Dems greet Pope Francis with three cheers for abortion
By Washington Examiner • 9/23/15 12:01 AM
This week, Democrats welcomed Pope Francis to Washington in the way they know best — by filibustering a bill to ban bone-crushing late-term abortions.
The 20-week abortion ban, which is based on the point in gestation when babies in the womb can feel pain, received 54 votes in the Senate. That's a majority of senators, but fewer than the 60 needed to proceed to a final vote. Only three of the Senate's 42 Democrats voted in favor.
Speaking on the Senate floor Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., studiously oblivious of the majority around her, decried "this horrifying bill" as "just one more piece of a deliberate, methodical, orchestrated right-wing plan to attack women's health and reproductive rights."
Harry Reid, a Mormon and the Democratic Senate leader, has been one of the bill's most outspoken opponents, despite having maintained for years that he is "pro-life." Reid anticipated the vote with a fundraising email earlier this year, in which he called the 20-week bill "our worst nightmare" — perhaps he didn't watch the nightmare of recent videos showing Planned Parenthood officials haggling over the price of baby body parts — and a "major assault on women's health care" by "Republican extremists in Congress."
Actually, the extremists are people like Warren and Reid. The bill they excoriated represents America's moderate consensus on abortion. Most people in this country want a ban after 20 weeks gestation, or even earlier. And that standard is already adhered to by most of the civilized world.
In 2013, the Washington Post polled the question of how late in pregnancy elective abortions should be legal. It found that 66 percent of respondents believed the Supreme Court had been wrong to make abortion an inviolable right before 24 weeks of pregnancy. Offered the option, 56 percent said they would support a ban after 20 weeks, with an additional 10 percent volunteering that they supported a ban on abortions earlier than that.
Was this because Americans hate women? Hardly. Women in this poll, as often happens when the abortion issue is polled, were more pro-life than men. This should surprise no one for, despite Democrats' claim that women support abortion en bloc, Roe vs. Wade actually freed men far more than women from their proper responsibilities toward the unborn. Seventy-one percent of women polled preferred a 20-week ban or earlier. What's more, key segments of the Democratic base came in with similar numbers — Hispanic voters (65 percent) and those under age 39 (63 percent).
Not only are American restrictions on abortion lax compared to what the people of this country want, but they are also lax compared to the rest of the civilized world. France, Italy, Austria, Greece and Germany ban abortions after 12 weeks' gestation. Sweden bans elective abortions after 18 weeks. Portugal bans them after ten weeks.
Whatever you want to say about the proposal that came before the Senate this week, one thing you cannot say is that it is extreme. America's abortion law is extreme now — way out of step with the wishes of its citizens and with the rest of the world. It's even out of step with the Democrats' own base. The position of Reid and company is extreme and untenable, and someday, even if only for political expediency rather than for fundamental decency, they will soften their rigid, doctrinaire support for abortion extremism.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dems-greet-pope-francis-with-three-cheers-for-abortion/article/2572646
