U.S. House Passes Women’s Health Protection Act
On Friday, the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives sent a mostly symbolic message by passing the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA). The bill, which has little chance of Senate passage, prevents states from banning abortion prior to fetal viability, at about 24 weeks. It also removes ultrasound requirements and mandatory waiting periods, and allows a health care provider to determine if continuing a pregnancy would harm a woman’s health—including her mental health.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who prioritized the bill after the Supreme Court refused to block the Texas law, says the WHPA is “about freedom of women to have choice about the size and timing of their families.” Pelosi, like President Biden, is a Catholic yet supports abortion rights. After the WHPA passed in the House, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone labeled it “nothing short of child sacrifice,” adding, “It is especially shameful that any self-professed Catholic would be implicated in such an evil, let alone advocate for it.”
Louisiana Republican Julia Letlow denounces the WHPA as “perhaps the most extreme abortion measure that Congress has ever considered,” saying it would “overturn countless protections for the unborn that states have already put into place.”
Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen calls the bill “radical,” saying it “would effectively do away with all state-level restrictions on abortions.” Though the bill is “purely a political gambit” and “dead on arrival in the Senate,” he warns, “The American majority should wake up and take note.”
Southern Baptist theologian Dr. Albert Mohler describes the WHPA as “a form of virtue signaling,” saying it would legalize abortion until the point of delivery. After its passage, he tweeted: “The Democratic Party is now the party of the Culture of Death, and the Speaker of the House is its prophet. What a sad day for America.”
