Iowa

The Editorial Board of the The Daily Iowan has weighed in with a pro-abortion propaganda piece entitled Personhood amendment unnecessarily dangerous.  It quotes Jill June, the President of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, “This amendment would ban all safe abortion”.  Of course, there is no such thing as a “safe abortion”. All abortions kill an innocent human being. Killing is never safe for the victim. But that‘s the key for pro-aborts: ignore the victim.

As you can surmise from the PP quote, the piece focuses on back alley abortions, while (of course) ignoring the unborn victim. The Board continues:

The basic line of reasoning against restricting abortion is essentially the typical conservative argument against gun control, repurposed. If you outlaw abortion, only outlaws will perform abortions.

If you outlaw child molestation, only outlaws will molest children. If you outlaw spousal abuse, only outlaws will abuse their spouses. If you outlaw senicide, only outlaws will kill old men.

The Editorial Board, like most pro-aborts, obviously hasn’t thought through its position very well. Either that or it has a low opinion of its readers. Why make a good argument when cheap propaganda will suffice?

The Board quotes approvingly Susan A. Cohen of the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute who, with obvious misogyny, states:

Restrictive laws have much less impact on stopping women from ending an unwanted pregnancy than on forcing those who are determined to do so to seek out clandestine means.

If you don’t want to be pregnant and killing your baby is illegal, you’re “forced” to do it secretly. Women don’t consciously make decisions to endanger their own lives to kill their babies. They’re victims of circumstances beyond their control. Women are nothing more than mindless automatons, “forced” to kill their babies.

From misogyny, the Board turns to using statistics in a deceptive way:

An August 2012 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research projected that if Roe v. Wade were overturned and the 31 most conservative states adopted full abortion bans, the national abortion rate would fall by about 15 percent.

Even if this statistic is true (which I doubt), it provides good reason to outlaw abortion. We would save 180,000 (15% of 1.2 million currently murdered) babies a year.

But notice the cheat. When conservative states outlaw abortion, you need to look at the abortion rates only in those states. Duh. Why mix New York’s all-you-can-eat baby-killing statistics with Oklahoma’s? The Board has an agenda, so it twists the statistics to fit its agenda.

Bernard Nathanson, a New York abortionist and co-founder of NARAL, said the number of pre-Roe prenatal baby-killings was 100,000 nationwide. As you would expect, once legalized, the number of such killings quickly increased to over a million per year, peaking at 1.6 million. The fact is if we outlaw abortion, far fewer people will kill their babies.

The last line of the opinion piece “Go back to the drawing board” only applies to itself. I can see why no member of the Editorial Board would put his name on the piece. The Daily Iowan needs to hire someone who can actually think beyond shallow pro-abortion talking points.

The title of Shane Vander Hart's post says it all: Republican-Led Iowa House Advance Zero Pro-Life Bills. Mr. Vander Hart's frustration is evident and justified. Pro-lifers often bicker instead of joining together to pass legislation. Part of the problem is that legislation tends to be corrupt. Often there's a block of legislators who are too weak to do the right thing.

Legislators didn’t get a chance to vote on Tom Shaw's Personhood bill or any of the rest.

Bravo to Republican State Rep Tom Shaw who, according to this article, has introduced a Personhood bill in the Iowa House.  

The meat of the bill is a definition of person added to the murder statute:

“Person”, when referring to the victim of a murder, means an individual human being, without regard to age of development, from the moment of conception, when a zygote is formed, until natural death.

There are better ways to delineate the beginning of life but this is a good bill, worthy of support.

History was made in the Iowa Legislature today.

For the first time ever, real pro life legislation that might actually save babies and uphold the inalienable right to life made it out of a subcommittee in the Iowa House. HF 153, authored by State Rep. Kim Pearson and co-sponsored by 27 other Republicans, is the first “life at conception” bill to make it out of subcommittee.

The bill states:

The sovereign state of Iowa recognizes that life is valued and protected from the moment of conception, and each life, from that moment, is accorded the same rights and protections guaranteed to all persons by the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Iowa, and the laws of this state. The Iowa Supreme Court shall not have appellate jurisdiction over the provisions of this section. This Act, being deemed of immediate importance, takes effect upon enactment. This bill establishes that the sovereign state of Iowa recognizes that life is valued and protected from the moment of conception and each life is accorded the same rights and protections guaranteed to all persons by the constitutions of the state of Iowa and the United States, and by the laws of the state. The bill also provides that the Iowa Supreme Court does not have appellate jurisdiction over the provisions of the bill.

That is perhaps the most righteously-worded piece of legislation I’ve ever read. Imagine where the fight for the sanctity of life would be in this country if we had started the battle here the day after Roe v. Wade in state legislatures all across the country with bills worded exactly like this? Instead, we spent a generation fighting on the legal positivists and baby butchers’ terms, accepting their unconstitutional and immoral premise that courts make law and then reinforcing it ourselves fighting for abortion mills regulatory reform bills that ended with the hellish phrase “and then you can kill the baby.”

Perhaps no institution in America has fought harder and longer for the sanctity of human life than has the Catholic Church, which is why it’s surprising to find that the two lobbyists at the Iowa Statehouse from the Iowa Catholic Conference are registered as “undecided” as of now on HF 153.

Not only does this bill begin with the most righteous and American premise about the sanctity of life, but its wording also asserts a dually important premise that courts don’t make law and have no authority to try and do so not granted to them by the other two branches refusing to assert their constitutional authority.

“We had absolutely riveting personal stories from two women who had had abortions,” State Rep. Pearson said. “They spoke of the physical pain of the abortion and the sound of the vacuum. Both cried out for the ‘doctors’ to stop. One woman was held down by a handful of staff. The guilt and shame of the abortions lead them down a path of further destruction (suicide attempts, drug/alcohol abuse) until they felt the forgiveness and healing from Jesus Christ. They were so brave! When they realized that the bill had passed its first hurdle they cried and thanked the Lord.”

Opposing the bill in subcommittee was Democrat State Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell. Republican State Rep. David Heaton was the deciding vote that sent HF 153 to the full 21-member Iowa House Human Resources Committee. A majority of that committee’s members must approve of the personhood measure before it can be voted upon for passage out of the Iowa House and sent to the Democrat-controlled State Senate.

Neither of Iowa’s twin governors, Terry Branstad and Mike Gronstal, has indicated whether or not they would allow the legislation to move forward should it pass the Iowa House. Hopefully the language limiting the jurisdiction of the Iowa Supreme Court found in the bill will become a mainstay in all legislation made by those attempting to restore America’s constitutional and natural law foundations.