During Tuesday’s House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the implications of the FACE Act, several very revealing moments occurred regarding the Left’s public position on abortion. The hearing exhibited yet again that when it comes to late-term abortion and the possibility of placing limits on procedures that crush the intact skulls and tear the limbs from unborn babies, the Left’s strategy is to evade, evade, and keep evading specifics.
One of the witnesses at the hearing was Talcott Camp, the chief legal and strategy officer for the National Abortion Federation. During an exchange with Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the congressman pressed Camp on a recording of her discussing a late-term abortion procedure that involves the crushing of the baby’s skull in order for it to be removed from the uterus, in which she allegedly said, “Oh my God — I get it! When the skull is broken, that’s really sharp! I get it! I understand why people are talking about getting that skull out, that calvarium [an incomplete skull].”
In response to Roy’s question of what the physical risks are for the baby in these situations, Camp refused to answer directly, instead alleging that the recording of her saying the quote “stoked a massive uptick in violence, those heavily edited, misleadingly edited media products…”
Later, near the end of the hearing, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) asked Camp if there were any restrictions on abortion that her organization would support. “The question you ask is one of profound moral dimension, one that only the person who is pregnant can answer …,” she responded. Camp went on to refuse to directly answer questions on if her organization would support sex-selective abortions, restrictions after 20 weeks, and parental consent laws for minors obtaining abortion.
When Johnson referred to Roy’s earlier line of questioning and asked Camp if crushing the skull is part of a late-term abortion procedure, she again evaded, saying, “I’m not a clinician.” After Johnson’s repeated attempts to get Camp to answer the yes or no question, she again dodged, stating, “What I can tell you is that my background is law and strategy, not medicine.”
Camp’s refusal to answer simple questions about controversial abortion practices is unsurprising. The Left has utilized this strategy for decades, presumably in the hopes that if they refuse to talk about it, the American public won’t think too much about the gruesome reality of abortion and will continue to vote for pro-abortion candidates.
Progressives know that they are in a delicate position when it comes to the issue of late-term abortion. They know that almost all of Europe has outlawed the practice long ago, and that liberal states share the embarrassing company of human rights abusers like North Korea and China as being among only seven countries that permit abortion after 20 weeks gestation. But they also know that if they concede to any limits on abortion, they are implicitly admitting that the practice is not good — that it in fact kills an unborn child. It appears that the Left is content to use an interminable strategy of kicking the can down the road: if they keep pretending that late-term abortion doesn’t exist by never directly addressing it, maybe they will never have to pick the can up.
It remains to be seen whether this strategy will prove to be successful in the long run, but right now, the Left’s strategy of evasion is a stark illustration of a pro-abortion movement on its heels. Since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe last June, at least 24 states have enacted legislation protecting unborn babies, or are in the process of doing so. Just this week, the North Carolina legislature voted to override the governor’s veto of a bill protecting the unborn after 12 weeks gestation.
When it comes to the question of where the momentum is on the abortion issue in America, there’s no dodging reality: it’s clearly on the side of protecting unborn life.
Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.
