Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced today that the Senate will vote early next week on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks. It will be a high-stakes vote with heavy consequences for both parties and the country as a whole.
The bill bans abortion on the basis that science shows unborn babies can feel excruciating pain during an abortion by 20 weeks, if not earlier. And by that point, the baby is so large that increasingly brutal tactics are needed to terminate it, such as dismemberment.
The United States is one of only seven countries in the world — including North Korea and China — that allows abortion after 20 weeks. Even The Washington Post admits so.
Twenty states have already passed their own state versions of the bill. Surprisingly, the abortion lobby has declined to challenge the law in most of those states — excepting two where local courts are abortion-friendly — most likely because they fear it would go to the Supreme Court and be upheld, thus narrowing the scope of Roe v. Wade.
The bill has already passed the House by a vote of 237-189, though it has also passed the House in previous Congresses only to die in the Senate. In 2013, the Senate didn’t even take it up, while in 2015, it received 54 votes, falling short of the 60 needed as Democrats filibustered it.
The bill’s chances of attaining 60 votes this time are slim as well. The Democrats are almost completely in the pocket of the abortion lobby and most will vote against it, even though upwards of 60 percent of American voters support the bill.
So if the bill fails because of Democrat opposition, Republicans must hammer them night and day. Any senator who votes to continue barbaric late-term abortions on five-month-old babies is an extremist, plain and simple.
It’s high time to do the right thing. Democrats love to talk about “who we are as a nation.” They should ask themselves: Is allowing cruel late-term abortions, like North Korea and China do, who we are as a nation?
Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0
