The Kansas legislature has begun consideration of SB 95, the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act. This measure, the number one legislative priority of Kansans for Life, would ban abortions that "dismember" a living unborn child...one piece at a time...through the use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors or similar instruments. Not surprisingly, at the initial Senate Health committee hearing Monday on SB 95, "pro-choice" conferees:
- did not identify themselves as "pro-dismemberment;"
- did not talk about the cruelty of unborn children getting torn apartpiece by piece;
- did not explain that the dismemberment abortion method is preferred as cheaper and faster than other methods and circumvents a labor and delivery experience.
Instead, abortion supporters tried to do what defense lawyers do for a guilty client-change the focus to some other subject. In this case the topic was changed to accusing Kansas and other pro-life states of policies that hurt women and children.
Playing the role of lead defense attorney was Julie Burkhart, Wichita abortion business owner, and promoter of the 'George Tiller- Trust Women legacy.'
Burkhart brandished a pseudo-report with selective categories and benchmarks to back up her accusation that states enacting significant pro-life laws are hostile to the best interests of women and children. The "IBIS Report" [see here, executive summary here] advances an agenda in which topics like smoking rates, all day kindergarten, minimum wage, and prisoner shackling are the critical issues defining good government.
The IBIS indicators of Women and Children's Health are selected to advance an anti-life perspective. Moreover, whenever Kansas statistics surpass the national average, somehow the IBIS benchmark is inexplicably just a few tenths of a percentage point away. This is a desperate grasping at straws to denigrate the pro-life agenda, and yet it is the last defense for pro-abortionists as the public comes to apprehend the barbaric cruelty of abortion.
In the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, dismemberment abortions cause unborn children to "bleed to death as an adult would do." That is a cruelty that a civilized society must confront.
But such is not the case in Burkhart's world, where children only matter after they are born, and only suffer when it advances a
particular political agenda.