TALKING POINTS/FACT SHEET

Why HB 1215 Should Not Be Amended to Include Exceptions

          While the Church can support incremental legislation with regard to abortions (see quote from John Paul II in our Abortion Talking Points/Fact Sheet), we must resist carving out exceptions to HB 1215 for the following reasons:

• The Catholic Church professes a consistent ethic of life. Pope John Paul writes in The Gospel of Life, "Where life is involved, the service of charity must be profoundly consistent. It cannot tolerate bias and discrimination, for human life is sacred and inviolable at every stage and in every situation; it is an indivisible good. We need then to show care for all life and for the life of everyone" (EV, 87). (Emphasis added.)

• Consistency is not hard to understand. It flows from the nature of love itself. If we love God, we love the people He has created and redeemed. Moreover, if we acknowledge that only God has dominion over human life, this obviously includes every human life. To stand with God is to stand with life, and therefore to stand against whatever destroys life. The Church defends the dignity of the human person, no matter what the assault on that dignity may be.

• Therefore, in legislation, we cannot on one hand say that the life of the unborn child must be protected, and then carve out a class of unborn children who are not worthy of those protections simply based on the circumstances that brought about their life.  To do so is illogical and unreasonable, and completely contradicts the intention of an abortion ban.

Application to a Rape and Incest Exception

• We cannot excuse the killing of children who are just as innocent and deserving of life simply because their father has committed a terrible crime.

• The manner in which a life comes about does not somehow negate the dignity and worth, or very existence of that life.

• If you believe that life begins at conception, and that life should be protected from that moment on, and then go on to say "except in the cases of rape and incest,"  then you must also support the killing of the child after its birth.  Either you believe that conception is the defining moment of life or you don't.  You cannot reasonably choose conception as the defining moment in non-rape cases and birth as the defining moment in cases of rape and incest.

• In addition, if you support a rape and incest exception, then you must also support an exception for the health of the mother - the exception that swallows the rule.  For the reasons given for allowing an abortion in the cases of rape and incest are to protect the mental health of the mother.  If you allow protection of the mother's health in the cases of rape and incest, you cannot reasonably deny it in other cases in which the mother's mental or emotional health may be adversely affected by the pregnancy.

• Conceiving a child through the evil of rape or incest is unjust for the mother.  However, it is a far greater injustice to kill the innocent child.  The injustice of abortion ends a life and there is no remedy for that.  However, sustaining life for the child conceived has many positive outcomes that can help provide healing for the woman.  Let us not forget that regardless of the father’s identity, the woman is still the mother, and the baby is still her child.

• If abortions were only allowed in cases of rape and incest, the number of abortions in our State would be drastically reduced, and legislation of this nature would be considered incremental legislation.  However, because the power to limit abortions is not presently with the States, any abortion ban with this exception will likely fail in Court, and no lives will be saved.

• To quote a pro-abortion blogger:  "The exception for rape/incest is a hole you could drive a convoy through in pro-life arguments."