Why Can't Women Be Both Pro-Choice AND Pro-Life? It's Possible With Common-Sense Limitations on Abortions | Eastern North Carolina Now

    The Virginia state legislature defeated a similar bill on Tuesday, January 29. Virginia Rep. Kathy Tran introduced a bill (HB 2491) which would have allowed for abortion up until birth in cases in which the health or life of the mother is at risk. (Refer to the video referenced at the end of this article, discussion with a former abortion doctor. The Repeal Act would remove all existing abortion restrictions in the state of Virginia, and as Tran has admitted, would include allowing an abortion even when a woman is in active labor about to deliver her child. Truly unconscionable.



    ABORTION ARTICLE - Twitter Comment (Dr. Omar Hamada)

    Virginia may follow the New York plan, which was to continue to propose such legislation until Democrats take control of both houses of its legislature. But the truth is that Virginia already has a fairly relaxed abortion law and a fairly relaxed abortion policy, pretty much following the guidance the Supreme Court has provided in Roe and Doe (again the companion case) and in its subsequent opinions, such as Casey.

    My guess is that liberal states like New York, which have large populations of women who can't, or refuse to, exercise proper control over their bodies or in their sex lives, want to make sure abortion rights are alive and well (and enlarged and unfettered) within their borders just in case an evil conservative Supreme Court (perhaps even a "ruthless court) dares to try to put reasonable limits on that right in any way. I think we are seeing such laws being passed which expressly make it clear that a woman has a right, up until the point of delivery, to terminate and abort the life growing inside her. They want to make sure that Roe is viewed as standing for the most expansive view of the right to an abortion. And if the Supreme Court should just happen to follow the legal position of dissenting justices Byron White and William Rehnquist, which was that the states have the right, under the 10th Amendment, to legislate abortion and the federal government had no point taking that right away from them, the states themselves will already be ready with strong abortion-protection laws for our women's rights mentality population.


    Pro-baby-killing advocates are preparing for the day Roe v. Wade is overturned. (which may happen but the right of a woman to have an abortion will never be taken away; it will just be protected on a state-by-state basis).

    The truth is that 31 states have relaxed abortion laws, with North Carolina being one of them. 24 states, including North Carolina, permit a later-term abortion "for the life and health of the mother," which essentially means that a woman can terminate her pregnancy at any time for any reason, since the Supreme Court has interpreted "health" to mean any number of things - physical, emotional, psychological, financial, familial, because of stigma, and for age or for stress. These 24 states are: Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Compare this relaxed standard to the more strict one, which permits a woman to have a later-term abortion only if is necessary "for life and physical health of the mother." Sixteen (16) states have this more strict standard - Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. There are 3 states that allow a full-term baby to be directly killed, but only if the pregnancy poses a direct risk to the mother's life. Those states are Idaho, Michigan, and Rhode Island.

    Now, take special note of these particular states: Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont. They don't even require the pretense of a "health" reason for women to abort their full-term babies. In those 7 states, there are no bans at all on abortion at any stage. Those states are virtual killing fields. As Laurie Higgins wrote in the Illinois Family Institute: "It's open season on babies who, through no fault of their own, have the misfortune of being conceived in the wrong womb."

    Just to drive home how barbaric a late-term abortion is - the kind of abortion just legalized in New York and the kind that Virginia expressly wanted to legalize, here is how a former abortionist describes the procedure:

    "The baby is injected with a poison directly into his skull or torso. He then suffers a hideously painful death, which he will certainly feel because of his developed nervous system. The mother carries the corpse around in her womb for a day. The next day, there is an ultrasound to check if the baby is dead. If he isn't..... if, by some miracle he survived and has been writhing and suffering in agony for the past 24 hours clinging onto life, then he will be injected again. The following day, the mother delivers her dead child. Sometimes she delivers him at the clinic, but if she can't make it on time, the clinic is perfectly happy to recommend that she give birth into her toilet."

    What progressives and liberals don't want the ordinary person to know is that all states allow late-term abortions that threaten a mother's "life" - not just her "health." There is no life-threatening condition that would ever necessitate the direct, intentional, active killing of a baby in the womb. There are relatively rare occasions in which continuing a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, but ending a pregnancy does not require the direct, intentional, active killing of a baby. The key word here is "baby," which means that the unborn is fully-developed or near to being fully-developed and capable of being cared for outside the womb by the mother, caregivers, or by special incubators and machines that can provide the care and protection that the mother's womb can until term.

    If there is a life-threatening condition that would necessitate the termination of a woman's later-term, near full-term, or full-term pregnancy, the best option for doctors and for the woman is to deliver that baby. There are possible instances (such as cancer, a debilitating heart condition, toxemia, exceedingly high blood pressure, etc) when it may be necessary to remove the baby from its mother's womb, but it is never necessary to kill him before removing him. There is no medical reason, and certainly no reasonable or moral one, to take that extra step of preemptively killing the child. Doctors can induce delivery or perform a C-section to save a woman's life in a life-threatening or emergency situation without dismembering, crushing, burning, or chemically inducing cardiac arrest in a baby. In some induced deliveries or C-sections, babies will not survive, but that is wholly different from intentionally killing them.

    The point is - the FACT is - that a delivery must happen either way. If a mother in the third trimester decides she doesn't want or can't have her baby inside her, she is going to have to deliver him one way or another. The only question is whether she will deliver a dead child or a living one. Giving a lethal injection to the child may be the more convenient route, but since when do we as a society put a greater value on convenience than on life itself. It certainly isn't the necessary route.

    ABORTION ARTICLE - Twitter Comment (Matt Walsh)

    Our options should always fall on the side of respecting and preserving life. We are the nation founded on the great truth that we are created and the moment we are created, we are endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of Life and Liberty.

    God help us if we don't change our thinking on this subject and don't put and to the killing fields.

    Now, to be fair, most abortions are performed prior to 21 weeks of pregnancy. Agencies like the Center for Disease Control and abortion doctors themselves like to point out that the overwhelming percentage of abortions are performed up to 21 weeks. But, as I'll make clear later, 21 weeks (which is very close to medical "viability") does not mark the start of "life." The fetus became a new living human being before that - being fully formed (just still very tiny) and exhibiting the functions of life (although some are still weak). Heck, a fetus has a heartbeat at around 6 weeks (although it isn't heard well on an ultrasound until week 8)..

    The point is that although most abortions are performed during the first half of pregnancy, a good portion of abortions are on the living; they are killing unborn babies.

    This New York Reproductive Health Act has ignited a new debate on the abortion rights - specifically on the scope of the right and the fact that the Supreme Court never once considered the growing fetus/baby to be a "life," let alone a unique life (not a clone of the mother).

    If this abortion law doesn't disturb you, look at the other ways that a woman's right of abortion plays out:

    On May 12, 2016, Alabama's Governor Robert Bentley signed bill SB363 into law, to go into effect later that year, on August 1. SB363 is the Alabama Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act. It was never allowed to go into effect.

    SB 363 would have prohibited a physician from performing a "dismemberment abortion" unless it was necessary to prevent serious health risk to the pregnant person. The bill defines "dismemberment abortion" as "the purpose of causing the death of an unborn child, purposely to dismember a living unborn child and extract him or her one piece at a time from the uterus through use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors, or similar instruments that, through the convergence of two rigid levers, slice, crush, or grasp, or any combination of the foregoing, a portion of the unborn child's body to cut or rip it off."

    The bill would have allowed for a cause of action for injunctive relief and a cause of action for civil damages against a person who performs such a "dismemberment abortion." Any person who violated the law would be fined $10,000 and/or imprisoned for up to two years.


    This law targeted a procedure known as dilation and evacuation (D&E) which is frequently used during second-trimester abortions. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an abortion using suction aspiration can be performed up to 14 weeks' gestation, but after 14 weeks, the D&E procedure would need to be used to perform an abortion. As such, dilation and evacuation bans, depending upon their language, may ban all surgical abortion past 14 weeks' gestation.

    The bill's provisions were based on claims that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks or earlier. A look at some medical studies seems to conclude that a fetus doesn't feel pain before 24-26 weeks (see the NCBI article cited - "Does a Fetus Feel Pain?"). However, some have reported that pain is observable in fetuses at 18 weeks' of gestation and that there are clear behavioral responses to noxious stimuli (to a needle, to concentrated saline solution) by 26 weeks' gestation. The Alabama ACLU argued that leading medical experts such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists oppose this type of abortion restriction because the D&E procedure so effective. An evidence-based and non-partisan report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine described D&E as a "superior method" of abortion, finding that it is extremely safe with minimal complications.

    Despite the gruesomeness that Alabama's law sought to avoid, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU, the organization that Ruth Bader Ginsburg devoted her early legal career to) filed suit to have it overturned. The ACLU alleged that Supreme Court jurisprudence on abortion is clear and that states may not impose undue burdens on a woman's right to have an abortion or to make it burdensome for her to make necessary medical decisions regarding her pregnancy. It argued that the law must be stricken in order that doctors can continue to use their best judgement to provide the care that is right for their patients, in light of a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy. At first the ACLU sought an injunction/ temporary restraining order to block enforcement of SB363 (which was granted on July 13, 2016), and then on October 26, 2017, US District Court Judge Myron Thompson ruled the law unconstitutional. On August 22, 2018, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. [case: West Alabama Women's Center v. Miller; West Alabama Women's Center filed suit on behalf of the facility and its doctors and patients against Thomas Miller, Alabama state Health Officer].

    The really sad thing is that the 11th Circuit knew its ruling was wrong. It knew that its endorsement of the lower court ruling was intellectually dishonest. It knew its ruling was wrong because it has long-held that the Supreme Court got it wrong in Roe v. Wade (1973) and in subsequent cases such as Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey (1992). The 11th Circuit has criticized the Supreme Court's abortion decisions, calling them "an aberration of constitutional law," and accusing the majority of creating a new right from the bench, thus siding with the views of the dissenting justices, Byron White and William Rehnquist.

    If the judges knew the ruling was wrong, why did it issue it? Judge Joel Dubina of the 11th Circuit was forthright in his explanation. Essentially, he said that as an inferior court to the Supreme Court, he was bound to rule in favor of its prior decisions. And under that standard, he had to conclude that Alabama's law prohibiting dismemberment abortions of live unborn babies, known as Dilation and Extraction (D&E), violates the High Court's decisions.


    In his special concurrence, Judge Dubina wrote:

    "I write separately to agree on record with Justice Thomas's concurring opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124, 168-69, 127 S. Ct. 1610, 1639-40 (2007) (Thomas, J., concurring), with whom then Justice Scalia also joined. Specifically, Justice Thomas wrote, 'I write separately to reiterate my view that the Court's abortion jurisprudence, including Casey [Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 112 S. Ct. 2791 (1992)] and Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705 (1973), has no basis in the Constitution.' Id. at 169, 127 S. Ct. at 1639. The problem I have, as noted in the Chief Judge's opinion, is that I am not on the Supreme Court, and as a federal appellate judge, I am bound by my oath to follow all of the Supreme Court's precedents, whether I agree with them or not."

    Since when are federal judges BOUND BY OATH to follow all of the Supreme Court's precedents?