Best Chance for Pro-Life Measures in Years

WASHINGTON -- Pro-life Americans are among the happiest with Donald Trump's victory because he's promised them more than almost any presidential winner of the past.  And now pro-life organizations and politicians are ready to push hard and immediately with him for progress on a number of anti-abortion fronts.

"This is the moment the pro-life movement has been waiting for. We've never been stronger," stated Mallory Quiqley, a spokeswoman for the Susan B. Anthony List, one of the nation's leading pro-life groups.

"Poised to Make Great Gains"

"It's like nothing we've ever experienced before, quite frankly," said Quiqley's colleague, former Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave.

Quiqley added, "We are poised to make great gains for the movement."

Republicans in the last Congress knew if they got any kind of pro-life measure there, it'd surely be vetoed by President Obama.  But it's a whole new ballgame with a President Trump.

"He is pro-life. He has stood up and defended pro-life," Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., proclaimed of Trump. "And, of course, Mike Pence — our VP-elect — has a wonderful pro-life record."

Blackburn's colleague, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairs the House's Pro-Life Caucus.

"We were facing an existential threat to the unborn had Hillary Clinton won," Smith declared.  "Barack Obama was the abortion president, but she would have doubled down and made it worse domestically and internationally.  So we've got a reprieve of sorts in terms of this all-out assault."

A Trump Promise: Pro-Life Justices

The Trump/Pence team has made four commitments to the movement.

"Probably the most important one is nominating pro-life justices," Musgrave explained. "Since when do we get a clear indication whether or not someone who's nominated is pro-life? So that is absolutely amazing."

Quiqley and Musgrave mentioned another commitment.

"First thing on the agenda this year of is re-directing Planned Parenthood's taxpayer funding to the more than 18,000 community health centers that exist across this country," Quiqley said.

Musgrave said of Trump, "He wants to defund Planned Parenthood.  That's probably the most doable thing right now."

"Absolutely Disgusting"

Blackburn has headed up the special congressional panel investigating Planned Parenthood's selling of baby body parts to businesses that traffic in those.
 
"The woman with the fetus became a profit center for each of these two entities," the lawmaker explained. "To me that is absolutely disgusting. It is illegal, it is a felony – a 10-year felony – to sell a human body part in this country.  What we will do is go about de-funding the abortion industry." 

A third commitment involves putting an age cap on abortion.

Stopping Late Abortions & Taxpayer Funding

"Promoting the Unborn Child Pain Capable Act," Musgrave said. "Talking about banning abortion after the fifth month."

Quiqley added, "A majority of Americans are on our side. They want to see a commonsense restriction to stop abortion after five months when the baby can feel pain."

And the fourth commitment is making the Hyde Amendment, which has had to be renewed every year since 1976, permanent - or as Musgrave put it, "Stopping our tax dollars from going to pay for abortion."

That idea, along with other measures to protect the conscience rights of Americans, is popular with the public.

"They want to see conscience rights protected," Quiqley said, "whether that's taxpayers, or whether it's medical professionals who don't want to be participating in abortions."

What Abortion Actually Does

Congressman Smith believes all these measures will spark the biggest debate America has ever had over abortion. But he will welcomes that because it will make many more people conscious of what abortion really is.

"People need to focus on what abortion actually does," Smith said. "It chemically poisons or it dismembers a baby piece-by-piece. It's horrific. It's horrendous. It's cruelty.  And we need to stop it."

Pro-life forces have been waiting for years to pass all sorts of anti-abortion measures on Capitol Hill. And now is their best chance in years with both a Republican Congress and a Republican president.