Sen. Lindsey Graham introduces a bill to allow abortion up to 15 weeks of gestation, just after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision said abortion is not a Constitutional right. Is Graham just trying to save the slim GOP Senate majority in a ‘practical’ way, or caving to Progressive immorality as Republicans often do.
Compromise is the name of the game in politics, but when it comes to life and death, Bill Whittle says “compromise is complicity.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Phil struggles to counter the scientific logic and heartfelt compassion of Lila Rose, founder and president Live Action, the anti-abortion organization. Shouldn’t a veteran Republican Senator have as much backbone as 34-year-old Lila Rose?
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25 replies on “15 Weeks: Can Graham Save GOP Majority by Opening Abortion Window for 1st Trimester?”
Brilliant, Bill. “You can’t expect the politics to save you from the morality of the people who vote.”
Bingo. This is what struck me the day Obama was elected the second time. It was a big revelation. That’s when I switched to the tactic of persuasion of my family and friends. It’s not easy and you have to pick your battles, but that’s where the battle really is.
Five minutes after the SCOTUS ruled that abortion is a state’s rights issue, Graham comes out and proposes placing it back in the national area. I’m pretty sure he’s not a moron, and that he understands the victory that constitutionalists just won, so why would he throw this wrench into the pre-election period? Knowing what I do of Graham, it’s solely to support his purposes, whatever they may be. More than likely, it’s to rile up the leftists to vote, so MAGA doesn’t win majorities in the congress. He’s an establishment chump.
Lindsay Graham is forcing the Democrats and the RINO’s to make a stand on abortion less than 2 months out from the election and a dozen days before the house and senate take recess for the election. This keeps the issue alive. Its also got the left media contradicting itself all over the place. It will not cost the Republicans any votes it already had. There is no district where the Democrat is pro-life and the Republican is pro-choice, so this does not damage the Republican vote. It puts the pro-abortion Republicans feet to the fire and forces them to make prolife statements just before the vote. It messes with the democrats dividing them badly. It also distracts and ties up the DNC in this last too weeks meaning they can’t get other last minute legislation up. Trump and his people would rather have a week democrat in a congressional seat than a RINO Republican as long as they have the majority. Trump had lunch with Graham shortly before this was proposed.
Is there a way of taking the fetus out of the female and making it a test tube baby?
Sort of … It doesn’t involve test tubes and it’s called “adoption”. Because no one is forcing any woman to keep a baby she doesn’t want after it’s born and can adopt that child out to people who do want it, she has no excuse to murder the baby except for inconvenience, morning sickness and getting a little pudgy with sore feet.
Short answer, NO.
Yes its been done with animals successfully.
Yes Its been done with animals decades ago. My blog.
http://appliedimpossibilies.blogspot.com/2012/08/ectogenesis-saving-millions-while.html
Live embryo transplant.
Yes,that’s the ticket.
The reason that abortion keeps coming back up, whatever reason might be given to turn it into a black-and-white issue that should have been put to rest decades ago, is the burden that it places on the mother.
Yes. Abortion is the ending of a unique human life, one that has rights just like any other. Therefore, abortion is murder.
Yes. In cases where the mother’s life is at risk, especially if the infant will not survive, we agree that an abortion is the most moral choice we can make in that tragic situation.
Yes. A woman who gets an abortion simply because she wanted sex and didn’t want to deal with the consequences of what could happen is not just a murderer, but a monster.
But, and here (I believe) is the sticky point that is the reason abortion won’t be put to rest, and it’s the talking point that the Left uses and has used since the start: what if the mother didn’t want the child, but was forced into the situation via rape?
No, it’s not the child’s fault. But it’s not the mother’s fault either. We fall on the side of justice for the child. The Left falls on the side of justice for the mother. And the tragedy, in this case, is that they are mutually exclusive. If we can’t find an equitable solution for both sides, the Left will continue to vilify us for slavery, and we will continue to vilify them for murder… and rightly so.
It’s not like the fetus can be transplanted into the body of the guilty party. Our side, with our insistence that you can’t end a life, sentences innocent people to at minimum nine months of permanent scarring to make amends for the actions of a monster who might be able to get away completely scott-free. Even if the monster doesn’t escape, no amount of punishment will balance the books of justice when it comes to what our stance forces the mother to endure.
This is not simple. This is not black-and-white. And saying it is, or failing to acknowledge the harm that you are inflicting on innocents even as you claim to defend them, plays right into the hands of the Left, and ensures that this topic will never be laid to rest.
The best we can hope for is that the mother will redeem our moral oversights and rise above the quandary she has been placed in. It’s up to the mother to be willing to look past the mutilation she’s been put through and accept more for the sake of the only other innocent party in this whole mess. Because neither the Left nor the Right -sticking by their party line- can claim to be fully just.
I don’t know what the human answer is. I don’t know if the consequences of growing our unwanted in artificial wombs in labs would be any better. But refusing to acknowledge that under the current system, we are harming the innocent one way or another, means that we deserve the sticky moral quandary in which we find ourselves.
Thank God cases like these are in the minority. Thank God so many victims of rape are willing to do the right thing when literally no one else can. God forbid this happens to me… and God give me the grace to do the same if it does happen.
It is not a matter of justice for one or the other. Abortion is not an “undo” button for pregnancy, it is further trauma for both innocent parties.
The injustice to the mother (and the child) has already been committed, illegally, by the perpetrator. We don’t condone it, we try to stop it and we try to punish the offender.
We have to decide if we will then be complicit in further injustice to the child (and mother) by allowing the destruction of the child.
And by the way, I don’t think what you describe is the thing that’s keeping us from laying this issue to rest. Whenever the left brings up these hard cases it is only to divert the conversation – they invariably insist on any abortion at any time for any reason.
So eloquently put!!!!! May I borrow your words here to post elsewhere? I am happy to cite you as the source.
Of course! No need to cite me. 🙂
I’m a guy so it’s always interesting to get a woman’s perspective on something like this. Especially when that perspective is laid out clearly and articulately.
There’s considerable reason to think pregnancy resulting from a genuine assault rape is pretty rare. Usually people who say that don’t provide an argument and information to back it up and that’s a real problem when it comes to getting a handle on this sort of problem. I agree with you it is a problem but how much of a problem is also an issue.
Part of what makes this whole thing sort of fuzzy is how rape is defined. When the Left says the word “rape” they generally mean anything from a full on attack (absolutely rape) to date rape (absolutely rape if genuinely non-consensual) to post event remorse (probably not really rape) to “I had sex with this guy but I don’t really like him and he got me knocked up so he raped me.” which is not rape at all.
In the last case I feel a bit sorry for the poor schmuck who didn’t have any better sense than to get mixed up with a woman like that … 🙂
I don’t think any but the first two examples are actual rape. Which is wholly non-consensual forced sex. It doesn’t matter if the force is muscles or threat of violence or slipping someone a drug and abusing them when they are not capable of objecting. It’s all force and it’s all rape.
The problem with the way the Left defines rape is that it includes as rape things that are not rape, which inflates the numbers significantly and I’m pretty sure that’s intentional.
Now that we have that out of the way, I’m going to have to do something I hate doing. I hardly ever post links to videos or websites rather than just state my interpretation in my own words but this is a tricky subject. So I’d appreciate it if you would read this article, which is longer than I ought to post via copy/paste in this forum, and let me know what you think of it.
https://lifeissues.org/1999/04/rape-pregnancies-are-rare/
If pregnancies resulting from forced rape are as rare as that article indicates then we might at least have a conversation about making exceptions and if we’re wrong in doing so our intent is good and we can at least ask for Forgiveness. I know there are people who will not allow exceptions under any circumstances and I know there are people who would consider doing so. I’m not really on either side, yet, because this is a very, very tricky and difficult moral issue.
The problem as I see it is whether it’s exceptions for forced rape pregnancies or the 15 weeks Lindsey Graham is proposing in his legislation or anything else it’s ALL a slippery slope. There’s also the possibility of women who falsely claim rape in order to get an abortion.
We were told way back when that abortion would be “safe, legal and RARE”. Only one of those, the legal part, is actually real world truth. Abortion is not safe and it has become so un-rare that it’s now often used not as a backup to but a substitution for contraception. That slippery slope has gotten so steep we now have Leftists claiming it’s OK to actually deliver the baby then set it aside where it will be comfortable and decide whether it lives or not. Which is pure murder and not how this whole rodeo got started.
Which all means that we’re going to have to make some sort of lesser error somehow. We either make exceptions for forced rape victims or allow no exceptions at all to keep our feet off the slippery slope. Murder is still murder but if the actual reality is that forced rape pregnancies are quite rare, that’s a consideration also.
It’s a consideration because if it is very rare then we’re not asking an inordinate number of women to carry an unwanted child which is the result of a violent, life altering attack, to full term so she can adopt the baby out to eager parents that want it.
The other side of that argument is that if it’s that rare and we allow it we’re still saving all the other children of un-rare common pregnancies which might have ended in abortion. No matter how you look at it, losing a few hundred babies and saving tens of thousands is still a win. It’s just not a nice, clean, fully ideological win and …
There’s that slippery slope problem. The slippery slope slides both ways though. If we allow exceptions for rape someday down the line our lawmakers can say words to the effect of —
“Since we passed that law many studies have been done (hopefully this will be the case) and there just are not enough women who get pregnant from rape to make an exception outweigh the State condoning murder of the unborn. We’re sorry we have to do this to you but your life is not the only one under consideration. We are therefore forced to remove this particular exception.”
Either way, the child has no say so it’s the responsible thing for us all to do the very best we can in resolving this. What would be even worse is a policy or law that gets abused and makes the situation even more horrible.
I realize that what you’re saying is the Left will still use rape babies as an issue and an excuse. I think the best we can hope for is to take that argument away from them. One way or another.
Thank you for your response! Yes, I believe that the actual instances of (true) rape producing kids is in the minority, and I’m very glad that’s the case. I’ve even heard of many anecdotal cases where the mother involved decides to keep and raise the child, and both come out a lot stronger for it. This is, of course, the best possible outcome.
The problem, as you’ve pointed out, is that the Left uses the very unlikely scenario of rape and an unwanted child to justify everything else they argue for, and I know people who are unfamiliar with the whole truth who find the Right’s mantra of “abortion is murder” to be dismissive and cold rather than morally best in this awful (but thankfully rare) situation.
If it were up to me, every mother would birth and raise her child (whether the pregnancy was intended or not) rather than abort it. We just can’t lawfully enforce it, or it will lose the virtue of charity… and I don’t think we have a satisfactory alternative for those who can’t make that sacrifice (or, perhaps more accurately, the theorists who are swayed by the rhetoric of unwanted rape babies).
The argument to justice you’re making (or repeating) has a flaw. The child is not the cause of the injury to the raped woman, but part of that injury. You are not giving a mother justice by letting her kill her child, as much as she might not want it. You give her, and the child, justice by punishing the person that raped her.
If a rapist did not get a woman pregnant and just broke some bones, brused some organs and caused psychological trauma with threats and the physical injuries, she will still be healing for (potentially) nine months. The mental trauma will possibly last for years. Claiming that killing an innocent child is just part of punishing the rapist or getting justice for the woman makes no sense. Would we argue that she should be able to kill a 9 year old child that was witness to the rape because that child was traumatized, or would retraumatize the woman each time she saw the child? That the memories would all come back?
Either we are talking about a child that is also a victim and should not be murdered “in the name of justice” or we have some clump of cells that can be removed like excess scar tissue.
Yes, I thank God these cases are in the extreme minority and with some many people able and willing to offer help in these cases we should not need to make exceptions. Since I’m a man my opinion might not count, but I suspect the vast majority of pregnant women in the world, and all of the women who wish they were pregnant, would not think of pregnancy as a punishment. There are probably a few who have been pregnant as a result of rape and saw the child as a silver lining or a blessing of the assault… not that they’d really want to go through it again.
Forget the virtue of Graham’s proposal. His motive in the timing is to serve as a Get Out The Vote effort for his Democrat buddies. If the email blasts I get from both sides are any indication, there’s a lot more enthusiasm for fighting his bill than supporting it.
Graham would rather see Dems elected so he can play Surrender Theater with the rest of the Vichy Republicans than have to deal with MAGA Republicans who will push him to actually do his damned job
Exactly
I have always used the “But its not your body” argument, and point out that scientifically, it is a living human being at fertilization. But then they may say “But its not a person” I point out that is a legal term, not a scientific, biological or religious term. I add that that was one way slavery was rationalized. Simply, Blacks were not legally people, but property in slave states. That tends to make them uneasy. I wonder why?🤔
But one thing I think has to happen. The pregnant person has a right to life; to defend one self if that life is in danger. An ectopic pregnancy, for example, can be deadly. Also being pregnant at a very young age. And in an ectopic pregnancy, the embryo cannot survive as is according to what I found.
These cases are very rare. I personally think an abortion when the woman’s life is in danger should be allowed. But to reduce people claiming that, I think in a panel of 5 doctors, at least 4 should agree an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the woman.
Just my two cents worth.
You’re right of course. The science here is that at conception the merger of two haploid germ cells, one female and one male, creates a zygote. Which is a modified but not new cell that contains both haploids. At that point we have the female haploid (the egg) hosting the male haploid. Chemistry happens and the process of creating a human being has begun but …
The very first cell division the new human being undergoes firmly establishes a unique DNA structure creating two new cells that did not exist previously in any other form but their own. These two new cells are called a blastocyst and these cells contain different DNA than either of the contributing haploids alone. At that point the DNA of the new cells is unique to many decimal points. For the rest of that human being’s life and long after death that human being can be uniquely identified by that DNA structure. The one thing in common to that human being from conception to death is this unique DNA structure.
It can easily and correctly be argued that a human being’s DNA is what makes them a human being. No other single factor more surely identifies a human being as a human being than the DNA in their very cells, whether the number of cells is two or millions and millions. In this regard It’s all the same from there. It is human DNA unique to that human being. It is uniquely what makes that entity a human being and it is the only thing that human being has that makes them a human being.
Theoretically you could implant that blastocyst in a female host pig or sheep and what grows and is born is still a human being, not a pig or a sheep. You could grow that blastocyst in a test tube and what matures is a human being not a test tube. Because it is a human being from the formation of a blastocyst onward.
Unravelling the structure and mechanism of DNA with the subsequent mapping of the human genome has been one of the major scientific accomplishments of all time. That this is indeed “science” is undeniable and unequivocal.
If there is a point anywhere in the process that a new, unique human being is created that is the point where it happens. Anything that intentionally kills the blastocyst past this point is destroying a unique human being. Which is ethically murder of an innocent human being. There’s just no way around that and the only way that murder becomes preventable is to not permit the male and female haploids to merge. Past that point in order to avoid murder the only way is to allow the new human being to continue its existence.
It’s not “your body” because it’s no longer your DNA. This is what makes a preborn human different than any other “clump of cells” that might need to be surgically removed. Your appendix has your DNA and only your DNA because your appendix is completely you. Your tonsils contain only your own DNA. Etc. You might be said to own your own DNA but you certainly do not own anyone else’s DNA.
That’s the nitty gritty of the science in this matter broken down and explained in the simplest, most accurate manner I can come up with. Anyone who denies this after it has been explained to them is a science denier.
That said, understanding that someone might still argue for abortion of the unborn on other matters is still a factor. Except for rare cases like ectopic pregnancy or other threats to the mother which can be considered self defense where the new human being would not survive anyway … It’s OK if people want to argue for abortion. We allow people to take the lives of others under very rigid circumstances. The military and self defense being specific examples. The question is not the killing but the justification for the killing of a human being. Unjustified killing is murder, justified killing is not murder. Justification is the only argument you have left if you’re pro-abortion.
It’s OK in that you can make the argument and you’re entitled to do so under our laws but … Any argument you make is fallacious, immoral and facetious if you do not first acknowledge that you’re committing the murder of an innocent human being. If you want to argue that you should be allowed to commit murder, argue away all you want. I don’t think that argument will be very successful if you have to admit that according to science you’re committing murder on an innocent human being but if your morals are that corrupt go ahead and try.
I would welcome people to make such an argument because it would be de facto proof that they want to murder innocent human beings for their own convenience. It would be relatively easy to say that such people should not get their way and should not be trusted with power over any human being. If they will kill one human being for selfish convenience it’s only a matter of degree and time before they find more reasons to kill more human beings. It would be a simple thing to shame them for what they really are.
The key is that we all have to be honest about what we’re arguing for and science is solidly on our side in this issue.
There is no point in our laws that allows an arbitrary definition of “personhood” and certainly nothing that allows the definition of a being possessing “personhood” or not to live or not. For someone to destroy that being based on “personhood” is a specious sophistic argument attempting to dodge the science in order to advance an agenda.
If that is accepted as a legal standard all that’s required to kill inconvenient human beings is to strip them of their “personhood”, to redefine them as something else. That is one of the very worst of the slippery slopes. As you point out the slave owners did this by diluting “personhood”. The Nazis did this by defining Jews as sub-humans and thus not “persons”. There are many examples of how this sort of murder works.
The thing the Left needs never to forget is what goes around comes around. If “personhood” is arbitrary then might not mothers who slaughter their own children be ‘unpersoned’? How about the homeless and others who cannot for whatever reason support themselves and are a burden not an asset to society? Can they be ‘unpersoned’ too? It’s best if we stick to standards we know work and not open doors to things that seem advantageous in the moment but may well prove increasingly atrocious in the future.
You are correct that murder is the intentional unlawful killing of a human being. Self defence makes it lawful. Does the abortion saving the mothers life take an innocent life? Yes. A choice has to be made. Which dies, and which lives? The woman has to decide since the unborn cannot. Again, its very rare. But to make it more problematic, in some cases, its not one or the other. Its either one dies or both do.
I hate that the real world leads to this possibility. But I’m not a person who expects all cases are perfect. Not on an imperfect world with imperfect people.
I agree with all of that. I would point out that making a decision to kill or not should always be a difficult choice. The killing of another human being should never be an easy decision and should never be made cavalierly.
Sometimes the decision has to be reached very quickly but that in no way lessens the gravity of the choice.
It is good that the decision be difficult lest in ease it becomes jaded and commonplace, losing the impact of the profound consequences involved.
In no other instance in modern society is the killing of another human being permitted and sanctioned as a matter of self-centered personal convenience except for the case of abortion.
We ought all work on fixing that.
What good is it if you get elected but aren’t willing to stand firm on principle? The republicans have been doing just that for decades.
That question would be pertinent if Graham were a principled person. Because he’s a dyed-in-the-wool politician, and in light of the timing of his proposal, I’d say he has nefarious motives, and wants to pit the left more firmly against America First Republicans.