Victory for the Unborn

November 5, 2003, was a historic day in Washington, DC. I joined several of my House and Senate Colleagues at the Ronald Reagan International Building for President Bush’s signing of the ban on partial birth abortions.

After years of legislative setbacks, this important issue is now law. Congress has approved bans on partial birth abortion two times already – in 1996 and 1997. However, the legislation was vetoed by President Clinton both times. The House overrode the vetoes, but the efforts fell short in the Senate. In 1999, the House again passed a ban on the procedure, however the Senate did not vote on the issue that year.

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop says partial birth abortion is “never medically necessary to protect a mother’s life or her future fertility. On the contrary, this procedure can pose a significant threat to both.” Even some Members of Congress who support abortion draw the line when it comes to partial birth abortion. Every member of the Alabama Congressional Delegation – all seven members of the House, and both our senators – supported this legislation.

This legislative ban has nothing to do with being against choice, or being against women. This law has everything to do with protecting the innocent lives of the most vulnerable among us. The American Medical Association has stated that it “could not find any identified circumstances in which the procedure was the only safe and effective abortion method” and that “the partial delivery of a living fetus for the purpose of killing it outside the womb is ethically offensive to most Americans and physicians.”

Most partial birth abortions are performed in the fifth and sixth months of pregnancy. There is an incredible amount of medical evidence that a baby, at this stage, is extremely sensitive to pain. In fact, at this stage, an infant delivered spontaneously is usually born alive. Usually, the baby has developed well beyond the stage where it can feel every bit of pain you and I would feel if this were done to us. So, the difference between murder and partial birth abortion is simply a technicality.

In the past, major pro-abortion groups have insisted that the method was used only a few hundred times a year and only in cases involving acute medical crises. However, these arguments were entirely discredited years ago when the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers admitted that the procedure is performed thousands of times every year. Even more disturbingly, it is done mostly on healthy babies of healthy mothers.

Now, this can change. The people of this nation have spoken through their elected representatives. There is no excuse for this procedure happening in a civilized nation, and now, it will be stopped.

I thought President Bush summed it up quite well during the bill signing, when he said, “America stands for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness and for the inalienable right of life.” He went on to say that this right to life cannot be granted nor denied by government because it does not come from government, it comes from the creator of life.