Pro-life legislation

Richard A. Sokerka

The good news last week was that nearly one-third of the members in the U.S. House of Representatives supported a new bill to ban most abortions after 20 weeks.

The bad news is that with Democrats holding control of the House, the legislation is not expected to pass a vote.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), our state’s shining light among politicians in the pro-life movement, introduced the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in the House that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks gestation — the age when, according to some medical experts, unborn babies can begin feeling pain.

“Pain, we all dread it. We avoid it. We even fear it. And we all go to extraordinary lengths to mitigate its severity and its duration for ourselves,” Smith said on Feb. 16. “Yet every day, a whole segment of human beings is being subjected to painful — and deadly — procedures.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a 20-week abortion ban in the Senate. Both Graham and Smith have introduced similar legislation in previous congresses without success. The House in 2015 and again in 2017 passed a 20-week abortion ban, but it did not pass the Senate.

Another pro-life bill — the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act — was introduced in the previous Congress. After Democratic leadership blocked debate on the act, members circulated a “discharge petition” to force consideration of the bill by the entire chamber, but the petition fell 13 signatures short of the needed 218 to force consideration.

Dilation and evacuation is the commonly used abortion procedure for the second trimester. Smith said that the gruesome procedure “involves cutting and dismembering the child’s fragile body including severing his or her arms and legs. Until rendered unconscious or dead, the baby feels every cut.”

He cited Dr. Colleen Malloy, assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Division of Neonatology, who testified before the House Judiciary Committee in 2012 that unborn babies are already moving, kicking, and reacting at 20 weeks. “In other words, there are children the same age who, in utero, can be painfully killed by abortion who have been born and are now being given lifesaving assistance,” Malloy said.

In 2020, Sen. Graham’s 20-week abortion ban — named “Micah’s Law” — failed to gather the necessary 60 votes for passage. The bill was named for Micah Pickering, who was born prematurely at 22 weeks. He survived after spending four months in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Pickering’s mother said at the time that the legislation “is not just [about] Micah, but is every little baby that could ever be born.”

But unless those who hold life sacred from the moment of conception work to elect a pro-life majority in Congress to enable passage of pro-life legislation, too many babies in the womb will continue to feel excruciating pain under the guise of what those who are pro-choice claim is “women’s health care.”