Commentary: No more Minnesota nice

What I heard was a stunning callousness and disregard towards mothers and their vulnerable nascent children. 

The Minnesota State Capitol building in St. Paul, Minn. (Department of Administration/Flickr)

When testifying at a Minnesota Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing, it was difficult to think of those speaking in favor of abortion until birth as “Minnesota Nice.” What I heard was a stunning callousness and disregard towards mothers and their vulnerable nascent children.

The legislators who say they are “pro-choice” voted against an amendment that would have given women considering an abortion the option of seeing an ultrasound image.

A pro-life senator asked the pro-abortion bill author when an unborn baby becomes a person, and the response was, “Senator, I don’t think that’s an appropriate question. I will not answer that.”

Since babies in the womb feel pain, an amendment was made to require anesthesia so pain would be minimized. Another amendment was to ban partial-birth abortions. All the pro-abortion senators voted against the amendments.

There were several excellent public pro-life testimonies. Some shared their sorrow from previous abortions, and others talked about the humanity of the other human being. Dr. Peter Daly, a surgeon, spoke about how his 21-week-old grandson had in-utero surgery in the womb and had his own labs drawn and medical chart. He testified, “No human being has a right to exercise their autonomous decision to use health care if in doing so it is at the expense of another human being’s death. The mother’s reproductive health care rights do not supersede the right to life of a separate human being living in her womb.”

The last public testimony from an abortion supporter was heartbreaking. It was from a woman who was a successful business woman but not a successful mother for her third child. “I had an abortion due to Down Syndrome in our third child. It was our third child. It was a choice about what was best for our existing family and my existing two boys. I was lucky enough to go to a hospital for my care, have my pregnancy terminated by a professional and awake under a heated blanket. I am fully aware that others are not so lucky.” The woman initially referred to her aborted child as a “child,” but then her third child was described as a “pregnancy” that was terminated. Hopefully she will experience forgiveness for removing her third child from the family. Neither she nor her child was lucky.

The Senate author testified, “The purpose of the bill is to trust Minnesotans and to trust health care providers to make decisions about their own individual reproductive health care choices. I trust medical professionals to do their jobs in accordance with their own professional obligations.” The senator apparently never heard of the abortionist Kermit Gosnell and “trusts” that women will not be forced to have an abortion.

Below is the testimony that I provided. It didn’t seem to change any vote, which was 6-3 along party lines with the Democrats voting for unrestricted abortion until birth.

I’m speaking against SF 1 because directly attacking an innocent human being is never health care. Abortion does not heal a mother and her child.

Everyone in this room started life as a single cell human being. Your human existence started with that single cell. You went from nothing to everything with that first cell. Someday your existence on earth will end. 

I believe that when you die your life will be judged upon the decisions you made in this life. By voting for this bill you will have to explain why you willingly made it easier to destroy God’s greatest gift, human life, right up until birth. 

Even if you don’t believe in God, then how can you vote in favor of a law that allows for a baby to be literally torn apart in the womb? Babies can feel the pain from torturous late-term abortions. There is no doubt that late-term abortions will result in more women being coerced into aborting their baby, whereas now they can rely on the law to prevent coercion. 

Over the years I’ve met and interviewed abortion survivors. Robin Sertell survived a saline abortion and will speak at our next Life Legal Minnesota dinner in Bloomington on April 15. I hope you can attend and meet Robin to see with your own eyes that she is a living human being and never was a “choice.”

Abortion is lethal discrimination against our preborn brothers and sisters. Killing these nascent babies does not protect our most vulnerable and does not promote the values of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Nascephobia, the abnormal fear of nascent children, results in killing vulnerable humans and wounding mothers, which is the exact opposite of Minnesota nice!  

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not represent an official position of Alpha News. 

 

Russ Rooney