In the closing days of a GOP-congress, Speaker Hastert & Co. tried to move an important piece of legislation: the “Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act” (HR6099). It may be the last piece of pro-Life legislation to reach the House floor for some time to come.

In order to get a vote in the closing hours, Hastert had to use special rules requiring a 2/3 vote in order to achieve passage. Unfortunately, the measure received only a strong majority: 250 – to – 162. Idaho’s Mike Simpson supported the measure, while Congressman Butch Otter missed the vote because of his preparations for assuming Idaho’s governorship in January.

The legislation would have required abortionists to tell women considering an abortion at 20 weeks or later that their baby was “likely to suffer severe pain” during the horrific techniques used these days to kill babies in the womb in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters. Abortionists would then have to offer pain medications for the baby in order to ease their suffering.

The proposal engendered some strange reactions across the abortion spectrum.

Some pro-Lifers on the national scene opposed the bill out of fear that women would somehow be encouraged to kill their babies if they were able to comfort themselves with the knowledge that their baby didn’t suffer. To be honest – I believe this is strange thinking, maybe even troubling. It rings of a kind of twisted Puritanism, in which the guilt of the woman is paramount, rather than a simple compassion for the suffering innocent.

Furthermore – if maximum suffering by baby and mother were effective strategies for ending abortion – then we should have long ago been done with this barbarism.

Looked at from yet another perspective: Demanding that babies continue suffering the full brunt of our social practices suggests that some pro-Lifers are guilty of treating preborn children as mere means to some political goal – rather than ends in themselves. And is this not the very evil we seek to defeat?

A number of pro-abortions groups also played unusual roles in the debate. Planned Parenthood and NARAL refused to enter the fray, claiming they support giving women complete information about abortion and its consequences. We know from bitter and long experience that this is just propaganda – but I’ll concede it was a clever PR move by these groups given the long odds against passage.

If any good comes from this legislative action, it may be in educating people about the horrendous practices used to kill children in the womb – many of them more cruel than even the Partial Birth Abortion method so roundly denounced by a huge majority of Americans.

- David Ripley