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Mary Szoch | The Washington Stand
In the midst of a contentious election year, Democrats are desperate to convince voters that protecting women and protecting unborn children are mutually exclusive. This was the purpose of last week’s U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) hearing, “The Assault on Women’s Freedoms: How Abortion Bans Have Created a Health Care Nightmare Across America.”
Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) kicked off the meeting by implying that protecting children somehow harms mothers. “This morning, we will be holding a hearing to take a hard look at how this decision, the Dobbs decision, has impacted women,” he lamented.
Sanders was joined by Senator Patty Muray (D-Wash.), who also commented, “We take a close accounting of the trauma Republicans are inflicting on women and families across the country, and the damage they are doing to basic reproductive health care through their horrific anti-abortion crusade.”
But, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a medical doctor, quickly pointed out what Democrats were really trying to do. “It’s an election year in which a Democratic incumbent is running behind. A decision has been made to raise abortion to a high profile to change the setting to invite a lot of folks to put us on TV. It’s partisan politics being played out in a committee hearing.”
Cassidy then presented images of a child’s development inside the womb from ten to 41 weeks. “How can we dehumanize this?” Cassidy asked, “Can anyone say that that child is not a life?”
With Cassidy’s poster at the front of the hearing room, it was impossible for Democrats to argue explicitly that an unborn child was not a human being, so they chose a different form of dehumanization.
Democrat witness Dr. Nisha Verma argued, “I’m not at all saying that pregnancies don’t have value. That value is different for different people…”
What Verma failed to see is that a person’s location cannot determine her worth — a point driven home by the presence and testimony of abortion survivor and Republican witness, Melissa Ohden.
Ohden began her testimony by reminding senators that, “Babies survived abortions before Roe v. Wade, babies survived during Roe v. Wade, and babies are still surviving abortions no matter where or how the abortion was performed. These experiences highlight the fundamental and undeniable humanity of the preborn and the needs, fears, and experiences of their mothers.”
Ohden continued by telling the story of a woman named Evelyn whose attempt at chemical abortion failed twice. After the second failure, an abortion business that offered second trimester abortions connected her with an organization willing to pay for all her travel expenses, plus the $12,000 fee of a second trimester abortion that posed risks to Evelyn’s health.
Ohden asked, “Can you imagine a child in your own life being subjected to so-called medical interventions intended to weaken, starve, burn, or dismember them limb by limb until they die? This is the reality of abortion, and we should be ashamed of it.”
Ohden explained that Evelyn was found to be 32 weeks pregnant, and the abortion business’s doctors weren’t trained to carry out abortions after 24 weeks, so Evelyn gave birth to her daughter. She made an adoption plan that both can live with.
“The nightmare, here, is not abortion bans,” Ohden said, “the nightmare is that abortion continues to be aggressively promoted so that it is seen as the only option. Like a plane ticket and $12,000 for a late-term abortion…”
Ohden then challenged the Democratic senators to consider “how different women’s and children’s lives, families, and society could be if just as much money was spent to provide financial assistance, housing, education and employment support, child care, medical and mental health care.”
“This,” she said, “would lead to a new era of women’s empowerment that ends the generational trauma of abortion.”
Abortion is not the solution to the problems women are facing. It kills a beautiful, irreplaceable human being and is a pathway to both physical and mental health challenges and heartbreak for that child’s mom. Women need tangible health care and support.
Attempting to win critical votes for November, Democrats spent the HELP hearing arguing that the best option for a woman to succeed is to kill her unborn child. Pro-lifers, on the other hand, offered real help and demonstrated a willingness to do whatever possible to care for both mothers and their children. Let’s pray that at the ballot box, Americans recognize which kind of “help” mothers and their children deserve.
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON STAND
This article was written with the help of Family Research Council interns Adam Opp and Josiah Sullivan.
Mary Szoch is the Director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council.
