“This Wednesday please join us for a pray-in/sit-in at Speaker Boehner’s office as we call for legislation banning all abortions after 20 weeks. Sadly, the House has failed to schedule a vote on this bill. People, it’s time to be a voice for those who have no voice!”
Those are the words of a Washington D.C. pastor, and director of the Christian Defense Coalition, Patrick Mahoney, one of three pro-life leaders organizing a public protest at the offices of Speaker John Boehner this week.
Rev. Mahoney, along with former nurse and well-known pro-life blogger Jill Stanek and Operation Rescue president, Troy Newman are planning a sit-it Wednesday at the speaker’s office because GOP leaders broke a promise and cancelled a vote on the “The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”
The law would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks when many believe that there is documentation that unborn children can feel pain.
“It was so disappointing to have you pull the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act from being voted on earlier this year.” the group wrote in an open letter to the Speaker recently.
The letter continues:
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“It was even more troubling to have this life-saving legislation withdrawn on the eve of the 2015 March for Life, when hundreds of thousands of Americans had come to Washington, D.C. to embrace human rights and equality for all, and we were promised it would be passed on January 22.
“Although we are sure this was not your intention, millions felt betrayed by your actions and those of the Republican House leadership. Just one day before scores would be marching in the harsh winter conditions of January, we were still being assured a vote would happen the next day.
Imagine our further sense of betrayal that, almost two months later, no vote has been rescheduled for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”
Protest organizers have called the failure of Republican party leaders to introduce the bill not only a betrayal of the pro-life movement but a betrayal of America’s children.
“We expect them to act,” Newman said in an interview with WorldNet Daily, “It’s exactly why the voters put them there. It was in their platform, what they ran on.”
Newman’s determination to send a clear and uncompromising message to party leaders on Wednesday came through loud and clear just days before the sit-in will take place. Newman said he won’t back down, “We are going there to put pressure on Boehner to get this bill pushed forward,” he told Saynsumthn.
Newman questioned Boehner’s leadership in passing a law most Americans support, “This is the the most “pro-life Congress” in US History but they can’t pass a bill they passed last session?” Newman asked.
Stanek says that she helped organize this protest after Rep. Renee Ellmers sabotaged the bill when it was originally supposed to be brought forward, that was January 22nd this year, the anniversary of Roe, the law which legalized abortion.
“After that, I, for the most part, kept my silence, waiting… and waiting… and waiting for the GOP House leadership to circle back and fix their mess,” Stanek writes on her blog.
“The GOP must have mistaken our silence for indifference – when really it was a grand display of unmerited patience – because after January 22 the House leadership went silent itself about the 20-week ban.
“So finally a small group of us said enough and organized a protest for March 25, at 11:00 a.m., at Speaker Boehner’s office, at whose door the buck stops.”
A week before the protest is to occur, Speaker Boehner told Life News that there is no purposeful delay in bringing the bill back to the floor, that it is very important to him and he and Republican leaders are committed to bringing it back to the floor for a vote.
“I’m proud to lead a pro-life bipartisan majority in the U.S. House of Representatives,” Boehner said.
“The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act is the most significant pro-life legislation to come before Congress since enactment of the ban on partial-birth abortions, and it remains an important priority for our majority. We have a moral obligation to defend the defenseless, and we will continue to fight to ensure our nation’s laws respect the sanctity of unborn human life,” the Speaker added.
But protest organizers were not convinced by the Speaker’s grand standing as evidences by Stanek’s response to Boehner, “Words, words,” she writes.
Stanek’s impatience comes from her own personal experience of holding a dying aborted child in her arms, “For me, it always comes back to the 21-week abortion survivor I held until he died. That sweetheart would be alive today had a 20-week abortion ban been in place.”
Days before the protest, Stanek told Saynsumthn that she is feeling determined to see that the GOP knows she is not going away as a voice for these children, “Wherein lies one of the pro-life movement’s problems. We’re obviously not respected or feared enough to have had someone(s) in the political party that is supposed to uphold our interests carefully shepherd the 20-week abortion ban through the process like it was truly a Big Deal.”
“Right now I am feeling determined… angry… fed up… and disgusted,” Stanek said.
Rev. Mahoney is encouraging pro-lifers to join them on Wednesday, citing holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace prize winner, Elie Wiesel, on the group’s events page, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
“We cannot be indifferent when it comes to standing for innocent human life and equality for all! Join us on March 25! #freetheban,” Rev. Mahoney writes.
Image credit: Jill Stanek Blog
“I, as a nurse at a hospital in Chicago, held an abortion survivor for 45 minutes until he died, and he was 21 weeks old,” Stanek told WorldNet Daily. “An abortion ban such as this would save babies like I held. This is very real to me. I have actually seen and held the babies that the House is just playing around with willy-nilly right now.”
“I have determined next Wednesday will be a fitting time to remind politicians, and even we in the pro-life community, about that little guy and others like him, and attempt to restore a sense of urgency on saving these babies from an agonizing, tortured death,” she said.
Anyone who wishes to join Stanek, Newman, and Rev. Mahoney can get additional information on the group’s Facebook page. For updates as the protest unfolds follow the hashtag #freetheban on twitter.
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