WASHINGTON – Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah) said that too many young people have been “desensitized” to abortion procedures.
Love recalled serving on the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives when hearing about the experiences of children at Planned Parenthood clinics.
“I remember sitting down thinking, as I’m listening to what happens to a person who goes through a Planned Parenthood clinic, and then I started realizing that a 14-year-old, and at that time my middle child was 14, can actually go into a clinic, agree on her own, without the consent of a parent or someone there being an advocate for her, to say I’m going to agree to a major medical procedure and then I’m also going to agree to give up that child for either selling their parts for research and be able to make that decision. I have to tell you, that it is so un-American,” Love said during a recent Empowering Women through Conservative Policy event at the Heritage Foundation.
Love said it’s wrong that a child can choose to have an abortion on her own while she cannot legally operate a vehicle, vote or join the military.
“We have desensitized our society and desensitized our youth to think that that same child, our federal government and society says that child cannot get behind the wheel of a car, cannot register to vote, cannot join the military, can’t even go on a field trip without their parents’ signature but yet they can go into a clinic without an advocate there at the scariest time of their lives and be able to do and consent to these procedures is beyond me, and that’s where I felt like my voice came in because I remembered my 14-year-old daughter and how she could be in that situation,” she said.
“We as Americans have to be able to stand up and say we are going to protect life at all stages of development, in the schools, on the streets and in the womb,” she added.
Love, former mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, said that her goal as an elected official is to “preserve life.”
“I am unapologetically a pro-life mother, pro-life American. I believe that it is our job to preserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she said. “First and foremost, life, and if it’s the only thing I do while I am here is to preserve life I will be able to hold my head up and be able to stand in front of my children and say I’ve used my talents for something good.”
“You have gifts and you have talents that are not opportunities to use for the betterment of society, but it’s your obligation to do that,” she added.
Pro-life conservative lawmakers have been advocating for passage of the Conscience Protection Act, which would “amend the Public Health Service Act to prohibit governmental discrimination against providers of health services that are not involved in abortion.”
Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) supported adding its language to the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 or $1.3 trillion “omnibus” bill. Congress passed the omnibus before leaving for spring break; the final version did not include the language of the Conscience Protection Act.
Black and Love were among the Republican members of the House who voted against the bill.
“Today I voted against a $1.3 trillion spending package that flies in the face of Utah’s principles of responsible governance. Utah’s industrious taxpayers deserve to know that their hard-earned dollars are being spent responsibly and after careful review,” Love said in a statement following the vote. “That’s why I’ve long supported a balanced budget amendment and introduced bills to reform our broken process, like the One Subject at a Time Act. Unfortunately, this 2,232-page bill was drafted without broad input, released late last night, and makes no effort to rein in spending. I cannot, in good conscience, support it.”
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