Only These States Say Unborn Babies Are Humans: An Update on the Fierce Abortion Battles Across the US

Jenna Ellis with the Dobson Family Institute appeared on Wednesday's CBN Newswatch to talk about abortion legislation currently in
state legislatures around the country. Click play to watch the interview.

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) on Wednesday released their sixth annual report on the fight to protect defenseless unborn babies in the United States.

The report titled The State of Abortion in the United States, 2019 summarizes legislative developments in all of the states, at the federal level, and also gives the annual number of abortions performed in the US.

The document also lays bare the 2017 - 2018 annual report of abortion giant Planned Parenthood.

According to the NRLC report, using data from the Guttmacher Institute and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with estimating figures for 2015-2018, the NRLC now estimates 60,942,033 abortions have been performed in the United States since 1973.

"Nearly 61 million unborn children have died as a result of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions," said Carol Tobias, National Right to Life president in a press release. "However, through the right-to-life movement's determination to protect mothers and their children, we continue to see evidence that our efforts to educate America about the unborn child's humanity, and our efforts to enact protective pro-life legislation, are having a tremendous impact in moving our nation away from Roe and Doe's deadly legacy."

Planned Parenthood, which reported over $1.6 billion in revenues in 2017-2018, while posting over $240 million in "excess revenue," is estimated to have made nearly $160 million performing 332,757 abortions – well over one-third of all abortions in the United States annually.

The report also found that state legislatures continue to be successful in enacting pro-life legislation that extends protections to unborn children and helps their mothers. These laws include protections for pain-capable unborn children, laws banning dismemberment abortions of living unborn babies, and efforts to steer state funding away from organizations that perform abortions, such as Planned Parenthood.

Meanwhile, state battles are underway to acknowledge the humanity of unborn babies. Pro-life lawmakers in states like Indiana, West Virginia, and Kansas are fighting to declare that unborn babies are human beings at the moment of conception and prohibit abortions.

In Indiana, state Rep. Curt Nisly has introduced a bill that would recognize unborn babies as human beings from the moment of fertilization and would be included in the state criminal code. 

In West Virginia, state Rep. Alex Mooney's "Life at Conception Act" would define human life as beginning at the moment of conception.  Mooney believes all unborn babies are entitled to legal protection under the Constitution. 

In a recent op-ed in The Inter-Mountain, Mooney writes the "fact that life begins at the moment of conception is taught in West Virginia Biology classes."

"The Prentice Hall Biology textbook published in 2002 states on page 1016, 'When an egg is fertilized, the remarkable process of human development begins….a single cell no larger then a period at the end of this sentence undergoes a series of cell divisions that results in the formation of a new human being."

And in Kansas, 21 lawmakers have sponsored an amendment to the state constitution that would prohibit abortion. The amendment gives equal "inalienable rights, equal protection and due process of law of every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being, including fertilization."

"My purpose is to protect unborn babies and unborn children. I think they're persons. I think life begins at conception and they should have equal protection under our constitution," state Rep. Randy Garber, R-Sabetha told The Wichita Eagle. 

Thirteen states have laws on the books that state unborn babies are people. These personhood statements are often included under the criminal code to protect mothers and their unborn babies from violent attacks like domestic abuse. 

The states that define unborn babies as persons, human beings, or children, include Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Michigan.

Last week, New York legislators stunned America by passing a law that allows unborn babies to be aborted up until the day of birth. The Reproductive Health Act passed by state Democrats and signed into law by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). Democrats in the Virginia legislature also proposed a similar bill.

As these abortion battles are waged, one OB/GYN who says he's delivered thousands of babies offers this perspective.

Omar L. Hamada, MD, MBA‏ @OmarHamada who describes himself on Twitter as a Physician/Surgeon, Theologian, former US Spec Ops LTC Flt Surg & Dive Med Officer, says late-term abortion is never necessary:

"I want to clear something up so that there is absolutely no doubt. 

I'm a Board Certified OB/GYN who has delivered over 2,500 babies. 

There's not a single fetal or maternal condition that requires third-trimester abortion. Not one. Delivery, yes. Abortion, no."

I want to clear something up so that there is absolutely no doubt.

I'm a Board Certified OB/GYN who has delivered over 2,500 babies.

There's not a single fetal or maternal condition that requires third trimester abortion. Not one. Delivery, yes. Abortion, no.

— Omar L. Hamada, MD, MBA (@OmarHamada) January 23, 2019