A Texas-Sized Fight for Life

By Penny Young Nance, Special to CP Tuesday, July 09, 2013

There is an old song, "The eyes of Texas are upon you." And today, the eyes of the nation are on Texas as it grapples with the consensus on regulations for abortion. At last's nights rally on the steps of the Texas State Capitol, thousands of people linked hearts and voices to support the pro-life bill HB 2. In the crowd of blue shirts led by Texas members of Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee (CWALAC), I witnessed families, students, elderly folks, and people of every culture and color come together in a commonsense consensus position on abortion.

We just finished celebrating Independence Day, where many families, like my own, take time out to commemorate the birth of our nation by reading the Declaration of Independence. Thanks to our Founding Fathers and the principles laid out in this document, Americans are guaranteed that every individual, no matter how young or old, is endowed with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, this is an important week for the right to life, as HB 2 takes historic steps to protect both the unborn after 20 weeks by ending late-term abortion and the women who choose abortion by placing reasonable health and safety regulations on clinics in Texas.

Sadly, pro-abortion activists refuse to accept any common ground. They have done everything they can do to change the subject - changing the discussion away from the content and intent of this bill by talking about everything from so-called "women's rights" to pink tennis shoes. And by redirecting the discussion, they are taking it upon themselves to decide which lives are worthy of living and place little value on "inconvenient" or "imperfect" lives and dismiss the serious physical and emotional risks abortion procedures create for women.

Never has the pro-abortion message really been about what's best for women and women's health. Do we ever hear Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, or radical feminist Gloria Steinem discuss that abortion increases the risk of mental illness in women by 81 percent? Have we heard them sharing with young women that emotional symptoms after an abortion include depression, thoughts of suicide, and guilt, while medical complications include heavy bleeding, infection, damage to the cervix, incomplete abortions, complications for future pregnancies, and death? You will never hear abortion moguls bring up these basic health facts of abortion. Why? Because it's not good for business.

Make no mistake, abortion is their business, not their ministry. Abortion is a billion-dollar industry in the United States. Planned Parenthood received a record 542 million taxpayer dollars in 2012 alone. By exploiting the "women's health" slogan instead of sitting down and negotiating common ground measures to protect women, abortion activists make it clear that their agenda is really about power and money. To pro-abortion groups, this is about a radical ideology of abortion as a right to be used at any point, for any reason, at any time, and any number - all at the taxpayer's expense.

Abortion is the seminal human rights issue of our time. For our grandparent's generation, the Holocaust was the most heart-breaking atrocity against mankind. As many as 1.5 million Jewish children were killed as a result of the Nazis' horrific genocide scheme. What's shameful is that America surpassed this number of little lives lost to a cruel genocide long ago. Since 1973, the deaths of more than 54 million unborn children have been reported in the United States alone. Every year, approximately 1.21 million more unborn children will be aborted. And nearly 4,000 abortions are performed daily, as reported by National Right to Life. This is an injustice which must end.

Texas this week is ground zero in the abortion debate, as pro-life supporters engage in a righteous battle to protect babies in utero and their mothers. And as one side of the debate sang "Amazing Grace" and the other chanted "Hail, Satan," we clearly see the founding principles on which opposing belief systems are based. One is life. One is death.

For our own sakes, let's pray that Texas chooses life.

Penny Young Nance is the president of Concerned Women for America (CWA) and CWALAC. Nance most recently served as President of Nance and Associates and as Special Advisor for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where she advised the Chairman and the Commissioners on media and social issues. Before joining the FCC, Nance was founder and President of the Kids First Coalition, a non-profit organization focused on educating Capitol Hill, the media, and the public on a variety of issues related to children.