The Patriot Post® · Separated by Birth: Two Parties, Two Very Different Abortion Views
When D.C. homicide units pulled up to the brick rowhouse last Wednesday, it was already an unusual scene. As forensic teams carried out red biohazard bags and coolers, news was already starting to circulate about the gruesome evidence inside: the bodies of five perfectly-formed baby boys and girls, thrown away in an abortionist’s garbage eight blocks from the White House. Some of them, experts believe, could be victims of a crime that Democrats argue never happens — the cold-blooded infanticide that to this day they refuse to stop.
It’s a “solution in search of a problem,” we heard. A “fake issue” that conservatives use to motivate their base. But in the three years since Democrats voted to sentence innocent abortion survivors to death, more than one grisly discovery has proven them wrong. The latest — these tiny children in the nation’s capital — paints a harrowing picture of the kind of savagery taking place less than two miles from the Congress that could end it.
“I’ve never seen something so evil and grotesque,” said one pro-life activist, who witnessed what the waste management company was prepared to haul off as trash. As many as 115 dead babies were in the refuse outside the Washington Surgi-Clinic — more than 100 of the smaller bodies placed grotesquely in denture cups, with the five fully-viable babies left in simple white buckets. These are the “personal choices,” Democrats have argued, that should be “up to a woman and her doctor.”
As graphic pictures of the babies began to circulate, so did the speculation. Were the babies born alive and then killed? Were they, against federal law, partially born and aborted halfway out the birth canal? “Several medical experts have estimated that the babies, including a fully intact baby boy and one baby still within the amniotic sac, were in the 2nd or 3rd trimester of gestational age and some could have been born alive,” SBA List warned. Like other pro-life groups, they showed the disturbing images to doctors like Neonatologist Dr. Robin Pierucci, who insists, “… [T]hese babies died at an age when they were viable, premature people.”
The way some of the babies were “killed, dismembered, and delivered is highly, highly suspect,” experts say — and yet, D.C. police have so far refused to investigate, claiming that the babies were “aborted in accordance with D.C. law.” Several members of Congress beg to disagree, sending a scathing letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) and Police Chief Robert Contee, demanding medical evaluations and autopsies. Led by Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the group of House and Senate pro-lifers insist that “These children, like all children, have inherent value… [A]t a minimum, they deserve to have their deaths investigated to ensure that no D.C. or federal laws were broken.”
One of the babies, FRC’s Mary Szoch explained, “was born completely contained in the amniotic sac. And that leaves questions as to how did that child die?… Was this baby delivered alive and then just left to die?” And while abortion is allowed right up until the moment of birth in D.C., it’s still illegal to kill infants after they’re born. And if it horrifies you to think about snuffing out the life of a fully-developed baby, the same late-term barbaric abortions are currently legal in 20 U.S. states — two of which, California and Maryland, are actively trying to drop the criminal penalties for anyone who puts an infant to death in the “perinatal stage,” or the first seven days of life.
That won’t raise a single eyebrow in the Democratic Party, who’s fought for three years to protect a woman’s “right” to leave her newborn baby to die. Eighty times, Republicans stood on the floor of the House and demanded a vote that would have protected children like these. And 80 times, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused. “It’s heartbreaking,” Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) agreed. “It’s sickening.” “Every Republican in the House, including myself,” she pointed out, “has signed a discharge petition to bring the [Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act] to the floor for an immediate vote… [But Democrats] don’t want to pass this. They want to ignore it. They want to deny it happens.” One hundred percent of the Republicans in the House have signed on, Hartzler shook her head, but they’re six votes short. Why? Because “there’s not one Democrat that’s willing to stand up for unborn babies and sign [it].”
The Left is desperate for people to believe these tragedies are figments of our imagination. They aren’t. There are literally hundreds of infants being thrown out like garbage every year — a fact we know thanks to eyewitnesses like Jill Stanek, Pat McElraft, and Deborah Edge; survivors like Melissa Ohden; and convicted monsters like Kermit Gosnell. And even now, after the nationwide wave of pro-life laws, only nine states collect the statistics of born-alive abortion survivors. So just imagine how many nameless babies go unreported, victims of this myth that infanticide isn’t a real problem — or worse, a personal “choice” for moms and doctors to decide.
For now, the 209 Republicans in the House will do what they can — hoping and praying that voters will send more reinforcements in November, pro-life men and women who will join the fight to hold these criminals responsible. In the meantime, Americans can’t help but get a grim picture of where the current majority stands. Some in Pelosi’s ranks might not talk as openly about their radicalism as their leaders, but they don’t have to. The Democratic platform says it all.
Originally published here.
Stonewalling Jackson: GOP Fights to the End
While Democrats celebrate the all-but-certain confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Republicans have a message for Joe Biden: enjoy it, because she may be the only extremist you get. If the November elections are the bloodbath experts predict they’ll be, the script in the Senate will flip. And Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is warning Democrats that the GOP’s new bargaining power may come in very handy for future vacancies.
“I’m not going to go forward with any prediction on what our strategy might be should we become the majority,” McConnell told reporters. But, he continued, “What I can say with pretty great certainty is the president who ran as a moderate and who has governed as Bernie Sanders would have to spend the last two years of his term being a moderate.”
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also put the Left on alert, insisting, “If we get back the Senate, and we’re in charge of this body, and there [are] judicial openings, we will talk to our colleagues on the other side. But if we were in charge, she would not have been before this committee. You would have had somebody more moderate than this.”
And according to Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), just about anyone would have been more moderate. In a grim analysis of where Jackson stands, the Texas senator made plenty of headlines when he predicted that of the 115 men and women who’ve served on the Supreme Court, Judge Jackson “will prove to be the most extreme and the furthest-Left justice ever to serve…”
On Tuesday, he stood by that comment, outlining a laundry list of freedoms that could be one vote away from extinction. “… [I]t looks like all the Democrats are going to vote for her — and three Republicans [Senators Mitt Romney, Utah; Susan Collins, Maine; and Lisa Murkowski, Alaska] are voting for her as well. And I think that is really unfortunate,” he told listeners on “Washington Watch.” Here’s what that could mean, he explained. “I think she will vote to overturn Heller versus District of Columbia, the landmark case that protects our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. I think she will vote to overturn Citizens United, the landmark case that protects our free speech… I think she will vote to overturn fundamental protections for our religious liberty, including Zelman versus Simmons-Harris, the landmark case that upholds school choice programs across the country. All three of those cases were 5 to 4, one vote away from reversal. And I think she will be a hard-Left vote on life.”
Worse, based on her history and judicial record, Cruz thinks she will vote to strike down “every single restriction on abortion you can find across the country. That means prohibitions on partial-birth abortion. That means requirements for parental notification or parental consent.” And that doesn’t even begin to touch on an issue that grabbed a majority of the headlines from her hearings — Jackson’s softness on crime.
As for what shaping power she has on the court, Cruz believes it’s significant. “I think she will be way, way, way to the Left of [Stephen] Breyer. Breyer will occasionally vote on the conservative side of the aisle,” Cruz said, pointing to a Ten Commandments case in Texas that he litigated and won 5-4. “The deciding vote was Steve Breyer. [He] voted with the state of Texas to uphold that monument… If Judge Jackson had been there instead of Justice Breyer, I believe… the court would have ordered us to bulldoze a monument that stood on the state capitol grounds since 1961. As you know, the last book I wrote is called One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Could Change History. And every chapter talks about these landmark five court decisions that are hanging in the balance. And I think Judge Jackson will be a consistent voice pushing her colleagues to the far, far Left.”
As discouraging as his prediction is, there are some bright spots that we can take away from the hearing — including how hard Republicans fought Jackson’s nomination, no matter how certain her confirmation seemed. From Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Cruz, Graham, McConnell, and so many others, the GOP did its part to draw out the important distinctions — to get Biden’s judge on the record. That’s what conservatives want to see in our leaders: the courage to address the values they campaigned on and the issues that are important for this country.
Lindsey Graham was right when he said in January, “Elections have consequences, and that is most evident when it comes to fulfilling vacancies on the Supreme Court.” Let’s hope the American people have seen enough of Biden’s party to trust any of their choices moving forward.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.