By Dave Andrusko
The headline on the story that ran in yesterday’s Washington Times was “Abortion fights heat up as Roe v. Wade turns 40.” To which you might be tempted to say, “No kidding?”
But Cheryl Wetzstein’s story about state legislation is interesting and worth reading on a number of levels—for what it says, what it says (in our view) incorrectly, and what is not said.
For example, we must never confuse the re-election of pro-abortion President Barack Obama with the willingness and ability of pro-lifers in many state legislatures to promote the cause of life. What Wetzstein correctly describes as a “blizzard” of pro-life bills that has been introduced in various state legislatures since 2010 will be followed by more pro-life initiatives in 2013.
She correctly talks about pro-abortionists having “scored victories in the courts” (dubbed a “storm of pro-choice rulings” in the subhead) but this can be easily misconstrued. Virtually every pro-life bill is challenged in court and judges are all too eager to initially enjoin them.
That means the states must take the pro-abortion legal establishment to court—and in the meanwhile you could characterize the injunctions as [temporary] pro-abortion “victories.” Wetzstein also neglects to mention pro-life legal victories that we’ve documented here at NRL News Today.
Getting back to the measures that have taken effect in the states, have they made a difference? You have to very careful about accepting the overall numbers from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute [they exaggerate for their own purposes] but GI researchers say, according to Wetzstein, that “Since mid-2012, states enacted about 40 more abortion-restricting measures” on top of all those enacted in 2011.
“This proliferation of restrictions is cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] as a likely reason why the number of abortions is declining in the United States,” Wetzstein writes.
[Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, NRLC’s director of Education, has offered a fuller explanation in his analysis. He wrote, “The CDC says that ‘multiple factors are known to influence the incidence of abortion’ and goes on to list several: the supply of abortionists, pro-life laws such as waiting periods, parental involvement, increased acceptance of non-marital childbearing, population shifts, the economy, and factors such as contraception impacting fertility.” ]
So we’ve read about blizzards and storms so it’s not surprising that the meteorological metaphor is included in the final subhead: “Fierce clashes forecast.” She offers as an example the pro-abortion resistance to a bill passed in Michigan and signed into law last week by Gov. Rick Synder which elicited “fierce” lobbying. So what does the law require?
Wetzstein writes, “The law requires doctors in the state to screen patients to ensure that they were not coerced into requesting an abortion and requires clinics that perform more than 120 abortions annually to be licensed.”
THIS is controversial? Sure it is, if you are a militant pro-abortionists for whom there can never be a reason to forbid an abortion or even to try to give women a day or three to pause and consider their decision.
It is a truism that each year the dynamics are different in the state legislatures. Equally true is that pro-lifers will work relentless to pass every conceivable piece of pro-life legislation last year, this year, and every year.
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