I was wandering the internet today and stumbled across a fascinating incident that occurred in the Colorado legislature a little over a month ago. A representative in the House named Ted Harvey was incensed that the legislature was considering a resolution to honor Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood for 90 years of service to the state of Colorado. Harvey is strongly anti-abortion and thought the legislature had no business endorsing what he called "genocide."
So Harvey pulled off a very clever publicity stunt. He recruited a Nashville singer named Gianna Jessen to sing the national anthem before the session began. Jessen suffers from cerebral palsy, but even more importantly, she is a very rare bird in medicine -- an abortion survivor. Her 17 year-old mother attempted a late term abortion at about 30 weeks. The fetus was expelled from the uterus -- and lived. Jessen is now 29.
After Jessen completed the national anthem Harvey "introduced" her to the House. He proceeded to tell the assembly that Jessen's cerebral palsy was a result of the failed abortion. He was about to finish his speech with an indictment of Planned Parenthood when he was cut off. He was informed by the Speaker that it is against House rules to use an introduction to speak against a matter pending before the House.
Harvey's actions resulted in the kind of outrage one might expect. Planned Parenthood responded with a colossally stupid statement: "There's no statistical evidence that cerebral palsy has been caused by failed abortions." No, I guess not, because failed abortions are too rare to gather statistics on, but is there anyone out there who thinks a failed abortion attempt would not cause neurolgical damage?
But the prize for dumb goes to Democratic House Majority Leader Alice Madden, who said, "I think it was amazingly rude to use a human being as an example of his personal politics." Pardon me, but I thought politics was supposed to be about human beings. The problem with politics in this country is that it does not refer to human beings enough, not that it refers to them too often. And anyway, Jessen was not offended by Harvey's "rudeness." She told the Denver Post: "We need to discuss the humanity of it. I'm glad to be able to speak up for children in the womb. If abortion is about women's rights, where were my rights?"
Although his actions may have been a little over the top, I think Harvey did a good thing. Pro-abortionists have made a living from telling the stories of victimized women who seek abortions. I do not see how they can complain about getting some of their own medicine. Anti-abortionists have always argued that the fetus is the real victim in abortion. Here we actually get an opprortunity to hear from one, and we are told such arguments are out of bounds.
I do not take Harvey's hard line on abortion. I do not consider it murder, only unnecessary killing. But I agree with him that in some intellectual circles a pro-abortion stance is considered a given, and I think I would be offended too if a group of legislators tried to pass off a public endorsement of abortion as a pat on the back for "family planning." Family planning and an abortion clinic are not the same thing and Harvey had every right to protest loudly against such a sham.
If you want to read the whole story, check out this link and this one.