Human Services Committee Hears Bill to Abolish Abortion in North Dakota
State Representative Lori VanWinkle lays out HB 1373 before the Human Services Committee in the North Dakota House of Representatives
Yesterday, the North Dakota Prenatal Equal Protection Act, HB 1373, received a hearing in the House Human Services Committee. Foundation to Abolish Abortion was on the ground at the North Dakota state capitol to engage with and educate legislators on the need to provide equal protection to preborn babies.
Testimony in Favor of HB 1373
The hearing began with a powerful opening statement from State Representative Lori VanWinkle, author of HB 1373. Representative VanWinkle highlighted the fact that North Dakota's pro-life laws have failed to materially reduce the number of North Dakota babies murdered in abortion, while boldly making the case for the common sense position that mothers who murder their preborn children should be just as accountable to the same justice system as anyone else. "Murdering anyone should be illegal for everyone," Representative VanWinkle declared.
Following Representative VanWinkle, Ginna Cross, Director of Alliance Family Services, thoroughly debunked the fallacy that mothers should be given special murder rights over their preborn children.
“You cannot say on one hand that women are highly intelligent, which we are, but on the other hand say that with all of the information and technology available at our fingertips every second of the day, we have absolutely no idea that when we become pregnant we are pregnant with our own living, precious, human baby. This is ridiculous, of course women know,” Cross said.
Ginna Cross was followed by Jody Clemens, a post-abortive mother in North Dakota who shared her powerful testimony and explained why it is unloving toward mothers to give them legal immunity to take the lives of their own preborn children.
"If you see women who participate in abortions as victims, she has no need to repent because victims have no need of repentance. It leaves her with no need for Christ and no need of the Gospel. What it leaves her with is her guilt, shame, sorrow, self-hatred and her overwhelming grief," Clemens declared in her testimony.
Foundation to Abolish Abortion President, Bradley Pierce responded to questions from legislators, many of which dealt with implementation and enforcement. When asked by pro-abortion Democrat Jayme Davis why people with different religious beliefs about when life begins should be subject to laws protecting preborn babies at fertilization, Pierce responded,
"The Aztecs believed that it was okay to rip the hearts out of children and offer them as burnt sacrifices to their gods. I think that should be illegal."
Once again, abolitionists showed how Christians ought to contend with foolish moral relativism from anti-Christian leftists.
Opposition to HB 1373
The first speaker in opposition to HB 1373 was Democrat State Representative Karla Rose Hanson, who proceeded to deliver a diatribe of standard-issue pro-abortion talking points and lies.
Immediately following Hanson, Christopher Dodson, co-director and general counsel of the North Dakota Catholic Conference, came to the microphone to testify against HB 1373. His testimony was perhaps one of the most morally inverted and incoherent statements by a "pro-life" leader to date. Immediately, Dodson denied the fact that around 220 North Dakota babies are being murdered on North Dakota soil every year.[1]
In addition to denying the genocide of preborn children in North Dakota, Dodson denied that preborn children qualify as "persons" under the 14th Amendment to the U.S Constitution, stating “the claim has no legal merit.” By denying the very humanity of preborn children, Dodson's statements were morally indistinguishable from the pro-abortion Democrat that came before him.
At least one member of the committee seemed mystified by Dodson's statements. State Representative Nico Rios remarked to the committee that Dodson's insistence that mothers should have blanket legal immunity to murder their preborn children sounded "more pro-choice than pro-life."
Representative Rios went on to pose a hypothetical to Dodson, asking if Dodson would oppose the prosecution of the CEO of Planned Parenthood even if she came to North Dakota and took abortion pills on the steps of the state capitol. Dodson emphatically declared that even the CEO of Planned Parenthood should be treated as a victim, not a criminal, for self-managing her own abortion, stating,
“I look at her as someone in pain, that’s an act of desperation and pain and anger…we are not at the point where we can assume that women are making a rational but evil act in every case.”
Most of the remaining testimonies in opposition consisted of weaponized emotional statements expressing "concerns" over the bill's potential impact on IVF. Once again, the IVF industry is determined to ensure that they can continue to dispose of and destroy the "excess" human beings who are created in vitro. Equal protection would simply require treating human beings with a proper standard of care.
The final testimony in opposition came from Mark Jorritsma of the North Dakota Family Alliance, who delivered a masterclass in biblical eisegesis, when he claimed that since the Lord Jesus Christ showed mercy to sinners through His sacrifice on the cross, we should show mercy to mothers who get abortions by ensuring they are never held legally accountable. The suggestion that Christ's perfect sacrifice necessitates Christians to grant special murder rights to mothers to murder their preborn babies in the womb is simply an abominable false equivalency.
What happens next?
Ultimately, what took place in North Dakota yesterday was yet another reminder of a painful reality: too many self-proclaimed "pro-life Christians" are more than happy to team up with the abortion industry to keep abortion legal in the states, and will rely on the same tactics and morally reprehensible arguments that weaponize empathy, pervert scripture, and make false equivalencies.
HB 1373 will be voted on in the Human Services committee in the coming days and will receive a vote on the floor regardless. The battle to abolish abortion in North Dakota is just getting started.
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