Washington D.C., Apr 9, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- The U.S. bishops have urged support for legislation to limit abortion on the same day as abortion survivor Melissa Ohden appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Ohden testified before the committee Tuesday during hearings on the Pain-Capable Child Protection Act, telling senators that “abortion doesn’t spare a child from suffering, it causes suffering.”
“I have lived every day since discovering the truth about my survival at the age of 14 knowing that, sadly, children just like me are being subjected to similarly horrific, painful abortion procedures that lead to their death,” she said.
The bill would prohibit abortion after the 20th week of a pregnancy, at which point there is broad consensus that unborn babies are capable of feeling pain.
Ohden survived a saline-infusion abortion when she was at 31 weeks’ gestation. She said her birthmother, who was a teenager, was pressured into having an abortion she did not want.
Five days after being injected with the saline solution, Ohden’s mother gave birth to her. She weighed only 2 pounds and 14 ounces.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop’s pro-life comittee, said that the bill highlights the “shameful reality that the United States is one of only seven nations worldwide that allows the barbaric practice of late-term abortion, when a child likely feels pain and might even live outside the womb with appropriate medical assistance.”
The legislation was introduced by committee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has sponsored similar legislation each year since 2013.
“I don’t believe abortion five months into the pregnancy makes us a better nation. America’s at her best when she’s standing up for the least among us,” said Graham during the hearing.
During her own opening remarks, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) accused Graham of trying to play politics with women’s health, and that the bill itself is unconstitutional.
“The Supreme Court has made clear, repeatedly, that laws banning abortion before viability are unconstitutional,” Feinstein said, noting that similar state-level bans at 20 weeks have been struck down.
Ohden offered the senators a graphic account of how saline abortions like the one she survived are intended to kill the unborn child.
“As the toxic salt solution of the saline infusion abortion was injected into the amniotic fluid surrounding me in the womb, attempting to scald and poison me to death, I wonder how long it took for the pain to set in,” she said.
“If you read about it online or in medical journals, you will find children like me called the ‘red skinned,’ or ‘candy-apple babies,’ because that toxic solution would turn the skin bright red, as it peeled it away and moved internally into the organs.”
Ohden said that her medical records state that “a saline infusion for an abortion was done, but was unsuccessful,” meaning that she was born alive. A nurse noticed her breathing, she explained, and brought her to the neonatal intensive care unit. Only then was any effort made to reduce the amount of pain she was in.
“I can only imagine how my pain finally began to subside as medical treatment was provided to me,” she said.
Due to the effects of the abortion and premature birth, Ohden had numerous medical issues, including jaundice, seizures, and respiratory issues. She has since recovered, and says her life is “a set of many miracles.”
Ohden, the founder of the Abortion Survivors Network, said she has connected with 281 abortion survivors. She suspects there are many more abortion survivors, as proper statistics on aboriton survival are not kept.
“Every child deserves better than to suffer the pain of an abortion,” she said.
Archbishop Naumann said in a statement circulated by the U.S. Bishops Conference Tuesday that such procedures are dangerous to the woman, and noted that the vast majority of Americans are opposed to late-term abortions.
“It is time for Congress to pass this bill,” he said.
“I also pray that consideration of this bill moves our country closer to recognizing all unborn babies as legal persons worthy of our love and respect,” said Naumann.
The other six countries that permit late-term abortion are Canada, China, Netherlands, North Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam.
[…]
““As a founding principle of our country, we have always welcomed immigrant and refugee populations, and through the social services and good works of the Church, we have accompanied our brothers and sisters in integrating to daily American life,” Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the US bishops’ Comittee on Migration, said Jan. 2.”
Someone needs to take a remedial US history class.
SOL,
Which part of US history did you think they need a remedial class on?
Who are most Americans originally if not immigrants?
I’d agree it’s not correct to say that we have always, at all times welcomed immigrants and refugees but we certainly have done that selectively. And Catholics have for the greater part been among the groups of immigrants not warmly welcomed.
We need immigration to counteract the current birth dearth but we don’t have to have open borders or risk our national security. There should be a reasonable and humane approach to immigration.
Has it occurred to you that mass immigration is a cause of the drop in birthrates? By driving up the cost of living (housing, heath care, taxes, etc.), while depressing wages, it makes family formation so much more difficult.
Tony,
Birthrates are plummeting globally with or without immigration. Even government incentives to have a replacement level birthrate have failed.
Hungary is offering tax incentives for families and hopefully they’ll have some success.
Mrscracker,
The founding American people were not immigrants but colonists/settlers. They didn’t enter into a pre-existing polity and receive citizenship or some other form of membership from another people. The whole “America is a land of immigrants” myth was created by leftist subversives even if used by 20th ce nationalists for their own purposes after the fact, more than 3 centuries after the first British colonists started settling this country. Many of the founding fathers after the revolution even explicitly wrote on the question of whether anyone non-British should be allowed to immigrate to the US.
This original Anglo-American (and Protestant Christian) heritage and identity is what the left is trying to erase and unfortunately too many Catholic bishops are assisting in this, even if the bishops seek to replace it with some vague “Catholic” identity.
This system is currently in a stage of collapse, and continued immigration will further destabilization and increase the likelihood of wide-scale violence, regardless of how necessary believers in infinite economic growth say immigrants are for that.
SOL,
Good morning!
My daddy’s side of the family has been here for 400 years. I went to the UK a few years ago and visited the parish church of a 17th century colonial ancestor. In his memorial he’s referred to as “Henry the Immigrant” because he migrated to the American Colonies.
🙂
You know, the longer your ancestors have lived in North America the more likely you are to find non Anglo Saxon ancestry or ancestors who came as convicts. The American colonies were a dumping ground for thousands of British convicts until the Revolutionary War. After that, the British had to turn to Australia and Tasmania to dump their unwanted.
Beyond chattel slavery, folks of African ancestry have been here for 400 plus years. Many were free people of color and many intermarried with white colonists.
And of course, our American Indians have their own perspectives on immigration.
History is complicated and the more you look at it, the more humble you feel. Most of us have very modest beginnings and sometimes, we find very surprising narratives along the way.
Your argument seems to be that, since we are all the descendants of immigrants (in the broadest sense of the word), there is no justification for this nation (or really, any nation) to have a restrictive immigration policy. Apparently, this Ellis Island sentimentalism must override all other political, social, cultural and economic considerations. Does a country have a right to try to maintain its ethnic and cultural balance by limiting who is allowed in?
More mindless, liberal rubbish from bishops who seem utterly incapable of, not to mention unwilling to, speak in anything other than left wing cliches. Will they ever declare solidarity with the American people?
Looked up the bishop in question.
Wikipedia: Mario Eduardo Dorsonville-Rodríguez (born October 31, 1960) is a Colombian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Like Jose Gomez, another immigrant who is presumptuous enough to lecture Americans about American history and identity.
Thanks for the information. I suppose the good bishop has admonished the elites in Colombia on the need to clean up the corruption and to improve the nation’s economy that has apparently created such intolerable conditions.
Wish the bishops (and the nuns!!) would show a little solidarity with the dyslexic/dyscalculaic/etc community.
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Just because dyslexics frequently have high intelligence does not mean they all go to MIT and walk out with $75,000 starting income.
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Many suffer socially as well as educationally and the job situation upon adulthood can look bleak. As many prisoners are dyslexic, I think it is a good bet if it was caught early in school, we’d have fewer children in trouble and fewer adults in prison.
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I mean no ill will toward those looking for a better life, but we have plenty of hurting children/adults who were born here. Don’t they deserve the same concern?
Tony,
North Americans, with the exception of those descended from our Indian tribes, are all the product of quite diverse immigrant populations from the past 400-500 years. I dislike the term “diverse ” because it’s become a cliche, but it really does describe our immigrant history.
I don’t think race or ethnicity should even enter into a Catholic conversation regarding what to conserve in America. Color and ethnicity simply don’t signify but culture does.
A Judeo Christian culture is what conservative Christians and others should be concerned about preserving. Not Anglo Saxonism. Culture, not color is what’s critical.
And yes, I strongly believe that sovereign nations have a right to secure their borders and enforce immigration laws. And preserve their unique cultures. But you have to have enough population to ensure a functioning society to pass that culture down to. Societies that are ageing and not reproducing themselves won’t be capable of that and will eventually be replaced.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Immigrants – they are ambassadors of the Good News.
All of them? How so? In what way?