A few thoughts:
The bill isn’t perfect, of course, but I fail to see the logic behind a pro-lifer voting against a bill banning most (unfortunately, not all) abortions after 20 weeks of conception when the alternative, the status quo ante, is legalized abortion until right before birth.
Among the Republicans who voted against it, Hanna is no surprise: he is by far the two most reflexively pro-abortion Republican in the House (with the defeat if Biggert and Bass last year, Hanna really has no competition). Dent and Frelinghuysen are also pro-abortion, but they sometimes vote the right way—not this time. As for Runyon, Broun and Woodall, they are pro-life, but voted like idiots here. Broun is running for the Senate from GA; hopefully a pro-life conservative with more intelligence, such as Karen Handel or Congressmen Phil Gingrey or Jack Kingston, wins the nomination (Broun is also the one Republican candidate who could lose that election, thanks to his public comments favoring Creationism and his sometimes Alliance with Paultards).
Among the Democrats, Lipinski, McIntyre, Peterson and Rahall are consistent pro-life votes, the only four truly pro-life Dems left in Congress. Henry Cuellar usually votes pro-life, and he did here; hopefully his occasional pro-abortion votes last year were an aberration. As for Matheson, he’s no pro-lifer, but generally has voted pro life since the new district maps were released in Utah in late 2011; his pandering won’t be enough to save him from defeat by Mia Love in 2014.
Disappointing votes from Democrats whom I was hoping might support this bill (but knew probably would vote against it given their votes over the past two years: Langevin of RI, Sanford Bishop of GA, Lynch of MA and Kaptur of OH. And no one better mention Barriw of GA and “pro-life” in the same sentence again.
Oh, and the three freshmen Dems whom I thought might be pro-life: Filemon Vela and Pete Gallego of TX and Bill Enyart of IL, proved themselves not to be any such thing.
The logic is simple: the legislation correctly identifies the child in the womb as a human person and then fails to provide equal protection for every person, as the Constitution explicitly and imperatively requires.
In fact, it expressly grants permission for the abortionist to kill any child, as long as they do it on schedule.
Immoral, unconstitutional.
“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”
“No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Even Blackmun, in Roe, admitted that if the child is a person that they are “of course” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Then he and his majority colleagues dehumanized the child.
Legislation like this doesn’t even bother with dehumanizing the child before it allows certain disfavored classes of persons to be murdered. They dispense even with a fig leaf.
In a real sense, morally, these kinds of bills are worse than Roe.
Broun is a creationist but couldn’t vote for this bill restricting abortion? WTF? Useless Paulites. Thank goodness GA has primary runoffs.
Runyon one of them too? I just assumed he was pro-choice when I saw him on the list. What is their reasoning on this? I don’t get it.