House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who is reportedly sniffing around for a new job, perhaps because despite her public comments, she doesn’t believe she’ll have the gavel much longer — once again weighed in on abortion yesterday, mocking pro-life Republicans. This is the snarky line that has been getting some attention, as was clearly the goal when she said it:
Pelosi: There are those in the Republican Party who think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before. pic.twitter.com/MrxNAUtplI— Acyn (@Acyn) September 14, 2022
Many pro-lifers believe that human life begins at conception, for
which there is a scientific basis. That’s the position that Pelosi is
ridiculing here, making it sound cartoonish and dismissing it as silly
and frivolous. It also happens to be the stance of the Catholic Church.
I only mention that because Pelosi ostentatiously reminds anyone who
will listen about her supposedly very devoutCatholicism,
though she’s aggressively hostile to this particular value and teaching
of her espoused faith. Her answer comes in the context of Sen. Lindsey
Graham’s 15-week abortion limitation bill, which is generating all
sorts of criticism. The Left is screaming that it’s a national abortion
ban. It’s not. It’s a restriction on most late-term abortions, which
is not the same thing at all. I’ll address that more in a moment. On
the Right, I’ve seen minimal criticism that Graham’s bill doesn’t go far
enough. I’ve seen plenty of criticism that it’s a distraction from
issues like inflation, and poorly timed. This intense exchange between Graham and Fox’s Jesse Watters speaks to that dispute. I’ve also seen some Republicans like Mitch McConnell
say that certain members of the party would like to keep the issue at
the state level, which was a major conservative talking point after the Dobbs decision was released. Elsewhere in her remarks, Pelosi dinged Republicans over this, too.
While I understand the point on timing — releasing an abortion bill on the day Democrats were having a disastrous inflation ‘celebration’ — the substance of Graham’s bill is solid. It is a very reasonable bill that falls squarely within the American mainstream.
A ban on most abortions after 15 weeks, with a few exceptions, is
sensible, and even more permissive than laws on the books in many
Western nations, including France. The United States has been a
grotesque pro-abortion global outlier
for years. Democrats have been attacking Republicans in tons of ads
over the prospect of total abortion bans, some featuring women getting
arrested. This is a mischaracterization on several levels, but
Republicans would be in a much better position debating a 15-week
restriction than ceding the field to Democrats’ distortions. Democrats
would almost all oppose a policy that has majority support. This only
helps underscore their extremism on the issue, which they are not eager to talk about.
As
for the ‘leave it to the states’ complaint, I understand it, but I
think it’s wrong. Republicans have voted to ban the heinous procedure
of partial-birth abortion at the federal level (and guess who once supported it). They just recently
voted for a 20-week ban at the federal level, which most Senate
Democrats filibustered. Nearly every Democrat in Congress just recently
supported a gruesome bill to nationalize our abortion laws, allowing
abortion-on-demand, for any reason, through all nine months of
pregnancy, funded by taxpayers. I believe that some abortion questions
should be left to the states. Not all states are as pro-life or
pro-choice as others, and in our country, a top-down, one-size-fits-all
policy isn’t optimal. But protecting innocent life from elective
late-term abortions seems entirely ethical, from a human rights
perspective. “Sensible and humane”
is right. Not everyone agrees that life begins at conception, or that
human life should be legally protected from that point forward. But
there’s a meaningful consensus that late-pregnancy elective abortions
are wrong. This is not some meaningless, dehumanized clump of cells:
At 15 weeks, “Your baby is looking more like a little person, with eyelids, eyebrows, eyelashes, nails, hair, & well-defined fingers and toes. If you could see inside your womb, you’d catch your baby sucking a thumb, yawning, stretching, and making faces” https://t.co/BPPY512oBZ https://t.co/vlpcXbSbJ5 pic.twitter.com/QtaqGJs2RC— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) September 13, 2022
That’s a person, to me. At some point, an embryo becomes a fetus
— and at some point, fetuses deserve rights. We don’t all have the
same views on when that point ought to be, but a huge majority
of us agree it’s significantly before birth. Pelosi has no standing to
lecture anyone else on abortion extremism. Short of endorsing
compulsory abortions, she is as extreme as it comes. She’s championed
appalling ‘no limits’ legislation, and wouldn’t even condemn
terrorist attacks against pro-life centers that help offer women a
choice not to abort their pregnancies. While these organizations are
fire-bombed and threatened for the offense of not being pro-abortion,
elected Democrats are seeking to persecute them
politically, too. It’s disgusting. Agree or disagree with Graham’s
proposal, it’s much more moderate, reasonable, and widely-favored than
Pelosi’s ghoulish position.
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