The recent trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell has led to a wave of new laws at the state level aimed at abortion. The sheer horror of what was uncovered in Gosnell’s clinic has caused plenty of legislators to take a closer look at how abortion clinics in their state are regulated and inspected and also how late those abortions are being performed.
As these new laws began to be debated and voted on in several states, the pro-abortion lobby geared up as usual, summoning the troops and their friends in the media to turn back any new attempts at abortion restrictions. They are a well-oiled machine by now, having turned back many such attempts at state-level restrictions in the past.
But an amazing thing just happened in Texas. The well-oiled machine ground to a halt. Not only was it halted, it was defeated. Soundly. In fact, the new law passed by an even bigger margin the second time around after the pro-abortion lobby and their media allies focused the entire attention of the nation on the fight.
To understand why the left is suddenly losing the abortion debate in America, you have to understand how Gosnell changed the debate.
For decades, the small extremist minority of the progressive left has managed to control the national conversation on the abortion issue through control of the mainstream media. This allowed them to control the language used in the discussion. For instance, instead of “pro-life” and “pro-abortion,” the pro-abortion lobby & their media shills constantly use the terms “pro-choice” and “anti-choice.”
Despite the fact liberals make up only around 20% of the population, and the radical progressives with their extreme abortion views make up an even smaller subset, they were able to shield their extremism by attracting moderate support through the use of euphemisms and distortion. They made extremism on abortion sound compassionate and appealing.
With help from a media that was overwhelmingly pro-abortion itself, the progressive extremists would talk up the “reasonableness” and “compassion” of “choice” while relentlessly smearing the “hatefulness” and “zealotry” of pro-lifers.
Gosnell has changed the debate because it flushed the pro-death lobby out of the tall grass of vapid, undefined “choice” language and out into the open. To stop the new laws being proposed and voted on at the state level, they are now having to explicitly defend what they want with clear language.
They can’t just say, as they did for decades, “I’m pro-choice!” or “It’s not a person!” In light of the new laws being enacted like the one in Texas, the pro-abortion lobby is being forced for the first time to directly state what they support; in the case of that law, it amounted to arguing being for ending human life up to the 6th month of pregnancy and even later and for abortion clinics to have lower medical safety standards than dentist’s offices and plastic surgery facilities.
As polls on this issue show, wanting abortion to be legal up to six months and beyond into a pregnancy is an extremist position that most Americans don’t share.
Even the hip and sophisticated Europeans blanch at the fact that American states have been allowing abortions into the 3rd trimester. The old limit in Texas was 26 weeks. The new law rolls that back to 20 weeks.
For decades, with help from their media friends, pro-abortion forces managed to portray pro-life as being an “extreme” viewpoint. But how can being pro-life be an extreme view when almost half the country holds to it, according to polls like this one from Gallup?
Even the MSM slanting it’s coverage to favor the pro-abortion side can’t hide the extremism of their actual policy positions any more, which is why we are seeing the mask of “reasonableness” and “compassion” dropping from many pro-abortion faces as they realize they are now losing the debate on this issue.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.