News
Featured Image
Kellie CopelandNARAL Pro-Choice Ohio

CLEVELAND, Ohio, July 6, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – In a curious line of attack for pro-abortion lobbyists to pursue, the head of NARAL’s Ohio affiliate attacked the Trump administration Thursday for allegedly “putting babies in cages.”

The comments came during the latest episode of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio’s “The Morning After” podcast, in a conversation between the group’s executive director Kellie Copeland and communications manager Gabriel Mann.

The bulk of the conversation concerned the potential ramifications of President Donald Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee overturning Roe v. Wade, a topic of intense fear and anger among abortion advocates. The group encouraged members to contact the state’s two US senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, to thank the former for supporting abortion and pressure the latter to oppose Trump’s nominee.

Overturning Roe would enable individual states to vote directly on abortion’s legality, and Copeland expressed dread at the prospect of losing abortion’s Supreme Court “firewall.”

“You know if your state legislature does something boneheaded the courts will eventually sort it out and they’ll make it right,” she added. Pro-lifers have decried the abortion lobby for using the courts to insulate their favored policies from the democratic process.

Approximately 32 minutes into the podcast, Copeland urged pro-abortion activists to overcome their “misery” toward the political landscape and mobilize for pro-abortion volunteerism.

“Look, I get it, the misery index is really high,” she said. “It seems like they’re coming at us from every direction, I mean…they’re putting babies in cages, for God’s sake.”

Copeland was referring to immigration officials’ temporary detainment of parents and children in separate facilities for the duration of criminal proceedings over illegal border crossings. In fact, the child holding areas are the same as those used by the Obama administration; the only change under Trump was to stop waiving adult prosecutions, increasing the number of kids being held separately.

Since the public uproar over the policy began earlier this summer, Trump has signed an executive order calling for families in custody to be housed together, and the administration will comply with a court order to quickly reunite families that have already been separated.

As for babies within America’s borders, NARAL’s Ohio chapter declares the legal power to kill them before birth a “fundamental human right,” including beyond twenty weeks of pregnancy, via partial-birth abortion, and at taxpayers’ expense. A variety of medical literature suggests preborn babies are capable of feeling pain by twenty weeks.

It also bitterly opposes giving abortion-minded women the opportunity to see ultrasound footage of their unborn baby or hear his or her heartbeat, and condemns pro-life pregnancy centers for offering support to help pregnant women let their babies live.

Ohio saw a total of 20,672 induced abortions in 2016, the most recent year for which government data is available.

Copeland also suggested that the pro-abortion cause was “intertwined” with other left-wing priorities imperiled by a more conservative Supreme Court, including illegal immigration and same-sex “marriage.”

“All of those things are intertwined, and all of those values are at stake right now,” she said, a sentiment with which pro-family advocates agree, albeit because they hope for different outcomes.