion lobby says late abortion are very
rare and occur mostly in acute medical circumstances — this is a
distortion.
“As Mr. Franks bill goes forward, it will become more
evident that there are a lot more late abortions — done mostly for
non-medical reasons — than they have been willing to admit.”
In
Texas, the Harris County District Attorney is investigating abortion Dr.
Douglas Karpen for allegations that he committed multiple cases of
infanticide and late-term abortions on the scale of the Gosnell clinic.
Before
being amended to apply to the whole country, Mr. Franks’s bill got
support from a majority of the House (220-154) in a 2012 vote.
Unfortunately, the House leadership brought the bill up under
suspension, so it fell short of the two-thirds majority required to
pass.
A spokesman for Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the bill will come up under regular order this time.
After
it passes, it deserves a vote in the Senate so Americans can know how
their representatives in Congress stand on performing abortions on
babies who can feel every bit of the pain.
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