O’Reilly is right: We have no moral authority if we don’t protect the preborn

Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly of The O’Reilly Factor addressed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s stance in favor of late-term abortion from Wednesday night’s debate.

In his Talking Points Memo to open the program, he mentioned:

Now, it’s somewhat shocking and I mean that, shocking, that Hillary Clinton would support late-term, partial-birth abortion citing the health of the mother. As we saw in Kansas and in Pennsylvania, the health of the mother could be anything. There are corrupt doctors who will abort for money on the most flimsy of physical excuses. In a humane country, the unborn must be protected to some extent by the government. Otherwise, we don’t have any moral authority on anything.

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Media Matters for America, which also published articles claiming that “Chris Wallace Let Trump Push the Right-Wing Media Myth of “Partial Birth” Abortion” and “Right-Wing Media Keep Pushing Myth of “Partial-Birth” Abortion,” posted a clip of O’Reilly’s statements.

While Media Matters has mocked those who acknowledge the reality of partial-birth abortion, the facts back up O’Reilly’s points. Convicted murderer and former late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell performed abortions past the 24-week legal limit at his dingy ‘House of Horrors’ in Philadelphia — and if the babies survived, he snipped their spinal cords. In Kansas, late abortionist George Tiller would perform abortions on young women and girls for “mental health reasons,” such as not being able to attend prom or a rock concert. He also had Dr. Kristin Neuhaus rubber stamp these abortions for teens.

If those aren’t “the most flimsy of physical excuses,” it’s hard to say what is.

Live Action News’ Kristi Burton Brown reports that “even though federal law bans most partial-birth abortions (PBA), only 19 states have actually banned the procedure themselves.” So what does this mean as to the legality of the procedure? She explains:

The federal law bans PBA when it is committed on federal property – such as military bases – or when it involves interstate commerce. As explained here, this means that partial-birth abortions could shockingly still be performed in the other 31 states under certain circumstances. While a number of these 31 states ban late-term abortion, and while PBA is commonly thought of as a late-term abortion procedure, it can be performed earlier in a pregnancy as well. Three of the states that ban PBA only ban it “post-viability.”

Live Action News’ Carole Novielli addresses the fact that partial-birth abortions do happen — and they happen much more frequently than we have been led to believe:

In 1997, the head of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (NCAP), Ron Fitzsimmons, admitted that he “lied through his teeth” two years earlier when he claimed the procedure was “rare.” He later claimed that approximately 3,000-5,000 partial birth abortions were performed annually, the majority on healthy babies.

She also quotes a nurse who witnessed a partial-birth abortion, performed by the creator of the procedure. Nurse Brenda Pratt Shafer was horrified by what she saw:

Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby’s legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby’s body and the arms– everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby’s head just inside the uterus.

The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall.

The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. I was really completely unprepared for what I was seeing. I almost threw up as I watched the doctor do these things.

The United States is one of only four nations where a woman can obtain an abortion at any point of pregnancy for any reason. That hardly sounds like the government is protecting preborn children. It’s an oft-repeated ideal that without the right to life, there are no other rights.

When the government will not protect the most innocent, vulnerable, and defenseless among us, O’Reilly is right to say “we don’t have any moral authority on anything.”