I'm blogging light this morning (and, yes, I remember that I didn't blog at all yesterday) but sometimes other duties overwhelm even those 2-3 hours of the early morning I usually take for Vital Signs blog.
Today those "other duties" require my presence at the State Capitol in Lincoln for the Nebraska Right to Life's Pro-Life Day at the Unicameral. Among other things I will be testifying before the Judiciary Committee in behalf of LB 675, A Mother’s Right to See Her Unborn Child and LB 594, The Women’s Health Protection Act.
Those remarks (which are limited to 3 minutes) relevant to each are printed below. And tomorrow I'll give you the story of how things went. Until then...
Statement in Support of LB 675, A Mother’s Right to See Her Unborn Child. Presented to the Nebraska Unicameral’s Judiciary Committee on March 5. (Made by Denny Hartford, Director of Vital Signs Ministries)
Good afternoon, Senators. My name is Denny Hartford and I speak today in favor of LB 675 and I urge you to please move it onto the floor of the Unicameral for a thorough discussion and vote. I do so as a pastor and as the Director of Vital Signs Ministries who, in nearly 30 years of pro-life service, has talked to thousands of people involved in making (or having already made) abortion decisions. I speak too as the founder of the AAA Center for Pregnancy Counseling in Omaha, an outreach that has been serving women facing unexpected and otherwise problematic pregnancies since 1985.
LB 675 is an excellently-conceived and well-written legislative proposal, one that reflects compassion, justice and respect for a woman’s ability to make informed decisions. Indeed, that’s the key purpose of the bill – giving women considering an abortion more and better information about everything (and everyone) involved. It is a bill designed to better empower women, to give them fairer and more respectful treatment, to give them all the facts (not propaganda or commentary) but simple and salient facts about abortion in a visual form. To oppose this bill is to show disrespect for women, to be patronizing towards their abilities to make sound decisions or worse, to reveal an ulterior social ideology which prefers the abortionist’s profits over a women’s freedom and dignity.
For again, what LB 675 presents is the opportunity for a woman considering abortion (a procedure regarded by most Americans as the taking of an innocent human life and a procedure that leaders of both political parties say they want less of in America) to see exactly what she is about to terminate. And that ultrasound is not a propaganda film; it is not a video from Rush Limbaugh, James Dobson or Mother Angelica. It’s just the scientific visualization of the preborn boy or girl that the woman is carrying. It is reality, unencumbered with musical soundtrack or philosophic subtitles.
True feminists must agree that a woman can handle this. She can handle the truth. It is in her best interests (short and long term) to get the whole story about abortion before making that irreversible decision. And it is a matter of clear justice for the state to guarantee her this. I urge you therefore not only to vote LB 675 out of committee, but that you would do whatever you can to give Nebraska women a fair deal by passing LB 675 into law.
Statement in Support of LB 594, The Women’s Health Protection Act, Presented to the Nebraska Unicameral’s Judiciary Committee on March 5. (Made by Denny Hartford, Director of Vital Signs Ministries)
Once again, Senators, good afternoon. My brief presentation here is in behalf of LB 594, The Women’s Health Protection Act, a just and common-sense legislative proposal designed to better protect Nebraskan women from surrendering to coerced abortions, to strengthen existing legislation already passed by the Nebraska legislature regarding a women’s right to fully know about abortion before making that traumatic, irreversible decision, and to remove some of the obstacles which historically have made it nearly impossible for a woman to hold abortionists liable for those physical and emotional damages which proper medical screening and explanations could have avoided.
As a pastor and a pro-life activist whose leadership of Vital Signs Ministries has involved talking to hundreds of men and women suffering from various ill effects of abortion, including a great deal of guilt and emotional trauma, I understand all too well the significance of this line from the Supreme Court ruling in Gonzalez vs Carhart, “It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know.”
Senators, LB 594 seeks competently and compassionately to eliminate at least some of that unnecessary suffering by better empowering women in our state to know (and know more extensively) exactly how abortion might affect them.
You know, when my wife has been in the hospital or even in a doctor’s office for outpatient medical procedures, the staff go to great lengths to insure that she fully understands what she’s going to experience. Several times different medical workers read to her the details of the procedure, talk to her about possible side effects and post-op care – they even require her to repeat, using her own words, what she is expecting to undergo in the procedure.
This is all great. It reflects high standards of integrity and professional responsibility. It shows that authentic medical professionals understand that full and unbiased information be given to the patient, that she retain control over her medical care.
Abortionists should not be exempt from these standards.
Again, LB 594 is a good, common-sense bill, one which empowers and protects women. I encourage you to do what you can to see it become law here in our state.
