The U.S. House of Representatives voted 237 to 189 on Tuesday to ban most abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy, when infants are old enough to feel pain and survive if born prematurely. Only three Democrats supported the bill, while just two Republicans voted against it.
The bill first passed the House in 2013 following the trial of Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist who was convicted on three counts of first-degree murder for killing infants after they had been born. When Republicans took back control of the Senate in 2015, the bill received its first vote in Congress’s upper chamber, where 51 Republicans and 3 Democrats backed it, falling short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.
After Gosnell’s conviction, prominent advocates of a right-to-abortion, such as Nancy Pelosi, Wendy Davis, and Cecile Richards, were unable to explain the difference between the crimes for which Gosnell was convicted and the late-term abortions they want to keep legal.
As John McCormack wrote at the time:
What was the lesson of the Kermit Gosnell trial? Since the Philadelphia doctor was convicted last month of murdering three born-alive infants, two competing viewpoints have emerged. For some, like Senate majority leader Harry Reid and national abortion-rights organizations, the Gosnell case highlighted the need for “clean and sterile” late-term abortion clinics. For others, the real atrocity of the Gosnell clinic wasn’t simply its squalor, but the horror of killing babies old enough to “jump” and “scream” when stabbed in the neck with a pair of scissors, regardless of their location. “[T]here’s almost no difference between killing a baby accidentally born alive in a late-term abortion, as Gosnell stands accused of, and killing the same baby in the womb, as more skilled doctors can do,” wrote liberal, pro-choice Bloomberg columnist Margaret Carlson. “What we need to learn from the Gosnell case is that late-term abortion is infanticide,” wrote liberal, pro-life Daily Beast columnist Kirsten Powers. “Legal infanticide.” Though Gosnell was convicted, thousands if not tens of thousand of elective late-term abortions, or legal infanticides, occur every year in America. Just take the example of what’s happening in Maryland. Dr. LeRoy Carhart says he will perform “purely elective” abortions 28 weeks into pregnancy. Another late-term abortionist named James Pendergraft has suggested he’ll perform even later abortions under Maryland’s health exception if a mother was experiencing “anxiety and stress.” In August 2010, police searched a Maryland abortion clinic owned by a man named Steven Brigham after a woman was severely wounded during an abortion procedure. Police officers were shocked when they found a “chest freezer in the facility, which contained approximately 35 late term fetuses,” according to a report by the Maryland State Board of Physicians. “The latest fetal age is measured as being 36 weeks.” 36 weeks. That’s nine months.
