The Quarrel That Blew Up the GOP Abortion Bill

nationalreview.com ^ | February 2, 2015 | Joel Gehrke

[Morgana]

In mid June 2013, a group of female Republican legislators met with leadership and House aides for a last-minute messaging session about a 20-week abortion ban that was on life support.

The author of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, Representative Trent Franks (R., Ariz.), had made headlines just days earlier while defending its lack of exceptions for rape or incest. “The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy [is] very low,” he’d said during a Judiciary Committee debate on the legislation. Coming just months after two Republican candidates, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, fumbled away their Senate bids with careless talk about rape and abortion, Franks’s remarks had incensed the very group of female House lawmakers whose support he needed most.

“They were furious,” one House Republican aide recalls.

That conflict resurfaced during the March for Life two weeks ago, when House leadership canceled a long-scheduled vote on the very same 20-week ban. The bill’s latest failure comes at a time when the pro-life movement’s hopes for legislative progress in the new GOP Congress are as high as they’ve been in years, and it has exposed a simmering rift in the House Republican conference.

[Timber Rattler]

Bottom line: Ellmers is a liar.

[Oak Grove]

I will be donating generously to the Primary opponent of Renee Ellmers.

We must defeat the RINO’s.

[EternalVigilance]

“The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy [is] very low,”

Stupid argument. Beside the point.

They never focus on the real issue, which the supreme unalienable right of the innocent child, which exists no matter the means of conception.

Which is why they continue to lose.

[GeronL]

pro-lifers and other conservatives need to understand, the GOP is not really on our side - they only pretend when they raise money and campaign/

[ExTxMarine]

Bottom line: Ellmers is a liar.

Ding! Ding! Ding! And a winner!

On top of that, she wants to create a loophole that is big enough to swallow the entire law! By creating the "rape or incest" rule, without some sort of verification or reporting, then you might as well not have a law! Because any woman would be able to walk into the abortuary, claim rape, and dead baby! No questions asked!

Right now, if incest is claimed or implied, several states REQUIRE the abortion facility to report the claim! So, why not require them to report these crimes?!?! They are destroying evidence, and THAT is a crime!!

Even worse, without the reporting stipulation, the left will use all of the post-20-week abortion numbers as further PROOF of the "rape mentality" in America! The last thing the GOP should do is give the lunatic left more ammunition for their stupid policies and theories!!!

[CPT Clay]

I don’t understand what happened.

[BitWielder1]

Loophole for rape will inevitably cause more false rape claims.

[JoeFromSidney]

They never focus on the real issue, which the supreme unalienable right of the innocent child, which exists no matter the means of conception.

Precisely. Rape is not a capital crime, but being the unborn child of a rapist is a capital crime.

[eccentric]

Did you hear about the woman who wants to get married to her own father? Where do people get the "incest" exemption? Either incest is rape or it isn't.

And what woman waits more than 20 weeks after a rape to decide to have an abortion?