Council Bluffs, Iowa – Pro-life supporters packed a Council Bluffs City Council meeting last night to voice opposition to the announced plans of late-term abortionist Leroy Carhart, who has said he wants to open up a late-term abortion mill there.
Carhart has been forced to seek other locations for his late-term abortion business after Nebraska passed a fetal pain bill that banned abortions after 20 weeks when the pre-born baby is believed to feel pain. Carhart is also interesting in taking over an existing abortion mills in Indiana, where he was worked part-time for years, and Maryland.
“Carhart is desperate to relocate his late-term abortion business, because that is the only way he can make money,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “Carhart is a notoriously poor businessman who seems to be in constant financial distress. He doesn’t have the money to open in Council Bluffs right now, and this strong show of community opposition will make it even harder for him to move there, if he ever were to get the money.”
Iowa Right to Life and other groups mobilized over 300 people to turn out to the meeting after rumors began to circulate that Carhart may have been interested in purchasing a city-owned lot for his proposed new Council Bluffs clinic.
The City Council voted to sell the property only with the condition that it not be used for an abortion clinic.
While Carhart continues to raise money for a Council Bluffs abortion mill, which he says is tentatively scheduled to open in January, Mayor Tom Hanafan told the crowd at last evening’s meeting that no one has approached the city for the needed permits for an abortion clinic.
During the meeting, Councilman Mike Shultz stated that the council had over the years tried to make the community a “positive place to work and live,” adding, “I think the council is unified on this. We’ll try to do what we can to prevent this type of activity.”
Last year, Carhart vowed to open a late-term abortion clinic within 25 miles of Wichita, Kansas, but failed to do so when Operation Rescue successfully blocked his efforts there.
Operation Rescue continues to work through peaceful, legal means to insure that Carhart’s efforts to replant his failing abortion business elsewhere do not succeed.
Were there to be no support in the whole history of ethical and moral thought, were there no acknowledged confirmation from medical science, were the history of legal opinion to the contrary, we would still have to conclude on the basis of God's Holy Word that the unborn child is a person in the sight of God. He is protected by the sanctity of life graciously given to each individual by the Creator, Who alone places His image upon man and grants them any right to life which they have.