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She Had an Abortion at 15 – This Is How It Changed Her Life

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Nona Ellington was 15 years old when she found out she was pregnant. A victim of rape, Ellington felt alone, ashamed and desperate for help.

After a free pregnancy test came back positive, showing that Ellington was five weeks pregnant, she went forward and scheduled an abortion.

Around October 1983, Ellington, who was still in high school at the time, aborted the only child she would ever successfully conceive.

“As a result of that [abortion], I was never able to have children,” Ellington told The Daily Signal. “I had five miscarriages, two were pregnancies that required emergency surgery and [during] the last one in 2004, the only tube I had left ruptured so I was bleeding internally and they almost lost me.”

When Ellington was eventually ready to have children with her then-husband, she said she visited a fertility doctor who “confirmed that it was the abortion that had damaged me so much that I was not able to have children.”

Ellington considered trying in vitro fertilization (IVF)—where an embryo is manually transferred into the uterus—but said even if it had worked, her health insurance didn’t cover the cost.

“It covered abortion. But not fertility stuff,” Ellington said.

Looking back on her experience, Ellington calls abortion the most “selfish” decision she ever made, and now, she spends her time trying to warn other women against it.

As part of that effort, Ellington joined 3,348 women who who shared their abortion “injury” stories with the U.S. Supreme Court as part of what’s called an amicus curiae brief.

Their hope is that by discussing their “injuries”—both physical and mental—the Supreme Court justices will uphold a controversial Texas law that places new regulations on the abortion industry.

The case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, is being called one of the biggest abortion case since Roe. v Wade, in which the Supreme Court said that women have a right to abortion while also affirming a state’s right to regulate the practice.

Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt could signal how far states are allowed to go in issuing those regulations.

The law in question, known as H.B.2, requires abortion facilities in Texas to maintain the same standards as ambulatory surgery centers and abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

Whole Woman’s Health and its supporters believe the imposed regulations dangerously limit women’s access to safe and legal abortion.

“Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures performed in the United States, and neither of the requirements imposed by the Texas law would make it any safer,” the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in a statement. “Worse, this law clearly imposes an undue burden on a large number of Texan women, who would no longer have reasonable access to abortion care when needed, forcing them to wait longer before an abortion, travel across state lines for safe care, or even forego abortion care altogether.”

Those in favor of upholding the law argue the regulations are “commonsense” for the health and safety of women.

The law, wrote Sarah Torre, a pro-life expert at The Heritage Foundation, “was passed in response to the conviction of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who ran a ‘House of Horrors’ abortion clinic for over a decade with nearly no government oversight.” She added:

After the Gosnell grand jury recommended new clinic regulations and after hearings on the medical risks of abortion, Texas (along with other states) decided to require abortion clinics to meet the same minimum cleanliness and safety standards as other outpatient surgery facilities and require doctors performing abortions to have the credentials to admit a patient to a nearby hospital.

Myra Jean Myers, another plaintiff on the Supreme Court brief, said she’s experienced some of these dangers first-hand. Both Myers and Ellington spoke last week at a press conference held at the Family Research Institute one day before the court heard oral arguments for the case.

“Abortion is a dangerous procedure,” Meyers said. After her procedure, Myers said, “I had a hysterectomy two months later.”

A hysterectomy is a surgery to remove a woman’s uterus. At 28 years old, she, too, would never be able to conceive again due to her abortion.

Allen E. Parker, a lawyer at The Justice Foundation, which is the non-profit submitting the personal testimony by women who allege injuries caused by abortion, said most of the participants “suffered grievous psychological injuries,” “but many suffered severe physical complications as well.”

The most common physical complications of abortion, he added, are hemorrhaging, punctured uterus, punctured colons and scarring of the uterus.

“In abortion, you’re basically scraping the walls of the uterus and the contents of the uterus with a scalpel-like instrument,” he said. “And you’re doing it by hand in most instances or by feel, the doctors would say. And you can punch the wrong part and that’s where the complications occur.”

As for the mental conditions, Parker cited guilt, shame, sadness, depression, anxiety, drug abuse and suicide as the most common conditions.

Ellington blames her abortion for causing her to “spiral” into a “very destructive behavior of drugs, alcohol and promiscuous sex.” In 2001, she ended up pleading guilty to felony theft.

Myers said while the physical scars are still present, it’s the mental anguish that continues to haunt her.

“Nothing wounds you like being responsible for the death of your child,” she said at the press conference.

Parker, who sounded hopeful that the Supreme Court will consider the testimony of the 3,348 women when issuing their ruling in the case, added, “Whether you’re for abortion or against it, you can acknowledge that some women are hurt by abortion and we ought to do everything we can to protect these women.” (For more from the author of “She Had an Abortion at 15 – This Is How It Changed Her Life” please click HERE)

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Supreme Court Blocks Pro-Life Legislation; Only One Justice Says He Disagrees

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By Robert Barnes. The Supreme Court on Friday blocked Louisiana from enforcing a law that threatened to close all but one of the state’s abortion clinics.

The court’s action came just two days after it heard oral arguments in a similar case from Texas, and abortion rights supporters treated it as a positive sign. It came just hours after the justices met to discuss the Texas case for the first time in their private conference.

The court gave no reason for its Friday order; only Justice Clarence Thomas noted that he disagreed and would have let the Louisiana law take effect.

The issue is whether clinic doctors who perform abortions must have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. It was hotly debated during Wednesday’s oral arguments reviewing the Texas law.

Abortion providers say the requirement is medically unnecessary — hospitals accept any patient who developed complications after an abortion, they say, whether the doctor had admitting privileges or not. (Read more from “Supreme Court Blocks Pro-Life Legislation; Only One Justice Says He Disagrees” HERE)

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Lesbian ex-Girlfriend Backed in US Supreme Court Ruling on Custody

By Newsmax. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned an Alabama court order that had prohibited a lesbian from having contact with the three children she adopted and helped raise in neighboring Georgia while in a long-term relationship with their biological mother.

The 6-2 ruling reinforces gay rights less than a year after the court legalized same-sex marriage across the country. The justices didn’t hear arguments in the case, instead summarily reversing the Alabama Supreme Court.

The woman, identified only as V.L., has been battling the children’s biological mother, known as E.L. in court papers. The two women lived as a couple for 17 years in Alabama before gay marriage was legal in the state. V.L. adopted the children in 2007 after the pair set up a second residence in Georgia. The children were conceived by insemination from an anonymous donor. (Read more from “Lesbian Adoptive Mother Backed in US Supreme Court Ruling” HERE)

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Oklahoma Senator Introduces Bill to Criminalize Abortion as First-Degree Murder

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In a move that is unprecedented nationwide, an Oklahoma Senator has introduced a bill that would criminalize abortion as first-degree murder.

Sen. Joe Silk, R-Broken Bow, recently introduced S.B. 1118 which adds killing an unborn child to existing murder statutes.

“No person shall perform or induce or attempt to perform or induce an abortion after conception,” it reads. “A person commits murder in the first degree when that person performs an abortion as defined by Section 1-745.5 of Title 63 of the Oklahoma Statutes.”

The bill defines abortion as “the use or prescription of any instrument, medicine, drug or any other substance or device to intentionally kill an unborn human being” and provides the unborn with protection from the moment of conception.

The bill is stated to come as the result of a petition signed by over 30,000 Oklahoma residents, calling for lawmakers to immediately present legislation that would result in a complete end to abortion in the state. (Read more from “Oklahoma Senator Introduces Bill to Criminalize Abortion as First-Degree Murder” HERE)

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Woman Reveals the Terrifying Truth About Abortion to Supreme Court

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One of the 3,348 women who are part of The Justice Foundation’s amicus curiae brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in the Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt case compared the harm abortion causes to the trauma following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, which killed almost 3,000 people.

“Nothing wounds you like being responsible for the death of your child,” Myra Jean Myers said at a press conference on Tuesday at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. “Do you realize today and every day is the daily equivalent of 9/11, when across America women and men are deceived and wounded?”

According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 1.06 million abortions performed in the United States in 2011, which averages to 2,904 abortions every day.

The press conference at the Family Research Council was held in advance of the oral arguments in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt at the Supreme Court.

Myers recalled at the event that she was married with children in 1973, the year the high court legalized abortion across the United States in the Roe v. Wade case. When she became pregnant, her husband convinced her that she should have an abortion, which she did. (Read more from “Woman Reveals the Terrifying Truth About Abortion to Supreme Court” HERE)

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Horrifying: Former Abortionist Uses Medical Animations to Show What Happens to Baby and Mother During Abortion

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Photo Credit: BreitbartPro-life organization Live Action is showing a video series in which a former abortionist uses medical animations to reveal the harsh reality of abortion for both mother and baby.

The group’s goal is to cut through the pro-abortion rhetoric that speaks of “tissue masses,” “clumps of cells,” and “products of conception,” especially at a time when abortion has become a major issue in the 2016 election.

The video below features former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino – who performed more than 1,200 abortions – using accurate medical depictions of what happens during the abortion procedure. No graphic photos of real babies are used in the series.

“I’d like to challenge the abortion lobby – Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and the rest – to respond to these videos,” Lila Rose said during a web conference for media Tuesday. “After seeing the videos, most people would have a difficult time telling a woman that abortion is ‘health care’ or ‘empowering,’”

Rose, president of Live Action, said her group’s nine years of video investigations have led to the realization that most of the general public is uninformed about what happens during an abortion. (Read more from “Horrifying: Former Abortionist Uses Medical Animations to Show What Happens to Baby and Mother During Abortion” HERE)

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Proposed Bills Would Force Alaska Pharmacists and Insurers to Supply Abortion-Causing Contraceptives

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In the Alaska State Legislature, Democratic State Senator Berta Gardner has introduced two controversial bills to allow pharmacists in Alaska to dispense – without a doctor’s prescription – self-administered hormonal contraceptives, and to force health care insurers in the state to cover contraceptives, sterilizations and contraceptive procedures and devices – including those that cause abortion.

PHARMACIST MANDATE

Sen. Gardner’s Senate Bill 169 would allow pharmacists to dispense – without a doctor’s prescription – self-administered hormonal contraceptives as listed by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Those include the Pill and so-called “emergency contraception,” which can cause an early abortion of a living human embryo by inhibiting his or her implantation in the womb.

Moreover, SB 169 would mandate Alaska’s state Board of Pharmacy to develop a pharmacists’ “training program” on prescribing those hormonal contraceptives and counseling “patients” on “all contraceptive methods,” including long-acting reversible contraception, such as abortion-causing IUDs.

RIFE WITH CONCERNS

There are numerous concerns surrounding the pharmacist-prescribed contraceptives bill.

The bill does not only allow, but could force pharmacists to dispense – without a doctor’s prescription – and to recommend contraceptives. Senate Bill 169 does not contain any conscience protections to allow pharmacists for ethical or moral reasons to refuse prescribing or counseling for contraceptives, including abortion-causing drugs – or to opt out of the state board’s training program.

Moreover, the bill would have pharmacists prescribe and dispense strong-acting, hormone-based contraceptive drugs to patients who have not first undergone a basic consultation or clinical breast or pelvic exam by their primary care practitioner. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) stresses that “individuals should consult their health care providers” before choosing a particular method of contraception. Such conversations and exams can reveal underlying medical conditions and family histories that would make certain drugs especially dangerous to the individual. For instance, the NIH explains the use of combined oral contraceptive pills – such as the Pill – which contain various combinations of strong synthetic estrogens and progestins, is “not recommended” for women in certain circumstances, including those with a history of blood clots or a history of breast, liver or endometrial cancer. The use of combined oral contraceptive pills is linked to the development of deadly blood clots.

Senate Bill 169 would require a pharmacist to receive a “self-screening assessment tool” from the patient before dispensing the hormonal contraception, but the bill does not require the patient to have first seen her health care practitioner, as she would before accessing similarly potent drugs from the pharmacy. In fact, the bill even prohibits the pharmacist from requiring a patient to schedule an appointment with him or her before receiving the drugs.

The bill would require pharmacists to dispense hormonal contraceptives to a “patient” but the bill does not identify a minimum age for patients. So it is unclear whether pharmacists would have to dispense prescription contraceptives to 14-year-old girls on demand; the bill does not require pharmacists to first notify or obtain consent from a girl’s parent. Moreover, it’s not clear how the pharmacist could secure health background information from a young patient who cannot assess her own health or recall family health history – or how the girl could manage serious possible side-effects of the Pill like high blood pressure and heart attack.

FORCING HEALTH CARE INSURERS

Another bill sponsored by Sen. Gardner – SB 156 – would force health care insurers operating in the state to provide coverage for the “full range” of prescription and over-the-counter contraceptives, sterilizations and contraceptive-focused exams, “procedures and medical services.” Health care insurers would be forced to cover the contraceptive Pill, so-called “emergency contraception” and IUDs (inserted in outpatient procedures) – all of which can cause early abortions of living human embryos.

The bill has a narrow exemption for some health care insurers that provide an insurance plan to an objecting “religious” employer, namely a church, an association of churches, the “exclusively religious activities” of any religious order, or a non-profit religious organization that objects and has “self-certified” as such with the federal Department of Labor or has provided notice to the effect to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

This could leave out various organizations, including religious orders or religiously-affiliated organizations with a focus on social services that aren’t officially “religious” activities. Moreover, the bill would force health care insurers to cover contraceptives when they provide insurance plans to non-religious, for-profit businesses or non-profit organizations that aren’t officially “religious” but oppose covering contraceptives and abortifacients for religious or ethical reasons.

In addition, SB 156 prohibits health care insurers from requiring copayments, deductibles or other forms of cost sharing to offset the costs of covering contraceptives. But the bill does not prohibit insurers from raising the prices of insurance plan premiums – including of objecting and exempt organizations – to pay for the abortifacient contraceptives provided to others.

CATHOLIC TEACHING

From the first century the Catholic Church has affirmed the moral evil of procured abortion. “Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law,” explains the Catholic Catechism.

Moreover, Christianity has always recognized that the marital act has a two-fold purpose — to foster loving unity between spouses and to produce children. Each time a couple rejects the life-creating nature through contraception, that falsifies “the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality,” Saint Pope John Paul II explained in his 1981 apostolic exhortation, Familiaris Consortio.

The Catholic Catechism notes that for just reasons spouses may wish to space the births of their children, while respecting God’s design for human sexuality. The church supports Natural Family Planning, morally sound methods to achieve and avoid pregnancies. NFP is based on a woman’s observations of the naturally occurring signs of the fertile and infertile phases that God built into the menstrual cycle.

HOW TO TAKE ACTION

On Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 1:30 p.m. the Senate Health & Social Service Committee will conduct a hearing on Senate Bill 156. The hearing in Juneau will be teleconferenced.

For more information and to contact legislators about SB 156 and SB 169, go to akleg.gov or call 800-478-4648.

To follow Catholic Anchor reports on these bills and others, including news on public testimonies and bill hearings, go to CatholicAnchor.org. The current legislative session runs Jan. 20-April 19. (For more from the author of “Proposed Bills Would Force Alaska Pharmacists and Insurers to Supply Abortion-Causing Contraceptives” please click HERE)

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Abortion Clinics Are Closing at a Record Pace

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Abortion access in the U.S. has been vanishing at the fastest annual pace on record, propelled by Republican state lawmakers’ push to legislate the industry out of existence. Since 2011, at least 162 abortion providers have shut or stopped offering the procedure, while just 21 opened.

At no time since before 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, has a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy been more dependent on her zip code or financial resources to travel. The drop-off in providers—more than one every two weeks—occurred in 35 states, in both small towns and big cities that are home to more than 30 million women of reproductive age.

No region was exempt, though some states lost more than others. Texas, which in 2013 passed sweeping clinic regulations that are under scrutiny by the Supreme Court, saw the most: at least 30. It was followed by Iowa, with 14, and Michigan, with 13. California’s loss of a dozen providers shows how availability declined, even in states led by Democrats, who tend to be friendly to abortion rights . . .

Typically defined by medical researchers as facilities that perform 400 or more abortions per year, the ranks peaked in the late 1980s at 705, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based reproductive-health research organization. By 2011, the most recent year for which Guttmacher has data, that number had fallen to 553. (Read more from “Abortion Clinics Are Closing at a Record Pace” HERE)

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Federal Judge Forcing Christian Crisis Pregnancy Centers Violate Conscience, Advocate for Abortion

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A federal judge refused to grant a preliminary injunction on Feb. 12 against a California law that forces pro-life pregnancy centers to advocate for abortion.

…Judge John A. Houston refused to put the law on hold while the lawsuit proceeds, becoming the third federal judge to do so. He indicated during the hearing that he thought the required information was necessary for women to make “an informed decision.”

California’s “Reproductive Fact Act” took effect Jan. 1. It requires licensed, religious, pregnancy resource centers to inform women, with either posted signage or a handout, that the state offers free abortions for qualifying women. It specifies the inclusion of a phone number for a county social services office that offers free abortions through the state’s Medi-Cal healthcare system. The law mandates the time of distribution and the font size for the signs and handouts. It also requires unlicensed centers to inform visitors that they are not state-approved.

The state currently has 150 local crisis pregnancy centers affected by the law…

“We cannot allow this intrusion into the religious freedom of our pro-life members in California,” said Anne O’Connor, president of legal affairs at [The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates]. “If this act is not successfully challenged, then other states, prompted by Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry, will pass similar legislation forcing pro-life pregnancy centers to become abortion referral agencies.” (Read more from “Federal Judge Forcing Christian Crisis Pregnancy Centers Violate Conscience, Advocate for Abortion” HERE)

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SCOTUS Upholds Abortion, Strikes Down Juvenile Sentencing

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The Courts are at it again. And with Republicans planning to confirm another Obama judge as their first vote of the week, it’s time for conservatives to pay attention to the judiciary.

If you thought the last term at the Supreme Court was just an anomaly, think again. The court system is irremediably broken, and that includes the majority of lower courts as well as the majority of judges on the Supreme Court.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been observing a pattern of cases in which the high court refuses to overturn lower court decisions that struck down state laws that were clearly constitutional, all the while refusing to reverse lower court decisions that upheld lawlessness.

For example, while the courts had no problem overturning state marriage laws, they have upheld state gun laws that are clearly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has refused to take up any of these appeals, even though the lower courts are violating the McDonald decision. The court agreed to take Obama’s appeal to possibly overturn the lower court decision placing an injunction on the DAPA amnesty. At the same time, the court denied the appeal from Sheriff Arpaio to reverse the lower court decision upholding the DACA amnesty. Last week, the court refused to grant cert to those representing power plants languishing from Obama’s carbon rules that clearly violate congressional statutes.

The general theme is that what is in the Constitution is regarded as unconstitutional and what’s not in it is enshrined into the document by judicial action.

Yesterday’s announcements from the court were no different. On the same day the court struck down state sentencing laws regarding juveniles convicted of murder, it refused to hear an appeal from North Dakota after a lower court struck down its abortion law.

First, the sentencing decision. In Montgomery v. Louisiana, the court retroactively applied the Miller v. Alabama decision, which struck down most state laws sentencing juveniles to life in prison without parole. In 2012, Justice Kagan, writing for the majority opinion in Miller, found that the Eighth Amendment precludes states from issuing such sentences to juvenile murderers under most circumstances. Today’s decision in Montgomery, authored by Justice Kennedy, applied this decision retroactively to as many as 2,500 murderers serving life in prison without parole for murders committed as juveniles. Chief Justice Roberts joined with the five liberals, while Scalia, Thomas, and Alito dissented.

As Justice Thomas has said before, “the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause was originally understood as prohibiting torturous methods of punishment—specifically methods akin to those that had been considered cruel and unusual at the time the Bill of Rights.” Yet, once again, the court rules that the Constitution as adopted is unconstitutional. Now the federal courts can engage in retroactive jail break and foray into an area of law over which they clearly have no authority. And again, I will note that this same court stands by idly as states violate the plain meaning of the Second Amendment with prohibitions on concealed and open carry.

As Scalia concluded in his dissent:

[I]n Godfather fashion, the majority makes state legislatures an offer they can’t refuse: Avoid all the utterly impossible nonsense we have prescribed by simply ‘permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole.’

Both Thomas and Scalia noted that the court created an entirely new constitutional right to retroactively overturn convictions that were completely constitutional at the time they were passed. Hence, with the ever-evolving standards of the legal profession’s “Constitution,” they can order judicial jailbreak at any time for any reason.

Meanwhile, as the high court overturned the Louisiana State Supreme Court and the state legislature on a retroactive creation of a newly concocted constitutional right, the court refused to hear a petition from North Dakota after a federal district court blocked the state’s six-week ban on abortion. Sadly, this is not surprising because SCOTUS refused to grant cert to Arizona after the Ninth Circuit struck down its 20-week abortion ban in 2014.

Here we are in the year 2016 and the courts have the final say on all important societal questions—from marriage and abortion to immigration and basic criminal justice laws. Many Republicans are excited by the degree of GOP control of state governments, but unless we rein in the courts and strip them of jurisdiction over political questions, they will void out the most basic laws, even those put in place at the founding of our union and the ratification of the 14th Amendment. At the same time, the courts will carelessly uphold blatantly unconstitutional laws passed by blue state governments.

If conservatives are fortunate enough to win back the White House in 2016, the most important looming question is what to do with the courts; for, if the courts are allowed to rewrite our Constitution and impel societal transformation without representation, elections will be rendered moot. (For more from the author of “SCOTUS Upholds Abortion, Strikes Down Juvenile Sentencing” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Will Pro-Lifers for Trump Get Dumped — Like Ivana and Marla?

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“If he’ll cheat on her, he’ll cheat on you,” is what Southern mothers tell their daughters, warning them that stealing away a woman’s husband isn’t just gravely immoral. It also means you’re as dumb as a box of rocks. A man who proves that he’s willing to be unfaithful this time is pretty much promising you that he’ll be unfaithful next time, when you’re the victim. The only safe response to a man like this is Carrie Underwood’s: “The next time he cheats/it won’t be on me.”

And that’s what we’d like pro-life Americans to think about as they consider Donald Trump. Not Mr. Trump’s personal life [warning: graphic content] — the fact that he abandoned one aging wife (Ivana) to take up with a younger woman (Marla), then dumped her just shy of the date when their pre-nup would have expired, chivalrously breaking her the news by leaking it to a newspaper, and leaving a copy of the paper on her bed. No, that’s strictly personal stuff, and there’s no way we can learn about a man’s promise-keeping habits from irrelevant data like that. Instead, let’s think about Trump’s stated, public record on life issues, and what it means.

But first please walk on a little imaginative journey with us. Pretend, for just a second, that the pro-life movement acted as an effective pressure group, like the gun lobby. Imagine if in addition to its spiritual uplift mission, the pro-life movement were disciplined, rigorous and political. This would make sense on the face of it, since its stated goal is to change the laws of this country.

Yes, we do hope to change Americans’ hearts, and restore the dignity of sex, and build up a wholesome culture that sees life as meaningful and beautiful. But that is really a job for the churches, one which too many good-hearted people have piled onto the pro-life movement because their churches aren’t bothering with it. That sad fact makes it all too easy to lose our focus on the movement’s stated goal, which is to legally protect a whole class of abandoned Americans from lethal violence. Period. If that has the happy side effects of strengthening marriage, curing the “hook-up” culture, increasing respect for women, and helping souls to accept Jesus as Lord — and we think it will — then all the better.

But first the laws must change. There is no substitute. If we had never outlawed slavery, you can count on it people would own some. If segregation in restaurants had never been outlawed, it would still prevail in many places. The law is a great teacher. It tells citizens what is really, really important — important enough that if you flout the law, there are people in uniform who will come to your door. We wouldn’t settle for a nation that had changed its heart, but not its laws, on slavery or segregation, and we can’t when it comes to abortion.

The Margaret Sanger Argument Against Abortion

If you were pro-life in the same way that the head of the NRA is pro-gun rights, would you settle for a candidate who had spent most of his life as a radical anti-gun advocate, supporting the seizure of all private weapons? Well, Donald Trump favored abortion on demand until … some point after he decided to run for president. In 1999, he expressed support even for partial birth abortion, the destruction of near-newborns who could survive outside the womb. By 2011, Trump claimed to be pro-life, recalling that he knew “a friend had a child who they were going to abort, and now they have it, and the child is incredible.” In a GOP debate, Trump upped the ante, calling that lucky child a “superstar.” Jamie Weinstein of The Daily Caller, as a good journalist, asked Trump the obvious question:

Would Trump have changed his view on abortion if the child had become a total loser?

“I’ve never thought of it,” Trump said in our interview. “That’s an interesting question. I’ve never thought of it. Probably not, but I’ve never thought of it.”

Margaret Sanger couldn’t have said it any better. In fact, Trump’s view echoes her slogan: “More children from the fit, fewer from the unfit.” He would realize that if he ever took the time to think about it, which he admits he has not. That’s how important the deaths of a million American pre-born children each year are to Donald Trump: unworthy of two consecutive, logical thoughts, bridged by an inference. Would the NRA settle for this kind of callous “conversion” from a lifelong gun-grabber? Why should pro-lifers?

Perhaps it’s not surprising that when every pro-lifer in America was reeling from the gruesome footage obtained by journalistic hero David Daleiden, which proved that Planned Parenthood doesn’t just kill unborn babies, but cuts them up for parts, Donald Trump was one of the few Republicans to openly say that the government should go on funding that ghoulish group. He argued that the taxpayer should pay for all the non-abortion stuff (like imaginary mammograms) that Planned Parenthood is supposed to do — a distinction which he understands is meaningless. If your son is a heroin addict, you can’t make a deal with him that you will pay all his other bills, but will not pay for his drugs. Of course, you’re just freeing up his other money for … buying drugs! A man who has navigated four bankruptcies unscathed, while his investors lost tens of millions, surely understands basic accounting better than that.

We all know the way that abortion was legalized for all nine months, for any reason, in 50 states, against the wishes of voters — by unelected judges. In the same way, same-sex marriage and countless other evils have been foisted on us, and carved in stone out of voters’ reach. Trump knows this too. He knows that vast power has been seized from the citizens of this country by a cabal of judges, the presidents who appoint them, and the senators who confirm them.

This travesty of democracy which perverts and degrades our Constitution is one of the main complaints of the entire conservative movement — including immigration restrictionists, who note that “birthright citizenship” was only applied to illegal immigrants by virtue of a crackpot Supreme Court decision made in 1898. The greatest disappointment to social conservatives of three Republican presidents has been their mixed record of choosing Supreme Court appointees. Notice that Democratic presidents never, never disappoint the abortion lobby. Why do you think that is? Because they wouldn’t get away with it. Republican candidates know that they can, so they do. Since up to four Supreme Court seats might become vacant in the next presidential term, this issue matters more than ever, and more than most. The next four (or eight) years of presidential Court appointments could change America radically, revoking gun rights and gutting the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion.

So you’d think that the fervent pro-life convert Donald Trump would be keenly attuned to the need for appointing solid Constitutionalists to federal courts, especially the Supreme Court. But you would be wrong. When asked about this issue, Trump didn’t offer some mealy-mouthed speech about avoiding “litmus tests,” as too many weak pro-life politicians do. No, he didn’t hint with a wink that he might betray us. He outright promised to. Trump cited as the kind of judge he’d appoint to the Court his left-wing, judicial activist sister, who in the Trump tradition supports partial birth abortion. Some were tempted to write this statement off, even excuse it, as a mere example of charming, roguish nepotism. Really? Would Wayne LaPierre of the NRA settle for such an excuse? So why should we?

Lately, it seems that someone who knows the pro-life movement has gotten to Mr. Trump, and helped him to hire a ghostwriter. We’re glad that writer found work, but it’s hard to take seriously an op-ed like Trump’s recent piece in the Washington Examiner, which flies in the face not only of what he was saying in recent years, but in recent months. Given what he has said over many years, and in unguarded moments when there was no ghostwriter at hand, we must take Trump’s pro-life promises no more seriously than he took his business debts, or “till death do us part.”

If pro-lifers accept at face value Donald Trump’s half-hearted, fingers-crossed, nod-and-a-wink conversion, then they really are as clueless as Donald Trump thinks all Republican voters are. He boasted just this weekend that he “could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” If voters choose such a man as the legal champion of innocent unborn life, then they deserve to be betrayed. But those unborn babies don’t.

Or maybe some “pro-lifers” just don’t care. They are so concerned with winning, with sidling up to the big dog, with walling off the border or stopping goods from China, that a fig leaf’s enough for them. Ann Coulter, with her famous good taste, responded to Trump’s vague immigration plan by Tweeting:

Pro-lifers who share her priorities will nod at Trump’s empty promises, and pretend that they believe them. Then they’ll bat their eyes, sign the prenup, and give The Donald what he wants.’ (For more from the author of “Will Pro-Lifers for Trump Get Dumped — Like Ivana and Marla?” please click HERE)

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