Lawmakers in Maryland are considering a couple of bills that would restrict abortion once an unborn is old enough to feel pain.
Abortion interests predictably oppose them, but an expert with the American Center for Law and Justice delivered a blunt message to lawmakers in the northeastern state.
“Like a nightmarish scene from the Dark Ages, this is nothing more than execution by torture. It is disgusting and it must end,” said Benjamin Sisney of the American Center for Law and Justice.
He was dispatched to appear before a committee of the Maryland legislature in support of the pro-life bills.
“The bill I presented testimony about was Maryland HB 975, courageously sponsored by Delegate Robin Grammer along with 22 other delegates,” he said. “Put simply, this bill restricts abortions once the unborn baby is developed enough to feel pain. As I explained to the committee, it is undeniable that medical science shows that babies feel pain by at least 20 weeks post-fertilization (22 weeks gestational age) – yet Maryland continues to allow unquestionably painful and torturous abortion procedures on these helpless children.”
The proposal is constitutional, since the Supreme Court has ruled that legislatures can restrict abortions once children are viable, he said.
“Think about it – doctors give unborn children anesthesia for in utero surgery. But abortionists are allowed to rip a baby apart, even though they are old enough that we know they feel pain,” he said in an online report.
“We must continue to demand that our states stop these barbaric procedures. We must urge our lawmakers to face the truth about abortion,” he said.
“Advocates for the abortion industry were there in Maryland, too. But they had no real answers to counter the testimony of witness after witness who described the horror and terror abortion imposes upon women and children. If I could sum up what the Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and NARAL Pro Choice America lobbyists told the committee members in one statement, it is this: These pro-life bills are bad because they would decrease the number of abortions. In other words, these bills were bad for business,” he said.
Sisney said the abortion industry is based on “death and profits.”
In his testimony to the lawmakers in Maryland, he explained the bills simply would protect viable babies.
“Viability means the ability to survive outside the womb, including with proper medical care. A study from a few years ago found that actively treated newborns as early as 22 weeks gestational age were surviving,” ACLJ said.
“Even if Supreme Court precedent supporting this bill did not exist, there would still be solid grounds to uphold the constitutionality of the bill. In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the Supreme Court ruled that its past precedent ‘confirms the state’s interest in promoting respect for human life at all stages of the pregnancy.’ As Justice Kennedy wrote in his dissent in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), a dissent subsequently vindicated in Gonzales, ‘States also have an interest in forbidding medical procedures which, in the state’s reasonable determination, might cause the medical profession or society as a whole to become insensitive, even disdainful, to life, including life in the human fetus.”
He told the lawmakers: “Common abortion methods are barbaric, and it is preposterous to think that anything resembling common abortion methods would be allowed by law on anyone outside the womb. The thought that these procedures are allowed by law on the most helpless – unborn children – is unconscionable. It can be no coincidence that its victims have no voice in the political process. As such, abortion is, by its very nature, a procedure that tortures and kills a live human being – an unborn child who is sufficiently developed to feel pain. Thus, it is plainly a procedure that fosters insensitivity to, and disdain for, the life in the womb. If torturing animals is inhumane, so much more so is torturing unborn human children to death.”
