This is a letter to the editor published in the Guam Pacific Daily News here.
The most impressive thing about the public hearing for Bill 195-32 was the ability of the senators present to keep a straight face while listening to the most amazing yarns and irrelevancies proffered by the four “professional” women who opposed the bill.
We’ll leave names out, but the four included a former senator turned bank president, an abortion industry attorney, another former senator turned social worker, and a doctor - actually two doctors since the one doctor both read the testimony of another doctor and then gave her own.
Bill 195-32 is our local version of “born-alive” legislation. It simply says that should a child survive an abortion procedure, the child is a legal human being under Guam law and must be treated as a human being and not medical waste.
It’s obviously pretty difficult to openly oppose a bill which outlaws the tossing of writhing, struggling infants into the abortion clinic trash, so the local champions of abortion had to find another way, and the circus was on!
Both the bank president and the attorney errantly argued that the bill was unnecessary since there is supposedly already federal legislation that includes Guam. FACT: The federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act only applies to federal bureaus and agencies, not private abortion clinics (which is why 25 other states have passed their own versions)
The social worker, while curiously bemoaning Guam’s infant mortality rate by opposing a bill designed to outlaw the killing of infants, co-opted the hearing to wrongly blame child abuse and advocate for more money for jobs like hers. FACT: The island’s coroner recently testified (Bill 62-32) that the main cause of infant mortality on Guam was not due to child abuse but to prematurity.
The doctors berated the senators for not knowing the irrelevant fact that the hospital already had a policy for when to let born-alive infants die. FACT: The hospital claims it doesn’t do abortions so the bill has nothing to do with hospital policy - unless of course the hospital actually does abortions.
Senators are famously adept at keeping straight faces at public hearings, but this one had to be a challenge. One wonders if the question “Do they think we’re stupid?” crossed any minds.
For the sake of children like Kaitlyn Carey, let us hope not. Kaitlyn is a happy seven-year old local abortion survivor who was adopted by even happier parents, Mike and Chris Carey.
Upon learning of Kaitlyn, the mother of Natasha Perez, for whom Natasha’s Law is named, suggested that Bill 195-32 be named “Kaitlyn’s Bill”. She thought it would be good, as with her daughter’s bill, to put a human face on it.
To see Kaitlyn’s beautiful face and read her story, see “Katitlyn’s Story” at EsperansaProject.org
Tim Rohr
Resident, Agat