We’ve reached an odd point in the debate over abortion in this country, a point where it’s clear the old axiom “safe, legal and rare” no longer applies.

Not only have we seen bills that protect the right to a third-trimester abortion and make them easier to obtain, we’ve actually seen a governor imply that infanticide might not be a bad thing.

Additionally, Senate Democrats have recently blocked a “born alive” bill that would require “any health care practitioner present” when a child was born alive during an abortion to “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.” Good work, guys.

Part of the debate regarding access to abortion is whether or not a fetus can feel pain and when it can. During an interview on Friday at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference, Housing and Urban Development Director Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, talked about operating on babies still in the womb and born prematurely.

During the interview, Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, asked Carson when he believed life began.

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“That’s a very good question because, with all the technology that we have acquired as human beings, we still don’t have the ability to create life,” Carson said. “God has orchestrated an incredible situation where the egg and sperm come together, and within a matter of ten to 12 weeks, you can see the little fingers and the little toes, the little nose, and the face.”

“The heart has started to beat,” he continued. “It’s absolutely amazing.”

He noted that at a certain point in fetal development, babies were “developing hundreds of thousands of neurons every single day.”

“I’ve had the privilege of being able to operate on very little babies that were 25, 26, 27, 28 weeks gestation,” Carson continued.

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“And I can guarantee you they can feel. They can react.”

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“You have to give them anesthesia if you’re going to cut them, believe me,” he continued. “But they can also respond to comfort and to warmth.”

“And for somebody to say that’s a meaningless bunch of cells, honestly, is just totally ignorant,” he added.

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Carson continued to talk about the gruesome consequences of abortion.

“You have a baby who could live outside of the womb,” he said. “But some people feel that it’s OK to murder that baby.”

“And the level of barbarism that requires — I quite frankly don’t know how people can do it,” he concluded.

And as for the “health of the mother” excuse, Carson actually held the doctors responsible.

“They talk about they’re doing this for the health of the mother,” Carson said. “What about the mother’s mental health that she has to endure for the rest of her life?”

None of these things particularly matter to Democrats, of course. The most common hit on the GOP is that they just want to see the baby born, they don’t care about it after that. This gambit is eye-rollingly bad on face, but what’s interesting is that this argument actually makes more sense when used against the other side. They just want to make sure the mother can have the abortion, they don’t particularly care what happens to her afterward.

Physical problems, guilt, mental health issues — all of these are illusory. Inasmuch as they exist, well, they’re either rare but serious side effects that shouldn’t bother us or they’re the result of society shaming women who have abortions. The abortion itself has nothing to do with it.

And, as for the fetus, keep in mind that they’re shifting the goalposts further and further when it comes to what they’re willing to countenance in terms of abortion while swearing that it’ll never really happen.

Just a reminder that no woman is or has ever been moments from giving birth and decides “You know what? I want an abortion. I forgot that was an option until now.” — Paul F. Tompkins (@PFTompkins) February 6, 2019

Oh, OK. Why are people fighting to protect this barbaric procedure via law the way Andrew Cuomo and New York recently did? These are babies who can feel pain. That may not be what the left wants you to think about, but it’s the truth.

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