Penna Dexter

As January — Sanctity of Human Life Month — drew to a close, the US Senate failed again in its effort to curtail late-term abortions.

The bill is The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. It bans abortions after the five-month mark in a woman’s pregnancy. Research shows an unborn child is fully capable of feeling pain at this stage. Abortions done at 20 weeks gestation and later require that the abortionist tear the baby apart before extraction. The name of this bill is a stark reminder of the pain this inflicts.

But it didn’t seem to move pro-abortion senators who prevented the bill from getting the 60 votes needed to send it to the Senate floor where it would have passed.

Here’s what Senator Ted Cruz wrote about it at FoxNews.com:

“I had hoped my Democratic colleagues could see the merits of such legislation. I had hoped that they could recognize the barbarity of ripping apart a suffering child and put in place at least some limit of what we as a nation are willing to carry out in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade.”

After Roe v. Wade, the Left took on the mantra of choice ­­— a right to choose abortion. But abortion at 5 months, when the unborn child has everything — fingers and toes, eyelids, eyebrows, and eyelashes — is not a choice. It’s an act of desperation — often coercion. Young women even considering this need to know there’s help.

Priests for Life has been conducting undercover calls to abortion clinics to find out how willing they are to do these late-term abortions on healthy moms with healthy babies. A surprising number will do them. For a higher price.

In allowing elective abortion after five months, the US is joined by only seven other nations, including China and North Korea. It’s tragic that the Senate could not bring itself to remove us from that brutal club.