The Republicans now control both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The pro-lifers who helped win them their majorities were promised a vote on a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks, when the unborn child is capable of feeling pain, as well as in many cases surviving outside the womb. The bill passed the House in the last session, and polls show it having widespread support (including 71% of women). But after media criticism, the Republican leadership pulled the bill.
Read what Mollie Hemingway has to say about this.
From Mollie Hemingway, Why Everyone Should Be Terrified By The GOP’s Abortion Bill Debacle:
Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the Supreme Court legalizing abortion on demand throughout pregnancy. The pro-life movement commemorates this day with marches, worship services and lobbying for bills to protect unborn children. Pro-lifers were promised by the Republican leaders they just helped elect and re-elect that the House of Representatives would pass a bill today banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a point after which infants can feel pain and survive if born prematurely.
The legislation has been passed by the House in the previous Congress and is extremely popular in national polling. “One of the clearest messages from Gallup trends,” the polling firm reported, “is that Americans oppose late-term abortion.” A Washington Post/ABC survey showed that 64 percent of Americans favor limiting abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy or earlier. When just women were asked, the figure jumped to 71 percent. Such measures are popular among independents and Americans of various income levels.
Quinnipiac even asked detailed questions about the bill last go-around:
“As you may know, in 2013 the House of Representatives approved legislation that would ban virtually all abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy, except in cases of rape and incest that are reported to authorities. Would you support or oppose such legislation?”
Sixty percent of voters said they would support it, while 33 percent said they were opposed. Even Democrats were evenly divided (46 percent to 47 percent) on the question. We’re one of just a small handful of countries, including notorious human rights violators North Korea and China, that allow late-term abortion.
And yet somehow the Republicans managed to make a disaster of passing the bill. Instead of passing the legislation and sending it to the Republican-controlled Senate, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act was pulled at the last minute and replaced with a bill that bans taxpayer funding of abortion.
What in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks just happened? It takes a special combination of incompetence and cowardice to miss an easy lay-up like this, but apparently the new Republican Congress has it in spades.
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