Our National Shame: U.S. Earns Failing Humanitarian Score, Along With Communist Nations

Our National Shame: U.S. Earns Failing Humanitarian Score, Along With Communist Nations August 5, 2013

The United States is one of only 2% of nations worldwide to permit elective abortion without restrictions, at any time, for any reason.

That’s right:  We rank right there at the bottom on the humanitarian scale, along with Communist China and North Korea, for our willingness to kill babies in the womb at any time, even if they are developed enough to survive on their own, regardless of fetal pain, if that’s what the mother chooses.  Only one other nation, Canada, also has no restrictions on abortion.

The other 192 world nations—even those which do permit abortion in certain circumstances—have restrictions in place, such as protections for unborn infants who have reached viability.

According to a report by LifeNews.com:

China and North Korea are not known for stellar human rights records. In fact, they are known for their human rights abuses. One such human rights abuse involves the use of late-term abortion.

For population control, women are forcibly aborted right up until birth under China’s One Child Policy. Vice President Joe Biden, at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China on August 21, 2011, said that  the “fully understand[s]” the policy and that it is one he is “not second-guessing.”

Last June, word came out that a woman in China, Feng Jianmei, was beaten and dragged away by family planning officials when she was seven months pregnant. The picture of her in bed with her aborted child lying next to her has circulated the web since Womens Rights Without Frontiers President, Reggie Littlejohn, broke the story with the information they obtained from a China-based group, 64Tianwang.

Reports were circulating over recent months that China was going to consider relaxing its One Child Policy. But Littlejohn has warned that unfortunately, this is not to be the case.

In North Korea, late-term abortions are also forced and are performed based on the ethnicity of the child. They are routinely performed on women who have fled North Korea and were brought back and imprisoned for their defection. Unfortunately, Canada and the United States join China and North Korea in being two of the four nations to allow late-term abortion for pretty much any reason.

Canada has no laws restricting abortion. This is not an exaggeration; taxpayer-funded abortions happen at any time in a pregnancy for any reason.

But here, in America, are we so enamored of individual rights, so protective of a woman’s personal freedom, that infant pain, viability, waiting adoptive parents, and availability of resources for pregnant women have no impact?

In the United States, the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision imposed restrictions on abortion in the third trimester—but then, the Supreme Court negated the restriction by adding a clause requiring states to permit late-term abortion “for the life and health of the mother.”

And as experience has shown us, the “health of the mother” provision is like a rubber nose, easily twisted and bent, manipulated to take whatever shape the woman and the doctor may choose.  The Court stated in the Doe v. Bolton case, which was released along with Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973, that

“The medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age – relevant to the well being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.”

It’s pretty difficult to think of a case in which one of these mitigating factors could not be presented as a reason for abortion.  What that means, then, is that a woman can have an abortion for any reason, and then cite psychological stress or family pressure or chronic headaches…. Whatever.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll demonstrated that a plurality of Americans support a ban on abortions 20 weeks post-fertilization.  In a survey of 1,000 Americans, 44% said they would support a ban in their state on abortions after the 20-week marker, compared to only 37% who would oppose such a restriction.

 

 


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