Fighting for Life
Georgia legislators have passed a bill banning abortion after the baby has a detectable heartbeat, which is around six weeks, unless the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life or poses “substantial and irreversible physical harm” to the mother.
The bill is under furious attack from the pro-abortion movement, particularly from Hollywood. The Writers Guild and over 100 liberal actors and comedians so far (there’s a handy alphabetical list at the link) are threatening a boycott of Georgia if it becomes law. Leaders of pro-abortion states such as Pennsylvania are seeking to cash in on the graves of unborn children by aggressively trying to poach Georgia’s lucrative film business (you stay classy, Pennsylvania Attorney Gen. Josh Shapiro – again, see the link.)
Georgia’s new Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is now in the hot seat, having campaigned on signing the bill but being put under massive economic and public relations pressure to veto it. Interestingly, Kemp has something in his background that none of his Hollywood critics can claim, that I’m aware of. Kemp is a former pediatrician, so he understands what’s happening in the womb and what abortion really is (Shapiro wanted to be a pediatrician like his dad but switched to poli-sci and law after flunking a pre-med class; and most of the people on the Hollywood boycott list are just former celebrities.)
Whatever Gov. Kemp decides, there is an important point here that should not be overlooked: the argument these people are making against this law is that a heartbeat begins at six weeks, and that’s before many women know they are pregnant. They think that’s a reason to allow abortion at that stage. If they were capable of stepping back and examining what they are saying objectively, they might realize that they are actually making an argument against abortion.
I know that many of the people on that boycott list are parents (Amy Schumer is pregnant now.) I’m sure they love and cherish their own children. I would like to ask them, when they first heard their child’s heartbeat through an ultrasound, did they yawn, “It’s a meaningless sound from a lump of tissue that it would be fine to shred” or did they feel thrilled and say, “It’s our baby’s heartbeat!”?
Through their own words, they are admitting that a beating heart – the most basic sign of human life – is present in a child in the womb very early on, before the woman even realizes she’s pregnant. That realization should make any compassionate person at least think a little harder about their support for abortion.
If you would champion allowing a baby to be killed after it’s already been born, as we’ve heard from politicians recently in New York and Virginia, then I can see how a heartbeat from the womb might not move you. But if your own heart has been hardened that much, then I wouldn’t be surprised if a child in the womb at six weeks has a more detectable heartbeat than you do.
If a fetal heartbeat doesn’t mean a baby is a living human, then how about if it’s already been born? As supporters of the Born Alive Act like to say, this shouldn’t even be a debate: if a baby is born alive during an abortion, and is separate from its mother’s body, there is no longer any question of infringing on a woman’s control over her own body. You are now dealing with a separate human being who is invested with the full rights of every American citizen, which includes the right to life-saving emergency medical care from the doctor who is standing there.
This seems to be Common Decency 101, something that should not even require a new law to codify it. Yet Democratic Senators blocked the bill to affirm that a child born alive during an abortion has a right to medical care, and House Democrats have voted 20 times to keep it from being allowed out of committee for a vote. The Internet is filled with snarky comments from liberals, mocking the idea that they are pro-infanticide. Well, sorry for the confusion, but when you keep voting to let infants die, it’s easy to get the impression that you are pro-infanticide.
Here is an account of a major effort on Tuesday by House Republicans to try to get their Democratic colleagues to (to use an expression they love to quote but don’t seem to understand) do the right thing.
Click here to read more articles from Mike Huckabee.
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