Butterflies and babies. Both are beautiful. Both develop in miraculous ways. A butterfly emerges after about 12 days in a cocoon, where it began as a caterpillar. A baby takes a little longer, emerging from the womb after about 40 weeks of life as a fetus.
On Jan. 9, Del. Kathy Tran, D-Va., introduced two bills in the state legislature: one affects butterflies, the other affects babies. According to Tran’s website, the first bill’s goal is to “help save … butterflies by protecting the fall cankerworm (caterpillar)” from deadly insecticides.
The other bill’s goal, Tran explained in a now-viral video, is to allow late-term abortion up until the moment of birth.
If you kill the caterpillar, you’ve killed the beautiful butterfly. What a strange and chilling code of ethics to prohibit insecticides while promoting infanticide.
This is not a theoretical debate. According to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, there are about 12,000 abortions performed annually after 20 weeks of pregnancy. That’s a staggering statistic: 12,000 babies aborted every year in the second half of pregnancy, when many are viable and can survive outside the womb in a neo-natal intensive care unit. Pampers even has a special line of diapers for these “micro-preemies,” as they are known.
Why are these late-term abortions sought? Again, the pro-choice research institute tells us in a study from 2013 that most late abortions are elective, and done for socio-economic reasons:
This ethic of late-term abortion promotion has infected the Democratic Party far beyond Virginia. Every 2020 Democratic presidential candidate has embraced Roe vs. Wade, which (contrary to common misunderstanding) allows just what Tran’s bill allows: third-trimester abortions for broadly defined “health” reasons that include a woman’s emotional health, family situation, and age. Most of these presidential candidates, including Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are on record recently voting against even a modest ban on abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy, and in favor of taxpayer funding of abortion.
New York Democrats were positively giddy in January when they passed a late-term abortion bill in the state legislature and celebrated by lighting up the One World Trade Center spire in pink. Pink? How jarring. For most people, pregnancy and the color pink evoke joyful images of baby showers, Instagram gender-reveals, and the classic delivery room announcement, “It’s a girl!” Meaning, a live girl.
Politically speaking, the shocking embrace of late-term abortion is a disaster for Democrats. The Left may be cheering abortion until birth, but the average person is appalled. About 75 percent of Americans say abortion should be limited to the first three months of pregnancy, according to recent polling. That includes a majority of Democrats. This is not a good electoral strategy for swing states in 2020.
Many Democrats used to think differently. When Congress voted on late-term abortion in the late 1990s, almost half the Democrats in Congress voted with the pro-life side. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., said this type of abortion was, “too close to infanticide.” The late Sen. Howell Heflin, D-Ala., once famously quipped, “As a former fetus, I’m opposed to abortion.”
It’s a lovely sentiment to want to protect caterpillars. Protecting human babies is more than a lovely idea, it is a basic necessity of human rights in a civilized society.
Maureen Ferguson is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a senior policy adviser for The Catholic Association.
