As more states pass heartbeat bills, the abortion industry insists such legislation is “extreme.” Even the mainstream media have portrayed strongly pro-life laws like Heartbeat Bills and Alabama’s recent abortion ban as extreme. But the reality is that most people are pro-life once they learn the truth about abortion, despite what abortion advocates otherwise claim.
CNN recently tweeted that the Alabama law is “strict enough to rival abortion rules in countries like Brunei, Guatemala and Syria,” implying that the law is extreme and retrograde. Notably, there was no CNN analysis of how New York’s abortion bill, which allows for the killing of preborn babies for virtually any reason up to birth, compares to countries around the world.
While there is some disagreement among pro-lifers about the effectiveness of the legal strategy behind heartbeat bills, the principles of the bills are not extreme. The pro-life position, like any position, requires consistency. If the preborn child with a beating heart is a human being — which she is — then that person should be protected by our laws from being killed violently. This includes babies conceived in rape and incest, because the circumstances of their conception do not in any way diminish their human dignity.
READ: Author claims Americans would support federal law protecting abortion. She’s wrong.
There are circumstances in which the life and health of the mother may be threatened by complications in pregnancy. The Alabama law, for example, includes an exception for this rare circumstance, when the mother’s life is in jeopardy. Yet, as Dr. Anthony Levatino explains, life-threatening emergencies late in pregnancy are addressed by delivering the living child prematurely, rather than deliberately poisoning a living child in the womb and delivering a dead baby after a days-long procedure.
Pro-abortion bills are, in fact, extreme, because they begin with the false premise that women have a right to end a human life. Taking this position to its logical conclusion results in a delegate in Virginia proposing legislation that would have allowed a woman to elect to kill her child while she is in labor.
Despite the media’s spin, Americans can figure out which side is actually extreme in the debate. Polling shows that most Americans support banning abortion after the baby’s heartbeat can be detected, around six weeks gestation. In addition, polling shows that 75% of New Yorkers oppose late-term abortion.
Abortion activists want to turn the debate is nothing more than a word game, arguing that pro-lifers are tricking Americans into supporting heartbeat bills by using the word “heartbeat.” Instead, they propose that we all call them “fetal pole cardiac activity” bills. What such activists are missing is the simple fact that words correspond to reality. When people learn what abortion is, many oppose it. That’s precisely why abortion activists work so hard to hide the truth behind euphemisms and dehumanizing descriptions. Whether you call it a heartbeat or “fetal pole cardiac activity,” most people are disturbed by the thought of killing an innocent and defenseless human being with a beating heart.
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