Every January it has become tradition at the state capitol for California’s legislators to celebrate the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that forced the legalization of abortion on all 50 states back in 1973. Both the Senate and the Assembly commemorated the court case yesterday, giving speeches and passing resolutions praising abortion rights. (You can find the final votes here: Senate and Assembly.)
Yet, in the midst of this celebration, there are pro-life voices still willing to speak truth to power, even when overwhelmingly surrounded by those who oppose them. Below are highlighted two such individuals, Californian’s for Life Director Wynette Sills, and Assemblyman Jim Patterson (R-Fresno).
Below you will find the text of a speech Wynette Sills gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee (watch speech) last week opposing the Senate Resolution, and a video of Asm. Jim Patterson’s opposing the Assembly Resolution yesterday on the Floor of the Assembly.
Both of these individuals serve as examples to us all.
Wynette Sills, Californians for Life Director
Senate Judiciary Committee
SR 7: OPPOSE
January 17th, 2019Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
We can all predict the outcome of this vote. Some would say it is a waste of time to even speak.
Yet, there is always merit in speaking Truth to Power.
You have the Power. We all know the Truth.
In the US, 60 million human lives have been killed by abortion since 1973. These 60 million human lives killed can be represented by the total number of people currently living in California (39 million), Oregon (4 million), Washington (7 million), Arizona (7 million), and Nevada (3 million), combined.
Abortion is brutal, bloody, barbaric, and inhumane, hurting millions of women for a lifetime, leaving many of us to suffer from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares, drug/alcohol addictions, and thoughts of suicide, especially women my age, who were lied to by the abortion industry, telling us “it was just a clump of cells”, some “tissue”. Yet, we now know the Truth. Everyone in this room has heard the baby’s heartbeat, which starts at just 21 days. We have all seen the ultrasound image of a baby’s arms, legs, and face, undeniably human.
SR 7 devalues human life and is a Civil Rights Injustice. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, whose birthday we celebrate, famously said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Killing the most vulnerable among us, the weak, the voiceless, the “imperfect”, and the “unwanted”, is a lethal human rights violation that effects all of us. Baby girls are being killed just because they are female. 90% of babies identified as having Down Syndrome are killed. Poor babies and babies of color are being killed at disproportionate rates. We don’t solve poverty by killing poor children. Where is the outrage over this human rights injustice?
I invite you to spend some time with me at the Sidewalk in front of the 145 abortion businesses here in our state. Most women I meet there feel like they have no “choice.” Tomorrow, 20 babies will be killed at for-profit Family Planning Associates in Sacramento. I’ll be there in the rain with a sign “Pregnant? Need help?” with a heart willing to do anything we can to help women and save lives. Women will come out afterwards, changed forever, often in so much pain they are barely able to walk, sometimes bleeding through their pants as they pass blood clots larger than the size of lemons, or fall to their knees, puking in the parking lot flowerbed.
I have a dream when women can succeed without having to kill our children.
I have a dream where we can all work together to make sure women have the resources and support they need when facing the challenges of an unexpected pregnancy, so that abortion becomes unthinkable.I invite you to share in that dream and join the increasing number of Californians who reject abortion. The abortion rate here in California is at a historic low, with a 48% decline in California abortion rates since 1991. http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/healthand-medicine/article132053889.html
Come be on the positive, loving, life-affirming, pro-life, pro-woman, pro-science side of history.
Yes, I know your voting record. Yes, I know your Democratic Party allegiance to the abortion industry.
Yet, in love and charity, I hope that someday, each of you will have a change of heart, just like “Jane Roe” of Roe v Wade. Her real name was Norma McCorvey, who actually never had an abortion and later had a complete change of heart, becoming a pro-life leader later in her life, alongside former abortionist and NARAL founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who had done over 60,000 abortions in his lifetime, but later became pro-life and producer of the Silent Scream.
There is hope and forgiveness for every one of us who seeks God’s mercy.
In closing, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Today, despite the powers against me, I will not be silent about the matter of abortion, which Dr. Bernard Nathanson called “the most atrocious holocaust in the history of the United States”.
I urge you to vote NO on SR 7.
