GOP Debate Question on Rape and Incest Abortion Exceptions

The Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire last night brought no surprises about the candidates views on abortion. What was said was good. I was a little disappointed in what was not said by some of the candidates. A perfect example is Rep. Bachmann's response to the question whether she was comfortable with Tim Pawlenty's opposition to abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother.

What she said is good, but she could have distinguished herself had she actually answered the question. She evidently either thinks a rape or incest exception is ok, or she doesn't think she can frame the argument in a winning way. Unfortunately nobody else on the stage distinguished themselves on it either.

How would you answer if you were running for president? What about this for an answer.

Rape is a horrible crime, and rape victims deserve our greatest compassion and care. They deserve to not be pushed into compounding the horror of rape with the murder of their unborn babies. I have friends who were conceived in rape. You can't tell me that they deserve to be dead. Let's punish rapists, not their victims or their children. Abortion is, in fact, one of the greatest tools of a sexual abuser, because it lets him cover up his crime, and many abortion businesses will not follow the law and report on an under-aged victim of sexual abuse. Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses cover up rape, incest, and other sexual crimes, enabling the abuse to continue. As President, I will not sign any budget with one penny of funding for Planned Parenthood.

Don't expect that answer this election season, but any of these candidates would at least sign most pro-life legislation--something President Obama clearly won't do.

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Wesley Wilson is the President of Let Me Live, a nonprofit dedicated to saving babies by showing the beauty and value of life to women considering abortion. Please learn more about the Let Me Live pro-life billboard campaign. Donations are tax deductible.

Open letter to SC State Senator Larry Martin on Rape and Incest Abortion Funding

From the South Carolina Citizens for Life:

COLUMBIA, S.C. (Wednesday, April 27, 2011) --A move to strip funding for rape and incest abortions from the state employees’ health insurance plan failed by one vote Wednesday in the Republican-controlled South Carolina Senate.  Senators Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, and David Thomas, R-Greenville, offered the amendment during debate on the 2011-2012 state budget.

In what is known as Part 1B, Section 80C of the state budget, the state employees’ health insurance coverage reads in part:  “No funds appropriated for employer contributions to the State Health Insurance Plan may be expended to reimburse the expenses of an abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or where the mother’s medical condition is one which, on the basis of the physician’s good faith judgment, so complicates the pregnancy as to necessitate an immediate abortion to avert the risk of her death or for which a delay will create serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of major bodily function, and the State Health Plan may not offer coverage for abortion services, including ancillary services provided contemporaneously with abortion services.”

The Bryant-Thomas amendment would have removed the six words “in cases of rape; incest or” leaving the rest of the House-passed language intact....

Senator Joel Lourie, D-Richland, moved to table (defeat) the Bryant-Thomas amendment. The motion to table passed by one vote.  Those who voted against tabling the amendment were voting in favor of the Bryant-Thomas amendment.

To see how your senator voted, click here.

 My State Senator, Larry Martin (not to be confused with Sen. Shane Martin who voted the other way), voted to table the pro-life amendment, so I sent him the following letter.

Dear Senator Martin:

I am disappointed in your vote to table the Bryant-Thomas amendment which would have banned state funding of abortions of pregnancies conceived in rape or incest. The amendment, which lost by one vote, would have changed the language of Part 1B, Section 80C of the state budget. Your vote made the difference.

Let me speak directly. You voted to use my tax money to kill babies whose fathers are criminals.

The SC GOP platform says: "We believe that the unborn and the newborn child have a fundamental right to life which must not be infringed. Accordingly, we believe that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection should apply to unborn children."

According to our party's platform, your vote was both unconstitutional and immoral.

I have appreciated many of the positions you have taken and your support for other pro-life laws. Please explain why you voted to table this amendment.

Sincerely,
Wesley Wilson

Update: Senator Martin responded promptly:

Mr. Wilson:

Thanks for your email and for your question about my vote on the amendment.  The language in the budget proviso regarding the limited instances that involve rape, incest, or the life of the mother,  in which the state health plan will pay for an abortion, is the longstanding policy of the state.  It goes back to the 1980s when the pro-life US Congressman, the late Henry Hyde from Illinois, was successful in implementing the same policy for Medicaid reimbursement.  The Hyde Amendment is a well settled policy in this important area, and the state health plan reflects that policy.  It is something that I have supported for many years going back to my service in the House, and I’m almost certain that there are other votes in previous appropriations bills.  Lastly, there are a limited number of individuals and families that are covered under COBRA policies that pay the entire employer/employee amount for their health insurance coverage under the state health plan. 

Thanks again for your email as it is good to hear from you.

Regards,

Larry Martin

I appreciate Senator Martin's prompt and cordial response. The Hyde Amendment was a huge step toward stopping the government funding of abortion. At the time, the political reality apparently required that the rape and incest exception take precedence over the sanctity of human life. That's politics. Better to compromise and stop paying for 99% of the murders than lose the vote and be unable to stop any of them. At least that's the theory. (Some readers will disagree, and I respect your views.)

I am thankful for the Hyde Amendment. I think Henry Hyde probably took all the ground he could at the time. What Senator Martin is saying, however, is that the Hyde Amendment is the goal, not just a step in the right direction. In South Carolina, where the electorate is strongly pro-life, and the state government is completely in Republican hands, this isn't a matter of compromising to make progress. Senator Martin apparently thinks that tax money really should be used to murder babies in the 1% or so of unwanted pregnancies resulting from rape and incest.

For the record, the House version of the budget last year did not allow funding for rape and incest abortions, but the Senate defeated the pro-life measure. This year, both the SC House and Senate versions fund those abortions.

Abortion: The Ultimate Cover-up

Crisis Pregnancy Centers often receive phone calls from people seeking abortion. I answered such a call recently from a woman who was calling on behalf of her married daughter.

I asked if the daughter had received a medical pregnancy test and an ultrasound to verify that it was not a tubal pregnancy—services that we offer at no cost. The caller was impatient. "You don't understand. This isn't her husband's baby. She has to have an abortion. She doesn't have a choice."

Stories like this are all too common. Some women who use abortion to cover up infidelity schedule an abortion for a week when their husbands are on a business trip.

It's not just women who cover up immorality with abortion. Abortion is the favorite tool of child molesters and rapists.

There's the 27-year-old Florida high school drama teacher Andrew Foster who was having sex with students and used abortion to hide the crime when he impregnated an 18-year-old.

In Connecticut, Adam Gault, 41, has been charged with the kidnapping and sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl. He tried to hide that crime with an abortion performed by a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Earlier this year Michael Britt, 43, a Connecticut abortion clinic janitor and owner of a modeling agency, lured teenage girls into having sex with him in order to become models. He reportedly took a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old to the abortion clinic to cover up his crimes.

That case came on the heels of another Connecticut case where 22-year-old Kevon Walker impregnated his 14-year-old girlfriend three times in six months, and ended each pregnancy with abortion.

John Blanks, Jr., of Ohio used abortion to cover up his incestuous sexual abuse of his daughter.

In most, if not all, of these cases, the abortion clinic has failed to report the sexual abuse of minors as required by most states, enabling the abuse to continue.

Abortion is the ultimate cover-up of sexual crimes and immorality. Perhaps that's the biggest reason its supporters fight to keep it legal. Andrea Dworkin, a leading feminist, wrote in Right Wing Women:

In the garden of earthly delights known as the sixties counterculture, pregnancy did intrude, almost always rudely;...one of the real obstacles to female [immorality] on male demand....It was the brake that pregnancy put on [immorality] that made abortion a high-priority political issue.

Or put another way, abortion is the insurance policy of the sexual revolution.

It's past time to liberate women from the abuse of men who cover up their crimes with abortion.


Wesley Wilson

Wesley Wilson is the President of Let Her Live, a nonprofit dedicated to saving babies by showing the beauty and value of life to women considering abortion. Please learn more about the Let Her Live targeted pro-life billboard campaign. Donations are tax deductible.

Planned Parenthood Protects Abusers from Women

Planned Parenthood, the great champion of women's rights, was caught harming women for profit again. LifeNews.com reported two separate incidents--one in Ohio, the other in California--on May 10th.

A teenage victim of incest is suing a Cincinatti Planned Parenthood for failing to report her father's sexual abuse to authorities, as required by Ohio law. LifeNews reports that the suit alleges she told the clinic staff about the crime, and "Planned Parenthood's failure to report the incest to police resulted in another 18 months of sexual abuse at the hands of her father."

In another report, workers at a Santa Monica, California, Planned Parenthood, told a girl posing as a 15-year-old who had been impregnated by a 23-year-old that if she were 16 they wouldn't need to report the statutory rape. She claims they told her to "figure out a birth-date that works" so they could perform an abortion without getting her boyfriend in trouble.

I'm just glad Planned Parenthood stands ready to protect women from exploitation. Aren't you? Maybe their protection of women is the reason our government gives them $272.7 million of our tax money per year.