Pro-Life Groups Take 'Stop the Gosnells' Mission to Irish Embassy to Protest Abortion Bill

By Melissa Barnhart, Managing Editor Thursday, June 06, 2013

National and statewide pro-life groups are uniting through their Stop the Gosnells coalition to further expose the practices conducted at late-term abortion facilities and to encourage lawmakers to respond through legislative action.

On Friday, pro-life advocates will gather outside the Irish Embassy in Washington, D.C., to support the country's pro-life stance and to call on their leaders to reject the legalization of abortion in Ireland, under a bill being considered that would allow abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, if a woman is at risk of committing suicide.

"Despair, hopelessness, and danger are all the abortion industry offer to women and their unborn babies," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the SBA List, a pro-life organization. "And we've seen in recent weeks that the brutality and negligence on display at the Kermit Gosnell trial is actually endemic to the entire abortion industry. Such conditions will likely accompany legalized abortion in Ireland. We must do everything we can to defend the lives of Irish women and children from the abortion industry."

"The coalition is meant to be a response to the horrors revealed by the Gosnell trial, and the subsequent stories, for which there's no shortage of incidents of abortion brutality," said Dannenfelser in an interview with The Christian Post.

"We're calling on Congress to take action, starting with Rep. Trent Franks' (R-Ariz.) Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the House committees and states' attorneys general that are looking into the abortion industry. We're advancing all pro-life causes, and highlighting the effort of pro-life groups, such as the SBA's link to Live Action's page and their upcoming protest at a late-term abortion clinic in Arizona," she added.

On Tuesday, the House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice approved, by a 6-4 margin, Franks' bill that, if passed, would ban abortions nationwide after 20 weeks gestation, and possibly earlier.

"The trial of Gosnell exposed late-term abortions for what they really are: relocated infanticide," said Franks, who hopes the Judiciary Committee will move the bill forward. "I pray we use this as a 'teachable moment,' in the words of President Obama, and agree that, at the very least, we are better than dismembering babies who can feel every excruciating moment. As a nation we find ourselves at a point at which we don't offer unborn children even the most basic protections – even protections we extend to animals and property."

Last month, Rep. Fred Upton, (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sent letters to all 50 state public health officials seeking answers on how they regulate abortion facilities.

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an organization that opposes parental notification legislation and believes the Bible is not opposed to abortion, declined to comment on Franks' bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks, and wouldn't state if the organization believes abortion should be restricted at any time during pregnancy.