The St. Paul city council unanimously approved a resolution declaring Tuesday, March 10, “Abortion Providers Appreciation Day” in the Minnesota capital.
The resolution — which, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, passed the all-Democrat council with “no public discussion” — claims “abortion is one of the safest medical procedures in the United States.”
Pro-life advocates beg to differ. The National Right to Life Committee points out that while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says abortion has an extremely low rate of serious complications, “there is no agreement among investigators as to what constitutes a major complication and no real national system for … reporting these kinds of statistics, making the accuracy of such assertions questionable.” Indeed, there is ample evidence that abortion is highly unsafe, notes the group.
The city council, by passing the resolution, aims “to combat the stigma that many abortion providers and clinic staff face, and to celebrate the courage, compassion, and high-quality care they provide.”
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Dave Andrusko of National Right to Life News suggested that in debating the resolution, “I’m guessing nobody mentioned, say, Kermit Gosnell. It’d be tacky to mention a man convicted of three counts of first degree murder in the deaths of babies he consciously aborted alive and then ‘snipped’ their spinal cords. And the seven Democrats would probably be uncomfortable if anyone brought up Karnamaya Mongar, the woman who died at the hands of Gosnell’s hideously unqualified staff.” Nor, he writes, is it likely that the council members visited South Bend, Indiana, for the recent burial of the remains of 2,411 babies that the late Dr. Ulrich Klopfer aborted and kept as trophies. And “who would bring up (or even remember) the candor with which the then-senior director for medical services for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) talked about fetal body parts in an undercover video taken by the Center for Medical Progress?”
In fact, the only abortionist mentioned in the resolution is the late Dr. David Gunn, who was shot and killed in Florida on March 10, 1993 — hence the date chosen for Abortion Providers Appreciation Day.
Abortion providers “are an essential and valued part of Saint Paul’s health care,” the resolution reads, adding that they provide “necessary health care.”
That is a difficult contention to defend given that the United States had some of the best healthcare in the world prior to the Supreme Court’s 1973 invalidation of all state restrictions on abortion. In addition, leaders representing more than 30,000 American physicians signed an open letter last year declaring that abortion is never necessary, “and deliberately killing the unborn child by abortion is not healthcare.”
The potential overturning of Roe v. Wade is what really has the city council worried, and the timing of the resolution is meant to coincide with the court’s hearing of a case challenging a Louisiana law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges to nearby hospitals.
“The Supreme Court of the United States now contains a majority of justices who may not interpret the Constitution to provide protection for the right to end a pregnancy and may overturn or severely limit Roe v. Wade,” frets the resolution. (The council is so far left that it actually struck the word women from the original text and replaced it with patients; elsewhere, it refers to “all people who can become pregnant.” We wouldn’t want to offend the transgender crowd, after all.)
The resolution also decries recently enacted abortion restrictions in other states and claims violence against abortion providers is increasing.
The American Civil Liberties Union praised the resolution, while Republican state Senator Mark Johnson said it was “indicative of the moral decline occurring in Minnesota and across our country.”
But the most pointed — and poignant — comment on the resolution came from Barbara Seery of Lakeville, Minnesota. Referring to the number of unborn babies aborted each year in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, she wrote to the Pioneer Press, “I can think of 10,000 Minnesotans from this past year, plus 9,000+ Minnesotans from the year prior, plus 10,000+ Minnesotans from the year prior to that, etc. (or ad nauseam), who will not be celebrating the St. Paul City Council’s newly approved Abortion Providers Appreciation Day.”
