Remember when President Barack Obama insulted small-town Pennsylvania voters by saying they bitterly “cling to guns or religion”? In next week’s special election, there is a strange new twist to this condescending attitude towards people of faith coming from the Democratic congressional candidate, Conor Lamb.
In a recent interview, Lamb oddly invoked his religion to defend his position in support of late-term abortion. He tells us that he never learned the term “pro-life” in Catholic school, and therefore he would vote against any limits on abortion, and would even oppose a recent bill to ban abortion past 20 weeks of pregnancy. This late-term abortion ban has bipartisan support in Congress, including that of senior Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa.
“I’d have voted against it,” Lamb said, adding that although he is Catholic, he would not describe himself as pro-life. “I just want to say, I don’t use the term ‘pro-life’ to describe what I personally believe, because that’s a political term,” he said. “It’s not one that you learn in Catholic school or anywhere else in the church.”
Really? That’s quite a whopper, Mr. Lamb.
The diocese of Pittsburgh promotes Pro-Life Sunday, while the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has a committee on “pro-life activities.” Catholic schools teach the catechism that states that human life “must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.” Pope Francis uses the term pro-life, and recently summed up Catholic teaching on human life in a tweet in support of the March for Life:
Every life counts: from the beginning to the end, from conception to natural death
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) January 19, 2018
But it’s not only Catholic teaching Lamb opposes with his extreme position on late-term abortion — it’s common sense as well, and a sense of human decency. Medical technology is constantly improving our ability to save premature babies born after 20 weeks. Babies born at this stage of development can survive outside the womb, yet current law allows more than 12,000 young lives annually to be snuffed out through late-term abortion. We regularly see these perfectly formed babies in ultrasound images sucking their thumbs, and can plainly see whether it’s a boy or a girl.
Lamb’s position is outside the mainstream of public opinion as well. A decade of research of Americans’ views on abortion by Marist, the Wall Street Journal, and NBC News found that Americans consistently oppose abortion after 20-weeks’ gestation. In a recent national poll, Marist found that 63 percent of Americans support banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, while just 33 percent are opposed.
In small-town Pennsylvania, where many are proud to cling to their religion, those numbers are probably much higher in favor of protecting innocent life. And as Conor Lamb’s Republican opponent, Rick Saccone, pointed out in a debate, the issue of protecting late-term babies from abortion is simply a human rights issue: “This isn’t a matter of religious faith, this is a matter of protecting our most helpless constituents, those that don’t have a voice.”
Maureen Ferguson is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a senior policy adviser for The Catholic Association.
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