by Bob Vander Plaats
The abortion debate in America has changed. And it’s suddenly way more radical than you may realize.
Last Friday, Nancy Pelosi and the U.S. House passed a bill (cosponsored by Iowa’s Rep. Cindy Axne) that would legalize any and every abortion – even gruesome, late-term abortions up to the day of a baby’s birth – in every state in the nation.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have similarly, when senators, co-sponsored bills that specifically allow abortion “at any time” in pregnancy, so long as the abortionist agrees it is for the mother’s “health” (a term so vague, it offers little protection for the baby whose “health” is being terminated).
And in 2018 the Iowa Supreme Court handed down a radical ruling that paves the way for late-term abortions to begin in Iowa and forcing us, the taxpayers, to pay for it.
It’s no mere talking point, no scare tactic, no longer anything but obvious. They’ve said it and their votes are on record: America’s leading leftists want every abortion legal, even those that snuff out a baby’s life seconds before she takes her first breath.
It’s a radical position. To most Americans, it’s a horrifying position.
And last Saturday, the Des Moines Register released a poll that revealed how strongly Iowans oppose such extremes. Even most pro-choice Iowans, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin in the Register poll, disagree with Pelosi, Axne, Biden, and our state’s Supreme Court.
If you add in the pro-lifers, according to the Register poll, a whopping 80 percent of Iowans disagree with this direction.
And Iowa is an outlier: A national Marist poll taken in January revealed that even pro-choice and Democrat respondents disagreed with this radical new direction at a nearly 3-to-1 clip. Our leaders are wildly out of step, not only with Iowa values, but even with members of their own party.
We are way past Roe v. Wade now. Biden, Pelosi, Axne, and a radical ruling of the Iowa Supreme Court have taken a position so extreme it asserts that no unborn life is worth protecting.
Here’s the reality: Even among those who feel abortion is a woman’s private decision, the vast majority of us know that at some point, that growing life in a mother’s womb is more than just a fingernail to be casually clipped. Maybe that point is when a growing child in the womb can first feel pain. Maybe it’s when she’s sucking her thumb and kicking her mother’s belly. Maybe it’s when her heart starts beating. I believe that life begins at conception and that the science confirms it. But at some point – though we may disagree when, at some point – that little one is a baby.
And our leaders – in all three branches of government – are perfectly OK with killing her, baby or no.
Are you? Really?
No, at some point, a baby is a baby and no longer just a “choice.” Even the judges who wrote Roe v. Wade recognized at some point a baby’s right to life should be taken into account – they just couldn’t figure out when.
But we are way past Roe v. Wade now. Biden, Pelosi, Axne, and a radical ruling of the Iowa Supreme Court have taken a position so extreme it asserts that no unborn life is worth protecting.
Look at an ultrasound – look at the images taken the day she’s scheduled to be born – do you agree? Is no life in the womb worth protecting? Ever?
This is why Iowa needs the Protect Life Amendment. The Amendment doesn’t say when a baby’s life is worth protecting – it leaves that debate to future Iowans. Instead, the Amendment simply affirms that at some point, life is worth protecting, and it was wrong of the unelected judges of Iowa’s Supreme Court to assert that any and every baby in the womb can be killed for any reason.
Iowans do not support Pelosi and Axne’s new brand of radical abortion extremism. We do not support this horrifying disregard for what’s obvious on the ultrasound.
Please join me instead in supporting the commonsense assertion that at some point, that baby deserves to be protected. Join me in supporting the Protect Life Amendment to the Iowa Constitution.
Bob Vander Plaats is president and CEO of The FAMiLY Leader, an Iowa-based Christian ministry working at the intersection of faith and government.
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