Trey Paul, FISM News
[elfsight_social_share_buttons id=”1″]
A recent report providing data on late-term abortions is shedding more light on a controversial piece of legislation proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham last week.
Sen. Lindsey Graham received harsh pushback from Democrats, and even some within his own party, after he announced the Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act that would set federal limits on late-term abortions. Some legislators and pundits argued against the bill saying it was unnecessary as late-term abortions are practically non-existent.
According to a fact sheet compiled by researchers with the Lozier Institute, however, 6% of all reported abortions take place at or after 15 weeks of gestation, translating to approximately 55,800 of these types of abortions each year.
The study also looked into why women received abortions after 15 weeks and found that according to statistics pulled from eight states, “95.7 percent are for elective reasons while less than five percent of abortions occur because of common exceptions to abortion restrictions.” This runs counter to the narrative that many Democrats have pushed – that abortion is merely a women’s health issue.
“Even researchers tied to the abortion industry admit that late-term abortions do occur and that they often occur for elective reasons, not for reasons commonly used as exceptions to abortion restrictions,” the study stated. “In 2013, a study was published in the pro-abortion publication of the Guttmacher Institute that admitted that ‘data suggests that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.'”
Graham stated that he chose 15 weeks as the benchmark because it is widely held that this is the time frame that babies can begin to feel pain. He also stated in a lengthy Twitter thread that his bill was a “common-sense protection of the unborn” as it falls “in line with 47 out of 50 European countries.”
Graham told Fox News that the Democrats are, in fact, the ones proving to be radical on the issue of abortion, saying, “Chuck Schumer introduced legislation several months ago that would allow abortion-on-demand up to the moment of birth, like China and North Korea, for the entire nation.”
Graham’s bill may also prove to be more popular than pundits think, especially in battleground states. In May, researchers with OnMessage Inc. conducted a Senate Battleground survey of 1,200 likely voters across six states and concluded there is a pro-life majority in the battleground.
They found that 50 percent of Americans preferred a “Republican candidate who supports restrictions on abortion after 15 weeks,” while just 30% preferred a “Democrat candidate who supports unlimited abortion throughout pregnancy.”
Jon Schweppe, the policy director for American Principles Project (APP), addressed the issue in an article in “The American Conservative,” arguing that Republicans who refuse to support Graham’s bill are “not really pro-life.”
Election Day is less than 50 days away, and many Republicans in Washington have decided to signal that they have no interest in doing anything for babies at the federal level. What kind of message is that? It sounds pretty pro-choice: not quite pro-abortion, but not really pro-life, either.
Schweppe argues that many Republicans in Congress are embracing a “federalist” approach to abortion that would condemn millions of unborn children to death and called out the fact that fewer than half of Republicans in the House and only three other Republicans in the Senate formally endorsed Sen. Graham’s bill.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio who co-sponsored Sen. Graham’s bill tweeted:
“Restricting abortions to the first 4 months is more lenient than virtually every country in Europe. The extremists are people like Congresswoman Val Demings who opposes any restrictions & has voted for taxpayer funded abortion for any reason, at any time, up to the moment of birth.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was one of the Republicans who came out in opposition to Graham’s bill. He said on Tuesday that “most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level.”
As for Sen. Graham, he remains optimistic about the future of his bill:
I’m confident the American people would accept a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks with exceptions for the life of the mother, rape, and incest, and reject the Chinese abortion policy being pushed by the Democratic Party.