I’m sorry I’ve abandoned the blog for a month. Now it’s back. There’s way too much to talk about. Sorry for going away. In the meantime, I was doing a lot of pro-life advocacy.
The BIG news is that The Senate was unable to get enough votes for cloture to end the filibuster on the Child Interstate Notification Abortion Act before the Congress recessed. The bill would have required any abortionist in any state to notify a parent before performing an abortion on a minor from another state. It would also have prohibited transportation of minors across state lines to obtain abortions to evade the parent's right to be notified in the home state. 60 votes were needed. The vote to end the filibuster was 57-42. 51 of 55 Republican Senators, along with 6 of 45 Democrats, voted to end the filibuster. 8 of the 14 Democrats, who voted for the legislation in a previous form, switched their vote and supported the filibuster.
Here are a few things to note. Most kids who get pregnant, a little over 60 percent, become pregnant by adults, not their peers. Statutory rapists routinely use abortion clinics to cover up their sexual crimes. Abortion clinics are notorious for not reporting.
Mark Crutcher and Life Dynamics called over 800 abortion clinics a few years ago. A woman pretending to be a 13 year old girl fearing that she was pregnant by her 22 year old boyfriend-whom she said she wanted to protect, was told by over 90 percent of these clinics that they would not tell, did not have to report the boyfriend, or they would counsel her on how to evade parental notification laws. Crutcher told our radio audience that it is clear from the calls and abortion clinic literature that these calls are not unusual to abortion clinics and they know how to handle them. There’s big bucks to be made from teen and pre-teen girls who may or may not be pregnant. They are not going to tell. The senators know this. But 42 voted against it.
The failure to vote for cloture and vote on the bill says a lot. It says that for a large group of people (not all or even most pro-choice identified people), the most important thing is not the safety of the child or the well being of the family, but the fact that she got an abortion. If your kid is afraid you’ll be mad, or embarrassed, or she is being manipulated by a man or the boy’s mother, too bad. Don’t depend on the authorities. It’s your fault. You don't have a right to know.
This isn’t about choice or kid’s health. It’s about making sure that we don’t have a bunch of “unwanted” kids running wild through our cities with teenage mothers.
How else do you explain the votes? There were exceptions for health emergencies, for one parent not notifying another, a judicial bypass and if she said she was sexually or physically abused by her parents or neglected by them, the abortionist would have to notify authorities in her home state, not tell the parents. All the objections were met. The senators chose to shill for the financial interests of the abortion industry instead of standing for families and child safety.
