By CHRISTOPHER MANION
On September 7, Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn charged 30-year-old Andee Wright with second-degree murder. The New York mother was accused of killing her newborn son, whom she had carried to term, moments after his birth in October 2020. The body of the child was found in a garbage can in the basement of the woman’s home the next morning.
A grim story indeed. But if Nancy Pelosi’s new abortion bill had already been passed into law, Wright could be a free woman today. Under Pelosi’s law, all Wright needed to do was to enlist the services of a random medical “professional” — not necessarily a doctor — to abort her son the day before. Had the boy managed to be born alive, the rule of current Virginia Democrat governor and pediatrician Ralph Northam would have applied: Just “keep him comfortable” until he dies.
And the law would apply to any expectant mother and her child in any state of the union.
This is a grim story because it reflects a new low in the history of the United States Congress. On September 24, by a vote of 218 to 211, the House of Representatives passed HR 3755, the “Women’s Health Protection Act.”
It was a Congressional Declaration of War on life.
“Nothing Short Of Child Sacrifice”
San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone said the Women’s Health Protection Act allowed “nothing short of child sacrifice.” It is “surely the type of legislation one would expect from a devout Satanist, not a devout Catholic,” he added. Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann, who chairs the Pro-Life Committee of the USCCB, called it “most extreme pro-abortion bill our nation has ever seen.”
That didn’t matter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who corralled all of her fellow Catholic Democrats, save one, to vote in favor of the bill.
The outlier was Cong. Henry Cuellar of Texas. Cuellar joined the unanimous Republicans to vote against the bill, immediately prompting pro-abortion groups nationwide to throw their support behind his feminist opponent. They will meet in next year’s Democrat primary in Texas’ 28th congressional district.
Pelosi’s bill is not only radical, it is historic, and truly revolutionary.
The bill’s sponsors insist that the text merely “codifies” Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that overturned pro-life legislation in dozens of states. But that assertion is beyond deceptive. In fact, the bill mandates what its authors wish the Supreme Court had said in 1973.
HR 3755 bars any and all state legislation restricting abortion, up to, through, and beyond birth. It outlaws waiting periods, informed consent, and conscience rights. All hospitals are required to provide abortions, and medical personnel cannot be exempted on the basis of conscience rights. Parents will have no right to withhold consent for their minor daughters’ abortions because they have no right to be informed about them. If the mother is uninsured or on welfare, the U.S. taxpayer will pick up the tab for the abortion.
The Lay Of The Land — And The Laity
It’s getting clearer every day. Put plainly, Democrats have become the party of the Culture of Death. One wonders, why do our bishops find it so hard to confront them? Why are Archbishops Naumann and Cordileone not joined by a unanimous chorus of resounding “Amens!” from the American hierarchy?
Some history might help.
Like me, most of our bishops grew up in the ’50s and ’60s. And like me, most of them grew up in Democrat families.
Why?
Tradition. In generations past, America’s bishops had been strong supporters of Wilson, FDR, and JFK, all of them Democrat presidents. By the time today’s bishops entered the seminary in the 1970s, being a Democrat was bred in the bone.
In 2007, Catholic historian James Hitchcock told The Wanderer that, even then, most pro-lifers were Democrats — even those who had voted for Republicans because of their opposition to abortion.
Indeed, many pro-lifers never left the Democrat fold (take my family: my father published Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative in 1960; when he died nineteen years later, he was still a Democrat.)
My, how things have changed.
The Road Ahead
The legislation is unlikely to be approved by the Senate, but the Democrats’ message is clear: Their candidates on the national, state, and local level will either endorse abortion wholeheartedly, or they will be defeated.
The Texas heartbeat bill has inspired similar proposals in dozens of states across the nation. They all have one thing in common: If a Democrat supporter of any heartbeat bill runs for any office, his own party will try to defeat him in the primary. Pro-lifers are now faced with the sad fact that, when it comes to political parties, there is no alternative regarding candidates and officeholders regarding abortion.
And who will lead us? Let’s face it. Since its beginning, the pro-life movement has been inspired and led by the laity.
There’s still a lot of work to do. And it’s up to us.
Detritus
The collapse of U.S. policy in Afghanistan will continue to have repercussions for years to come. In recent weeks, the pro-war coalition has struggled to reconvene.
On October 18, former President George W. Bush and his longtime aide, Karl Rove, will host a fundraiser for Cong. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.). She is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who directed the war efforts from the Bush White House.
Cong. Cheney voted for the impeachment of former President Trump last year, and now sits as an ally of Nancy Pelosi on the Democrats’ “January 6” caucus on Capitol Hill. Donald Trump has endorsed Cheney’s primary opponent, Republican National Committeewoman Harriet Hageman, and the appearance of Bush and Rove reflect the seriousness of both the Hageman challenge and the survival of the longer-term Bush-Cheney legacy of Wars for Democracy abroad and “Big Government Conservatism” at home. That legacy was one of candidate Donald Trump’s prime targets in his 2016 presidential campaign.
Other veterans of the war effort — “armchair veterans,” to be sure — have also made news recently. On Tuesday, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, running for another term in office, debated Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin. When McAuliffe bragged that Bill Kristol, “the leading conservative in America” supported him, the crowd erupted in laughter.
Kristol’s fellow neoconservative Mona Charen, still touting her pro-life bona fides, endorsed pro-abort McAuliffe in the same spirit she had endorsed pro-abort Joe Biden: She can’t stand Donald Trump. Trump had scathingly attacked them in 2016, and neither Kristol nor Charen has recovered. They dutifully carry on the tattered tradition of the neocons: They’re always wrong. They always blame somebody else. And they never, ever, apologize.
Also here in Virginia: Two years ago this week, French teacher Peter Vlaming was fired from his position in Williamsburg Public Schools. When one of his students “decided to identify as the opposite sex, Peter did everything he could to accommodate this student,” says the Alliance Defense Fund, who has taken Peter’s case. “He used the student’s preferred male name, while avoiding the use of pronouns altogether.”
That wasn’t enough. “Peter was given an ultimatum: Use male pronouns for this female student or lose your job,” the ADF reports. When Vlaming refused, he was summarily fired by the school board.
Virginia has become a national focal point of the firestorm surrounding radical school boards and their “gender” agendas. Next month’s elections in Virginia will decide not only who sits in the governor’s mansion, but also the entire membership of the House of Delegates and half of the State Senate, both of which currently boast Democrat majorities.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress