Politico reports that the abortion-supporting Senator Patty Murray is leading her fellow Democrats in a new approach to forcing a hearing on an Obama’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court—turn it into a referendum on late-term abortion. Yeah, that should work…
The thrust of the message from Murray, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), and other Democratic senators will be this: Senate Republicans won’t take time to fulfill their advise-and-consent duties but will take time to do what Murray calls “everything they can to turn back the clock on women’s health care.”
“While they say they won’t even hold a hearing on a Supreme Court nominee to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities — they were eager to hold a hearing to attack women’s constitutional rights,” Murray will say, according to her remarks provided in advance to POLITICO.
She continues: “They love to talk about the Constitution — unless we’re talking about a woman’s constitutional right to make decisions about her own body, or the part that lays out the Senate’s responsibilities when it comes to filling Supreme Court vacancies.”
The hearing she’s referring to was Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee panel on late-term abortion. Aside from being wrong about the Constitution requiring the Senate to entertain the nomination of a jurist who they already know would not take the Constitution seriously, these Senators have chosen an alarmingly poor wagon on which to hitch their cause.
You see, in addition to a range of medical experts fully prepared to explain that the “women’s health care” Boxer and friends are protecting entails brutally butchering a living, developed, recognizable child that can feel pain, this particular hearing featured abortion survivor Melissa Ohden:
“As somebody who has lived to see the effects of abortion, I think it’s incredibly important for the public to pay attention to this hearing, to hear the stories of people like me who know firsthand what late-term abortion looks like,” Ohden told The Daily Signal [the day before the hearing…] “As a child who was initially left to die after an abortion, I believe that timely, appropriate medical care is incredibly important to children like me,” Ohden said.
In past testimony, Ohden has described her abortion in brutal detail, powerfully demonstrating that real people are the cost of “choice”:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EjHWxFbah8&w=560&h=315]
So by all means, Senators, please continue to draw attention to this hearing. Your help raising awareness of the atrocity you’re trying to defend is greatly appreciated.
The second reason this is destined to backfire is that they’re saying the Senate needs to let Obama replace Scalia for the sake of a policy the public already rejects. 57% of Americans say abortion should be either totally illegal or only illegal for rape, incest, or life-of-the-mother (all three of which are exempt from the 20-week ban anyway), while only 20% believe elective abortion should still be permitted in the final trimester. As for the 20-week abortion ban specifically, 61% of Americans support it—including 62% of self-described pro-choicers and 60% of women. And if more people were to see the following Live Action video featuring former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino describing a second trimester D&E abortion those numbers could increase even further:
Tying the Supreme Court fight to a human rights offense ripped straight out of a horror movie and an issue on which pro-aborts are decidedly in the minority… with keen strategic judgment like that, it’s no wonder they feel the need to rig the game via judicial activism: they don’t even trust themselves to save abortion in a fair fight.
