Pro-life leaders call for Republicans to schedule a vote on Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act

A group of national pro-life leaders have released a joint statement urging House Republican Leadership to schedule a vote on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

Pro-life leaders say that babies and mothers being targeted by the late-term abortion industry have waited long enough for protection.

“The Senate stands ready to take up this legislation. A vote on this popular, modest bill will serve as a benchmark as to whether the House GOP is serious about protecting unborn babies and women,” they state in their press release.

Read the full statement here.

Leaders signing on to this statement include:

Marjorie Dannenfelser, President, Susan B. Anthony List
Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council
Penny Young Nance, CEO and President, Concerned Women for America
Jeanne Mancini, President, March for Life
Janet Morana, Co-Founder, Silent No More Awareness Campaign
Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
Charmaine Yoest, President & CEO, Americans United for Life
Kristan Hawkins, President, Students for Life of America
Brian Burch, President, CatholicVote.org
Dr. Russell Moore, President, Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

A November 2014 poll from Quinnipiac found that 60 percent of Americans, including 56 percent of Independents and 46 percent of Democrats, support the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. To date, 14 states have enacted Pain-Capable laws.

Today marks three months since a scheduled vote on landmark pro-life legislation was delayed by the House GOP after being sabotaged by Republican Congresswomen Renee Ellmers who forced GOP members to abandon the first vote over rape reporting requirements to the legislation.

“This is the kind of people that I have talked about before,”Life Dynamics president Mark Crutcher told his Life Talk​ audience.

“Who want the mantle of pro-life and the mortality that comes along with it. But when push comes to shove, they’re pro-aborts,” he said.

Crutcher also reminded the pro-life TV audience that Ellmers earned her new label as the GOP’s “abortion barbie” after calling pro-lifers “abhorrent and childish” for criticizing her actions.

Ellmers, who is now pushing for a much wider loophole in the pro-life bill that could render it meaningless by allowing virtually any abortion under the bill, told the National Journal that instead of a requirement that rape victims report the crime to law enforcement, the version she saw would mandate that the woman must inform the doctor performing the abortion that she was raped in order to be eligible for a late-term abortion.

“The demand that it be reported to law enforcement was completely unrealistic and only further victimized the victims of rape, and I think that’s something that we have to be very conscientious about,” Ellmers said.

Ellmers added that the new language clarifies exceptions in the case of incest as well. Previously, the bill allowed only minors who were victims of incest to be eligible for late-term abortions. Now, the bill would open up the procedure to any women who become pregnant as a result of incest, no matter the age, she said.

As a result of her actions, Ellmers now faces opposition in her next political primary.

Challenger Frank Roche has uploaded a video where he claims Ellmers has betrayed her Conservative values and shows footage of her betrayal to pro-lifers on this bill.

https://youtu.be/hq0OFHYISdo

If there is another delay in passing the late term abortion ban, several pro-life leaders say they will hold a second protest at Speaker John Boehner’s office on Thursday, May 7, if the ban has not been passed by that time.

The May 7th protest would follow a demonstration held in front of the Speaker’s offices in late March organized by Jill Stanek, Troy Newman, and Rev. Pat Mahoney.

Meanwhile, Jill Stanek has reported that Montana may become the first state to force abortionists to provide anesthesia to preborn babies aged 20 weeks and older who they are about to dismember.

A Republican-dominated House and Senate just sent HB 479 to the desk of Democrat pro-abortion Gov. Steve Bullock.

HB 479 is a spin on an outright 20-week abortion ban, which Montana pro-life advocates decided against, believing the governor would veto it.

The thinking, obviously, is this bill will be harder for Bullock to oppose.

There has been much debate on whether pro-lifers should support this legislation and Stanek points out that the abortion lobby opposes the legislation and for good reason.

“A law such as this serves three purposes,” Stanek writes on her blog.

1. Educates the public about the humanity of preborn babies, juxtaposed against the atrocity of abortion

2. Gives abortion-minded mothers one last chance to reconsider – a final big tug on their maternal heartstrings

3. Provides compassionate, humanitarian pain relief if the mother nonetheless proceeds with the abortion, to a baby no one in Montana can as yet legally stop from being brutally torn limb from limb

Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and a co-host of Life Talk TV also supported the bill, “To rip off the arm or leg of a 20-week-old-or-more unborn baby is barbaric; to do it without at least giving the child an anesthetic beforehand is just plain sadistic,” said Fr. Pavone. “I strongly urge Governor Bullock to sign this legislation so that at least some babies may not feel the excruciating pain of being dismembered.”

HB0479 states that “substantial scientific evidence recognizes that an unborn child is capable of experiencing physical pain and suffering by not later than 20 weeks after fertilization” and would require abortionists to administer anesthesia to unborn children in the womb past the 20th week of pregnancy.