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June 8, 2015 (Pro-Life Action League) — The other day a strange email from the pro-abortion group NARAL showed up in my inbox. I’m subscribed to all the major pro-abortion groups’ email lists in order to keep tabs on their activities. What was strange about this email was that, in it, NARAL admitted that unborn children feel pain—and even used the word “baby” in reference to an unborn child.

The email was signed by a NARAL supporter, Dana Weinstein, asking for donations to NARAL to fight HR 36, the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks (5 months). She writes, “When I was more than 20 weeks pregnant, my doctor discovered our baby had horrifying severe fetal anomalies that could not have been discovered earlier in pregnancy.”

It’s strange enough to see NARAL using the term “baby” to describe the “products of conception” that the pro-abortion movement has worked so hard to dehumanize—to the point that the media now frequently refer to abandoned babies as “fetuses.”

But even stranger is what comes next. Weinstein writes, “If I’d carried our wanted and loved baby to term, she would have survived only for a short time, in a world of immense suffering. So we chose to end our baby’s pain.”

Again, the word “baby”—even “loved baby,” as if it were possible for this valueless being in the womb to be the proper object for human love. But even more shocking is the admission that children in the womb can feel pain.

The pro-abortion lobby has declared for years that fetuses cannot feel pain, or at least not until much later in pregnancy than 20 weeks. They’ve called it “junk science” to claim otherwise (despite the fact that perinatal surgeons routinely use anesthesia when operating on unborn children).

But now Dana Weinstein is insisting that she and her husband needed to abort their child to end its pain!

Conveniently, Weinstein does not say what condition this child had, so that one could look it up and find out what the prognosis really was—or whether there actually is a known fetal anomaly that subjects a child to pain in utero.

But Weinstein believes it. Aborting her baby was a “gut wrenching” act of mercy, which no politician should stand in the way of.

I understand why NARAL is breaking message here. It would be a heartless, unsympathetic parent who would talk about their “fetus” being diagnosed with health problems. And sounds a lot better to talk about “ending” the pain that a baby is supposedly in right now, than killing the child to keep it from feeling pain later.

But NARAL doesn’t get to have it both ways.

So what’s the deal, NARAL? Are fetuses babies after all—or only when their parents decide to confer value upon them? Can unborn children feel pain, or not?

Reprinted with permission from the Pro-Life Action League.