Texas

 

The importance of Texas’ HB2

By Dave Andrusko
Should Texas pass HB2—it’s already successfully negotiated unfriendly fire in the House and it’s now on to the Senate—the Lone Star state would be the tenth to enact a law to protect children who medical science shows can feel pain when aborted.

This is not to minimize or brush aside potential problems in the Senate, even though the body is peopled with good pro-lifers. Who would have thought an obscure pro-abortion state Senator could, in tandem, with a Senate gallery full of her people, derail the bill in the first Special Session?
That caution for the moment aside, let’s think about the significance of the second most populous state passing a law that both erects a shield around unborn babies who can feel pain (20 weeks and older) and demands that the “doctors” who ply their ugly trade in abortion clinics (which are forever touted its “concern” for women) have admitting privileges to a hospital within 30 miles in case there are complications. (And it is also hugely important for the safety of women that abortions be performed at an ambulatory surgical center.)

There are many considerations, here’s just four.
First, passage reinforces a message that pro-abortionists would agree with completely: in spite of the counsel of most of the media, pro-lifers are not about to curb our campaign to bring as much legal protection as we can to the littlest Americans. We will be told until the end of time that this “hurts” pro-life office holders. We will respond until the end of time that, for example, 62% of Texans support a ban on abortions after 20 weeks.

Second, pro-lifers in Texas could have become discouraged/knuckled under when state Senator Wendy Davis and the “mob” (Gov. Rick Perry’s apt description) pulled a fast one and prevented passage in the first Special Session. Instead, Gov. Perry called for a second Special Session and put right to life issues at the top. He and other pro-life leaders in Texas were not cowed by the avalanche of attacks masquerading as news stories.

Third, as we noted in a post earlier today, the percentage of self-identified pro-lifers continues to rise, rebounding from last year’s setbacks. The irony is almost enough to knock your socks off.

We are lectured incessantly that laws like Texas’ are “extreme,” but it precisely because those laws are in the mainstream that these pro-life numbers will go up. People WILL figure out that if to be “pro-choice” you have to allow unborn babies to be tortured and the door remain open for more Kermit Gosnells to walk through, they will say no!

Fourth and finally, what do the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell and the waves of publicity that have poured over HB2 have in common? What they don’t have in common is that Gosnell’s trial gathered only a small fraction of the attention it should have.
But what they do share is every time a pro-life member of a state legislative body—or the U.S. House of Representatives—tells the world that she or he will not rest until unborn babies capable of experiencing pain are protected, one more shaft of light shines on the darkness that hides the ugliness of abortion.

Source: NRLC News