One of the strongest pro-life voices in the House of Representatives says Republicans will soon pass a bill banning most abortions before 20 weeks of pregnancy and he says the legislation passed Thursday to ban taxpayer funding of abortion is also a major step forward for those committed to protecting the unborn.
Thursday marks 42 years since the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that declared abortion a constitutional right. House Republicans were initially planning to pass the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which bans almost all abortions before the unborn child reaches the 20-week stage.
Those plans were scrapped by Republican leaders after Reps. Renee Ellmers (R-North Carolina) and Jackie Walorski (R-Indiana) withdrew as co-sponsors of the bill. Their main concern was that an exception for rape victims required law enforcement documentation of a rape complaint around the time of conception. Ellmers also worried the vote could tuen off young women from the GOP in the opening weeks of the new Congress. Enough GOP members were getting wobbly on the issue that leaders decided to pull the resolution from the floor after debate had started.
However, pro-life stalwart Rep. Chris Smith (R-New Jersey) believes the bill will come back for consideration.
“There was some pushback, but pushback that I think will lead to another day where we get another bill that will bring unity. I am certain that the bill will be up very soon,” said Smith.
Smith says he was stunned at how Democrats found ways to defend dismembering unborn children more than halfway through their development in the womb.
“It was such a revelation to see how the abortion rights side can’t some to grips with the fact that dismemberment abortions cause hideous pain. A child hurts as her or her arms and legs, and ultimately they are decapitated by the abortionist. They just paper over that. They just say it’s not true, even though the evidence is overwhelming that the child feels pain at least at the 20-week point and probably even before,” said Smith.
“There’s a culture of denial in the abortion movement that we’re trying to expose because these little children deserve better than being so mistreated,” said Smith, who is appalled that pro-choice advocates believe discovering disabilities in an unborn child makes ending that life acceptable.
“How dare we suggest that you kill a baby painfully, or any other way, because he or she has Down Syndrome or some other anomaly that they’re coping with. That is cruelty of the highest order,” said Smith.
On Thursday, the House did overwhelmingly approve legislation to ban taxpayer funding of abortion.
“That is huge. We’re talking about Obamacare, where U.S. taxpayers are now subsidizing over a thousand insurance plans to pay for abortion on demand. This would end that. It would also make permanent the different restrictions we have like the Hyde Amendment, that have to be renewed every single year. It also provides more transparency because the Obama White House has no transparency whatsoever,” said Smith.
Smith says despite endless assurances to the contrary during the Obamacare debate, taxpayers are now funding more abortions now than at any other time in U.S. history. And he says there is a simple explanation for that. Obama “lied” during his health care speech to a Joint Session of Congress in September 2009.
“I was six feet away from the podium when he gave that speech. It is absolutely untrue,” said Smith. “Obamacare has a lot of lies to it, a lot of things that were said that turned out to be unbelievably untrue. When it comes to abortion funding, this is the biggest and most massive funding of abortion in America’s history.”
Smith says he is amazed that Democrats won’t acknowledge those facts either.
“It’s almost like being in an Orwellian theater sometimes when you hear some of the members speak.. There were people standing on the floor today saying that there’s no federal funding for abortion in Obamacare. Yet the Government Accountability Office (GAO)… said 1,036 Obamacare insurance plans pay for abortion on demand.,” said Smith.
But the taxpayer subsidizing of abortion does not stop there. Upon taking office in 2009, President Obama reversed Bush administration policy by allocating funds to organizations providing abortions like Planned Parenthood in developing nations. Obama is also pumping money into the United Nations Population Fund, which partners with groups enforcing China’s one-child policy through forced abortions and sterilization.
“This government, not under Reagan, not under Bush, not under the second Bush, but under Clinton and now President Obama lavishly funds this organization that has extolled the one child per couple policy, defends it, whitewashes it and on the ground is actually a part of it,” said Smith.
The congressman says the simple truth both at home and abroad, taxpayers are funding countless abortions through Obama administration policies.
“We’re enabling abortion and Obama is the abortion president,” he said.
