7 Days of Life: Why Do I March?

The March for Life’s campaign surrounding the 2014 March is #WhyWeMarch.  This push made me reflect on why I march.  It is not an easy thing to answer.  I know what brought me to the pro-life movement – in all honesty it was a job offer from the Family Research Council.  But what made me pro-life?  Why do I March?

 

I March for my parents for giving me my faith and love of knowledge and debate.  I grew up in a family of eight kids, not quite Duggar territory, but not shabby. And while unfortunately not all are pro-life, we were all taught to be both open minded but also be able to defend our positions.  While I am a cradle Catholic it wasn’t till years later I embraced that.  When I was pretty young I was an early riser.  I would get up and then turn on the television for Gilligan Island reruns.  My Mom would have none of that and insisted I go to daily Mass with my Dad.  This not only gave me an incredible bond with my Dad, it turned into me being a daily communicant for most of my childhood and, even though I didn’t know it at the time, gave me my love for the Church.  It was also my Mom who one summer as I was watching television (once again, though this time Mr. Ed reruns) who decided she would have none of that either, and instead introduced me to first editions of the Hardy Boy novels we had up in the attic.  This evolved into me being a voracious reader of anything I could get my hands on.  And as we got older it was my now deceased Dad, a judge and lawyer, who would make meal times interesting by sometimes making us take varying positions on things, and see how we fared against the toughest crowd around – our siblings.

 

I March for my best friend and his girlfriend choosing life.  In my last year of high school one of my two best friends at the time took his own life.  A month after that his girlfriend found out she was two months pregnant.  She decided that she would keep and raise the child.  For my freshman and sophomore years of college I would spend my summer days taking care of her son as she worked days and I worked nights.  For a guy with a pretty reckless reputation it was an eye opener being partially responsible for that life.  In future years it even inspired me for a short while to work day care.  He is now a full grown man and his Mom, who deserves all the credit for his turning out so well, couldn’t be prouder.

 

I March for my unborn child.  A few years after my college graduation, while I was still pretty reckless, I got a young woman pregnant.  Even though we did not work out there was no question we would keep the child.  Unfortunately late in the pregnancy we lost the child.  I know God has a plan in all things.

 

I March for my wife for strengthening my faith and reminding me why it is so important.  She grew up in a family of seven kids and her family is without a doubt more devout.  She incidentally is also in the pro-life movement – however she is in the much more important side – that of ministry.  She sees politics for what it is – not the final answer.

 

So to sum it up:

 

I March for my parents, and all parents, may they teach their children right and wrong and that good and evil do exist – and you need to stand up for what is good.

 

I March for my friend’s child and that child’s mother – and all parents who face a difficult decision and make the right one – be it parenthood or adoption

 

I March for all those who lost a child, deliberately or otherwise, before they had a chance to live.  That they may find healing

 

I March for my wife, and other incredible women like her.  My Mom, my mother in law, sisters, sister in laws, nieces and so on.  That they may help create a world where all human life, at all stages, is given the full value it deserves and that they may always be safe from those who would exploit them in the name of politics.

 

And I March for the inspiration to continue doing the work I have grown to love.  Nothing is more inspiring than seeing hundreds of thousands of people, mostly young, marching to end abortion.

 

That is why I March.  Why do you?

There is little doubt among reasonable folks that since its passage President Obama’s health care law, commonly known as Obamacare, contains multiple instances of abortion funding or subsidies.  Some of the current ways we know that Obamacare subsidizes or directly funds abortion is through multi-state plans, state exchanges, high risk pools, and of course the anti-conscience mandate that forces business owners and Catholic nuns to pay for abortifacients.  That could only be the tip of the iceberg as Obamacare also created numerous slush funds that are at the Health and Human Secretary’s discretion to give to abortion companies like Planned Parenthood, something they have done repeatedly already.

 

However that is all what we know now – what did we know at the time of passage?  On one side you had groups with names like Democrats for Life and previously pro-life politicians like Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebr.) and Rep. Bart Stupak (R-Mich.) (both since retired due to their pro-Obamacare votes) insisting there was no abortion funding in Obamacare.  After the vote Senator Nelson even gave me a large notebook that he insisted proved there was no abortion funding in the health care law. (a closer look at the documents in the notebook merely showed groups like the aforementioned Democrats for Life insisting there wasn’t any abortion funding – but offering little proof.

 

Despite their insistence though these politicians and groups with previously stellar records hurt their reputation more than they convinced anyone that Obamacare was abortion-free.  So at the time of the vote – what did pro-lifers know that others did not?

 

This isn’t merely a political exercise.  Shortly after the 2010 elections, one of those many Members of Congress who lost their seat in Congress because of his vote for Obamacare decided to sue the organization he thought mainly responsible – Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List).  Try to ignore the absurdity of a politician suing because lost his election and instead look at what the politician, former Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-esperate), is arguing.  SBA List was preparing to run ads (pictured below) that said that Rep. Driehaus voted for taxpayer funded abortions.  Their evidence was that he voted for Obamacare so thus voted for taxpayer funding of abortion.  Rep. Driehaus actually filed a claim before the election and then refiled again after he lost.

 

From the SBA List press release:

 

In January 2013, the SBA List won its related two year court battle with Driehaus, who had also filed a defamation suit alleging that SBA List cost him his job and a “loss of livelihood,” when the district court held that SBA List’s statements about Driehaus’ vote in favor of Obamacare were not defamatory. Driehaus filed an appeal from the dismissal in February, which remains pending.

 

Under a most likely unconstitutional Ohio state law Rep. Driehaus sued, saying that SBA List was lying.  In their defense and at the request of Doug Johnson at National Right to Life (who filed his own affidavit), I filed an affidavit with the court that argued that the health care law funds abortion.  In retaliation Rep. Driehaus tried to subpoena the email records of myself, Doug Johnson and, just to prove it was a random fishing exhibition, an employee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. 

 

In a normal world one would think that a Member of Congress suing because he lost an election under the grounds he lost his livelihood would, who granted cert on Friday.  Looking at the case it is more a case on free speech as it is on abortion – however proving SBA List lied would certainly hurt their case.  The thing is they didn’t.

 

Rereading my affidavit (which I had many smarter minds helping me out on) a lot of what is now proven fact was what we were arguing before the bill was even implemented.  This is true if you look at the arguments from most pro-life groups from National Right to Life, Americans United for Life, and so on.  Even the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who supported government sponsored universal health care, had the same arguments on abortion funding. 

 

In the affidavit it covers abortion in the Exchanges (pg 2, Section 8), slush funds (pg 4, Section 16), multi-state plans (pg 5, Section 17) and the abortifacient mandate (pg 5, Section 19).  The affidavit also reminded me that most pro-abortion groups agreed there was abortion funding in the bill as well (pg 4.  Section 15.)

 

So how did so many pro-lifers see the multitude of abortion funding sources and others did not?  One big difference between those fighting against Obamacare and those fighting for it was that those fighting against it actually read the bill and could figure out what was in it.

A recent story in an unlikely place, the Washington Post, highlights a number of problems with the pro-abortion movement worldwide.  The most blatant of course is how most advocates for abortion ignore places like China where U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing forced abortions and sterilizations.  Even when stories come out of how this policy is mostly affecting the poor in China who cannot afford the steep fines (7.49 million yuan (HK$ 9.59 million) in one case for simply having three children, two over the China legal limit).

 

See what else you can find in these excerpts of the Post article:

 

BEIJING — When her mind is clear, Gong Qifeng can recall how she begged for mercy. Several people pinned her head, arms, knees and ankles to a hospital bed before driving a syringe of labor-inducing drugs into her stomach.

 

She was seven months pregnant with what would have been her second boy. The drugs caused her to have a stillborn baby after 35 hours of excruciating pain. She was forced to have the abortion by officials in China’s southern province of Hunan in the name of complying with national limits on family size.

 

“It was the pain of my lifetime, worse than the pain of delivering a child. You cannot describe it,” Gong, 25, said in a recent interview in Beijing. “And it has become a mental pain. I feel like a walking corpse.”

 

Since the abortion more than two years ago, Gong has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. She traveled with her husband to the capital to demand help paying for her treatment, but she ended up being hauled away in her pajamas by police, a detention recorded on video by The Associated Press.

 

Forced abortions are considered an acceptable way of enforcing China’s population limits, but they are banned when the woman is more than five months pregnant. Yet no one has been held accountable for Gong’s late-term abortion, and other women in similar cases also struggle to get justice and compensation. . . .

 

Although China in November announced an easing of its “one-child” policy to allow more couples to have a second child, the overall system remains in place and local governments are still required to keep to population quotas. The new policy would not have applied to Gong because it allows couples to have a second child only if both the mother and father have no siblings.

 

“The system has not changed at all,” said Liang Zhongtang, a demographer at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. “It still forbids you from having more children than permitted by the government, so the game — and forced later-term abortions — are unavoidable if you want to have children the government does not allow.” . . .

 

Wu said his wife was different after the abortion. She easily burst into tears, picked fights with him, punched at him and their son and refused contact with others. In May 2013, about 18 months after the abortion, a doctor diagnosed her with schizophrenia, he said.

 

The majority of the article shows the tremendous, and at times arbitrary, results of China’s “birth control” policy – though nowhere in the article does it go into the U.S. involvement or that china in some ways is merely fulfilling Margaret Sanger, the “mother” of legal abortion in the United States, dream. 

 

Two other points of interest stand out from the above excerpts though.  One is the obvious psychological damage Gong Qifeng’s abortion had on her.  While some of that might be dismissed by the violence surrounding her abortion, numerous studies have found that women even under “optimal” surroundings suffer psychological trauma and/or aftereffects following an abortion, for, in truth, every abortion is violent. 

 

Secondly China, a near abortion utopia, actually bans late term abortions.  Here in the United States we are just starting the legislative debate if such human life should be protected – in fact we are one of the most liberal countries when it comes to killing the unborn.  The U.S. is one of only four nations permitting abortion for any reason after viability.  In fact most nations prohibit abortion after 14 weeks of gestation. However, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada do not.

 

So I stand corrected it is not only China that is a “near abortion utopia” – the United States is on the precipice of being one, despite having a pro-life majority among its populace.  It is long overdue that our legislative and government policies, and the politicians who write and enforce those policies, stand up for the human dignity of all human beings, regardless of age.  It is not only the will of the people but the right thing to do.

This morning there is a hearing on H.R. 7, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.   While abortion itself is a divisive issue (with a majority of Americans being pro-life), most people agree that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for it.  A CNN poll from April 11, 2011 found that 61% of Americans oppose using public funds for abortion and a Quinnipiac University poll from January 2010 found that 67% of Americans opposed funding abortion.   Here is our primer on the legislation.  Please call your Member of Congress to support H.R. 7 and call for a vote soon on the legislation.

 

Get American Taxpayers Out of the Abortion Industry!

 

H.R. 7, The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act was introduced by Pro-life Caucus Co-Chairs Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Dan Lipinski (D-IL) and would establish a government-wide permanent prohibition on funding for elective abortion and insurance coverage that includes elective abortion.  It would also close abortion-funding loopholes created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), prohibit tax-preferred status for abortion through health savings accounts (and other similar arrangements) and itemized deductions.

 

No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act would not affect either the ability of an individual to pay for an abortion (or for abortion coverage) through private funds, or the ability of an entity to provide separate abortion coverage.  H.R. 7 does not affect funding for family planning services.

 

At the end of Title I of the U.S. Code, the legislation would add the Hyde Amendment that now covers programs funded through the Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill, the Act also would make permanent such laws as the Helms Amendment (no funds for abortion as a method of family planning overseas) and the Smith Amendment (no funds for health plans covering elective abortions for federal employees).

 

Statistics bolster the argument that direct federal funding for abortion increases the number of abortions performed.

 

• In 1993, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the Federal Government would pay for as many as 675,000 abortions annually were the Hyde Amendment and other measures not in place to prevent taxpayer funding of abortion in government supported programs.

 

• According to a 2007 Guttmacher report, the Hyde Amendment ban on federal funding for abortion has prevented between “18-35%” of women from having an abortion. In other words, unrestricted federal funding for abortion will increase the number of women obtaining an abortion by an average of 25%.

 

• Researchers at the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that Obamacare will lead to 71,000 to 115,000 more publically funded abortions per year.

 

Regardless of one’s views on protecting life in the womb a large majority of Americans agree taxpayers should not be paying for abortions. 

 

Abortion, plain and simple, is the taking of an innocent life and is opposed by a large majority of Americans.  H.R. 7 gets the federal government out of directly funding the abortion industry and should be passed immediately.