Washington D.C., Mar 2, 2019 / 16:30 pm
President Donald Trump has accused Democratic politicians of pursuing a "extreme" abortion agenda that would lead to the "execution" of newly born children. The president joined prominent pro-life activists Saturday to address the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
In a nearly two-hour long speech, Trump accused the Democratic party of taking a "radical" position on life issues.
"Democrats are embracing open borders, socialism, and extreme late-term abortion," said Trump, to a chorus of boos from the reported crowd of more than 9,000.
Referencing the recent failure by the Senate to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, Trump said the pro-abortion agenda had become "extreme."
Trump also pointed to recent comments by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, and the passage of the New York Reproductive Health Act as evidence that there was not little to distinguish pro-abortion support from infanticide.
"Weeks ago, lawmakers in New York cheered as they passed legislation to allow babies to be ripped from the womb of their mothers," the president said in his speech Saturday.
"They will execute the baby outside the womb," said the president. "They will execute the baby after birth. This is a radical agenda by the Democrats."
Trump's comments came amid a day in which several pro-life activists and leaders addressed CPAC. Earlier Saturday morning, conference attendees had heard from Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director who now works as a pro-life activist.
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Johnson's change of views on abortion is the subject of the upcoming film Unplanned, set for release later this month.
Following the president's speech, pro-life and disability rights activist Gianna Jessen joined Live Action founder Lila Rose for a panel discussion titled "Left for Dead: Are There No Limits to the Progressive War on Humanity?"
Jessen spoke about her own personal experience of late term-abortion and the perspective it gave her on recent debates. She was born alive following a failed saline abortion on April 6, 1977. Her biological mother was 17 years old and 30 weeks pregnant. Jessen's birth certificate was signed by her abortionist, who had not yet arrived to work that morning.
"Had he been there, he would have ended my life with strangulation, suffocation, or leaving me there to die," said Jessen. "I always say, if abortion is about women's rights, then what were mine?"
Due the circumstances of her birth, Jessen has what she calls the "gift" of cerebral palsy. Despite doctors believing that she would be unable to ever walk or hold her head up, Jessen has completed two marathons and will be climbing a mountain in Italy.
She said that she does not consider herself to be a victim, and finds her strength in her faith in Jesus Christ.
Jessen said she was "grateful" for her life, and "absolutely horrified" by what was going on in the United States. She credited the growing legal push for late-term abortion to a culture that has rejected God and does not understand the inherent worth of human life.
"I think that is a fundamental issue in the culture now: is that nobody knows why they are valuable. Because there's no longer any God to honor," said Jessen.
Unlike the president and several of her co-panelists, Jessen placed blame on both major political parties for the status quo on life issues in the United States.
"We have some bloodthirsty Democrats and leftists, and apathetic Christians and conservatives," said Jessen, theorizing that because "many, many, many" conservative women had themselves suffered through abortions, they found it difficult to speak for fear of offending others.
"We reap the consequences," Jessen said, of four decades of legal abortion - including a wider media which portrays pro-life Americans as beyond the mainstream of public opinion.
To this point, Rose noted that "a lot of people who are pro-choice want abortion restricted," and pointed to recent polling that showed the number of Americans identifying as pro-life had jumped by nine points over a single month.
"When people actually learn these facts, when they learn what abortion actually does to that child," minds change on the issue, Rose explained.
Rose also said that children are naturally pro-life, and that people "are not made to look at a new life as a negative thing, but as a gift."
Life, she said, should be viewed as "an opportunity, not as a threat."
