The Protect Life Amendment creates constitutional neutrality on abortion
Is it possible Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz and Lina-Maria Murillo haven’t read the wording of the Protect Life Amendment? I pose the question after reading their uninformed piece, “An abortion ban? Now? Are you serious, Iowa GOP?”
Constitutional neutrality on abortion
The proposed amendment simply returns the Iowa Constitution to the abortion-neutral status it held prior to a 2018 Iowa Supreme Court decision. Let’s clear the air by simply reading the two sentences that comprise the Amendment:
“To defend the dignity of all human life, and to protect mothers and unborn children from efforts to expand abortion even to the day of birth, we the people of Iowa declare: Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to recognize, grant, or secure a right to abortion or require the public funding of it.”
In other words, it returns the regulation of human abortion to the People’s elected representatives in our state legislature, as explicitly stated in the Roe v Wade decision, to which Mss. Fixmer-Oraiz and Murillo refer. Let’s revisit Roe’s language:
[The state] “has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman’s health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a “compelling” point at various stages of the woman’s approach to term.”
An ironic smear
The writers, whom the piece identify as scholars of reproductive history, veered beyond their area of expertise by suggesting pro-lifers are tainted by ‘white supremacy,’ a particularly ironic smear in light of the carnage wrought on the African-American community by abortion. Although blacks represent but 13% of our nation’s population, they endure 36% of all abortions.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been in the news a lot lately. They tell us that human abortion kills more black human beings than HIV, murder, diabetes, accident, cancer, and heart disease … combined.
In other words, human abortion is a human rights issue when one group is so disproportionally affected, as seen by a declining birth rate below replacement levels for black America.
As black pastor and founder of Black genocide.org., Clenard Childress, Jr., warned:
So, for the sake of honesty, let’s drop the disingenuous ‘white racism’ canard from the conversation when discussing the honorable pro-life movement.
The two scholars of reproductive health history make a point in acknowledging the rare violence perpetrated in the name of the pro-life cause. In fact, eleven people were killed in abortion clinics between 1993 and 2015 by unhinged individuals, whose actions were clearly not ‘pro-life.’ The pro-life movement is a peaceful movement. We renounce violence.
Human abortion is founded on violence
By contrast, human abortion is founded on violence. Sixty million human beings have been aborted since Roe. The procedure is gruesome; the goal is the death of a unique human life who happens to live in a womb.
The CDC reports that 5597 abortions took place in the U.S. in 2015 when the unborn person was 21 weeks or older in the womb. Iowa law now protects these viable, unborn human beings, but without the Protect Life Amendment, this protection will be jeopardized.
And for the record, data from the Centers for Disease Control identify 362 deaths to babies that initially survived an abortion for the ten year period beginning in 2001, before being terminated or left to die. Talk about violence.
The Iowa legislature can juggle more than one ball at a time
Finally, Mss. Fixmer-Oraiz and Murillo are critical of the timing of the Protect Life Amendment debate, suggesting that for the first time in our state’s history, the Iowa legislature can’t deal with more than one issue at a time. Surely they understand that this process began last year before this season of unrest? Surely they understand that a pandemic suspended the legislative session until the past week? Yes, surely they do.
As things stand right now, only 13 states in the union have a lower abortion rate than Iowa. Without the Protect Life Amendment, that will change dramatically over time. The Protect Life Amendment creates Constitutional neutrality, allowing our elected representatives to regulate human abortion according to the desires of Iowans.
[The Iowa Senate has passed the Protect Life Amendment. The Iowa House has reconvened and is debating the language. The Amendment needs to pass both houses in consecutive legislative sessions, and then a vote of the people to amend the Iowa Constitution.]