If St. John Paul II was right in Evangelium Vitae (and he most assuredly was), this has been a most remarkable week not just for life, but also for democracy, in the United States.
There were, of course, the hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers who showed up in D.C. to march in the bitter cold to defend the right to life of the unborn – one of the largest crowds I’ve ever seen. But while their presence was expected (pro-lifers have been doing it for 45 years after all) there were a series of additional, and wholly welcome, surprises.
One such was the vote by the U.S. House of Representatives on the same day as the March to pass H.R. 4712, also known as the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, by a vote of 241-183. The bill clarifies that any baby that survives a botched abortion must be given the same care as any other baby that is born alive.
Sadly, such a law is still needed. Too few people know that President Obama repeatedly and unapologetically voted against a similar bill when he was a senator in Illinois. This was despite eye-witness testimony from a nurse in Illinois that living, born babies were in fact being abandoned to die. And even now, gruesome reports routinely emerge of similar instances happening in abortion facilities across the country.
Then, of course, there was President Trump’s extremely encouraging speech to the March for Life. Not only did Trump urge Congress to pass another crucial pro-life bill – the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act – and put it on his desk, but he powerfully affirmed the fundamental goodness of the pro-life cause. “We are protecting the sanctity of life and the family as the foundation of our society,” Trump said, “but this movement can only succeed with the heart and the soul and the prayer of the people.” . . .
