By Cheryl Sullenger
thousandsdieneedlesslyWashington, DC — Pro-life groups plan a sit-in demonstration at the Washington, D.C. office of House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday to protest the delay in a promised vote on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. This legislation would ban unpopular late-term abortions after 20 weeks in every state.
The event, known as #FreeTheBan, will take place on Wednesday, March 25, at 11:00 A.M. at Sen. Boehner’s office located in the Longworth House Office Building. The sit-in will be led by Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, Blogger Jill Stanek of JillStanek.com, and Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue.
Last week, Mahoney, Stanek, and Newman sent a letter to Sen. Boehner expressing disappointment that a promised a vote on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act did not take place on January 22, 2015, as planned. Assurances were given that the legislation would be slightly revised and a vote rescheduled “immediately.”
Now, two months later, there is still no scheduled vote on this important law that will protect women from traumatic late-term abortions and save the lives of thousands of babies each year from a barbaric and painful death.
Jill Stanek, a noted pro-life speaker and blogger and former Registered Nurse, noted her reasons for risking arrest to force this Late-term abortion ban to a speedy vote.
“My entry into the pro-life movement was prompted by the fact I held a 21-week abortion survivor until he died. He would have been saved by this 20-week ban,” said Stanek. “I have determined now is a fitting time to leverage my experience – to refocus attention on the baby and to continue to memorialize his senseless death the best I know how.”
Rev. Mahoney states, “We are coming to Speaker Boehner’s office to be a voice for the innocent children who die every day in America from the violence of abortion and call upon him to schedule a vote on banning ALL abortions after 20 weeks. As we pray and peacefully risk arrest, we are saying that Republican leadership should cease all business in the House until this legislation has been rescheduled.”
Troy Newman agrees. “With the vast majority of Americans in opposition to late-term abortions, it is the duty of Congress to act immediately to protect these innocent human beings from a tortuous and grisly death,” he said. “It is time to relegate all abortions to the ash heap of history along with other forms of human rights abuses such as slavery and human sacrifice. Banning late-term abortions babies that can feel pain is a good place to start. It is a barbaric, outdated practice that has no place in civilized society.”
Operation Rescue has long worked to end the grisly practice of late-term abortions, even relocating to Wichita, Kansas, in 2002 to focus on closing Women’s Health Services, the largest late-term abortion facility outside Communist China. That effort resulted in a disciplinary petition seeking license revocation against late-term abortionist George Tiller that was pending at the time of his death. Operation Rescue’s complaint also resulted the license revocation of Tiller’s associate, Ann Kristen Neuhaus, for phony mental health diagnoses that were used by Tiller to justify otherwise illegal late-term abortions.
A full description of the Induction Abortion process that is currently employed by late-term abortionists is available at OperationRescue.org.
An event in 2009 led by Operation Rescue in Omaha, Nebraska, focused on preventing LeRoy Carhart from doing late-second and third trimester abortions there. That event prompted the first-ever Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection law in the United States. Later, Operation Rescue discovered Carhart’s plans to relocate his late-term abortion business to Germantown, Maryland, and helped organize pro-life opposition that continues to save late-term babies from a barbaric and painful death.
Operation Rescue continues to expose abortion abuses at Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is now the largest late-term abortion facility in the U.S., and has supported efforts to ban the horrific practice of aborting babies in the later terms of pregnancy in that state.
Operation Rescue’s reporting from the trial of the notorious Pennsylvania late-term abortionist and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell along with revelations of horrific late-term abortion practices uncovered by Operation Rescue at a Houston, Texas abortion facility prompted the passage of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in the U.S. House 2013, but was killed in the Democratically controlled Senate that year.
So far, ten states have passed bans on abortions after 20 weeks when babies are known to feel pain. Twenty-one states have restricted abortion after viability. A federal ban is the fastest way to end late-term abortions in all states and put an end to this form of human rights abuse once and for all.
More about the #FreeTheBan protest and how to participate can be found at https://www.facebook.com/events/815628878485325.