November 1, 2017 — Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, Committee on the Judiciary, US House of Representatives, Washington DC

Thank you. My name is Star Parker and I am the founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, based here in Washington, D.C., and I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman for this opportunity to declare my support of H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017.

The abortion industry all across America, in particular in our most distressed communities, is preying on our Nation’s most vulnerable, brutally dismembering their offspring, and yet there is no Federal protection that the woman considering an abortion receive full disclosure about the human being growing within her. Recently, a famous rapper named Nicki Minaj told Rolling Stone magazine that an abortion of her youth still haunts her, a heart-wrenching story being told many times over, thousands of times, distraught men and women in hundreds of communities all across our great country.

I was one such woman. When, years ago, lost in sexual recklessness, had four abortions without any counsel nor information from the abortion providers about the distinct humanity of the life that was growing within me. I heard all the propaganda of abortion peddlers in school and media, from community and political leaders, yet I heard nothing of the infant development in the womb, nor any information about their mortality.

Perhaps then, one might argue, that little was known about the development or mortality of an embryo or a fetus. Very few instruments were available to medically or scientifically detect heartbeat, but today, due to modern technology, this is not an argument that can be made, in particular with the advent of ultrasound, where we can now hear and measure a heartbeat within the womb.

There is a great need for the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017, and to illustrate the humanity of the life in the womb and to express the great need for this particular bill, I want to share a sampling of stories I have heard over and over again in State after State about the impact of abortion on personal lives. In Texas, this man had deep regret of an abortion in his youth after discovering information on fetal development upon his wife’s first pregnancy, and he ended up in counseling for depression. When he saw the heartbeat of their expectant offspring on sonogram, his heart rushed with panic over an abortion he had a decade earlier with his girlfriend.

In North Carolina, this couple talked themselves into an abortion for financial reasons and then could not look at each other again after thinking about fetal development, and thus ended their marriage. In Alaska, this pastor found out that his minor daughter had had an abortion without consent after she was in agonizing pain in that she was carrying twins and the abortionist had only killed one. The survivor of this botched abortion is now an adult and speaking out against abortion. And interestingly, and for the record, all three of these stories were told to me by men, two of which were African-American.

Let’s imagine, if not only for a second, the millions of men and women all across our country that, with very limited medical and scientific information, go into an abortion clinic to yet still not receive information as simple as that the life growing within her womb has a heartbeat. As a Committee on the Judiciary and Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, I implore you to please consider my above testimony on behalf of the innocent life growing in the womb and the vulnerable men and women considering abortion.

But if you will also consider in your deliberations regarding H.R. 490 the last time in American history that we were faced with hard constitutional political questions on the civil conflict between humanity and convenience, personhood and property, justice and public opinion, slavery was, as abortion is, a crime against humanity. Like slavery, tensions were created in the public square and in law concerning who qualified for natural rights worthy of protection.

In the first 89 years of our Nation’s existence, it was the black slave who sought freedom and equal protection under the law, and many attempts were made to heed their cry. In 1777, gradual abolitionist laws were passed in Northern States — Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York. In 1807, Congress passed a law prohibiting the importation of slaves into the United States after January 1st, 1808. In 1831, emancipation was narrowly defeated in the Virginia congressional convention.
Today, it is the conceived person, living in the womb of its mother, that should be considered human with opportunity of equal protection under the law. It is ironic that while the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution in 1868 humanized slaves, the United States Supreme Court of 1973 dehumanized the life of the being in utero, handing down a decision that wreaked in ethnic cleansing to once again allow a powerful few to determine exactly who had a right to humanity.

As with slavery, while special interest groups put tremendous pressure on legislators and judges to dehumanize blacks so that they could protect slavery, today similar pressure is put on legislators and judges by the eugenics movement and other special interest groups regarding abortion. If the baby in utero is not a human being in the fullest sense of that term, then he or she has no natural right to life. However, if the opposite is true, then the humanity in the woman is entitled to the constitutional right to life.

Ignoring the advent of ultrasound and other medical devices that make it abundantly clear that the baby in utero is alive and indeed human is a disservice to women and to a society built on the constitutional rights that protect us all. I pray that this Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017 will unanimously pass this committee and eventually will be voted on the House floor. I have submitted to your committee a 2015 CURE policy report about the impact of abortion on the black community which will give you more specifics to support my testimony here today.

Thank you.

Source: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 115th Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 2017), pp. 11-12.