Greg has already drawn attention to this, but I’ll put my oar in, too.  (I have more to say, but have had difficulty finding time & space to say it, lately.)

Upon being alerted by the Knights of Columbus, I edited the automatic text in the NCHLA.org “email your congressman” form to read as follows: 

Please support the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R. 36) and oppose all weakening amendments. This bill represents a common-sense reform that should be objectionable to no one.

As a scholar in a related field, I am well aware of the growing body of research that indicates that humans not only recognize pain but language, parental voices, and the distinctive patters of their parents’ native language weeks before birth. (one easy-to-find example is here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091105092607.htm )

If we cannot agree not to kill unique human beings who are learning language and crying out in pain, what do we have left to talk about?

I stand by it. And I emphatically concur with the Kevin Williamson column Greg recommends.

There are real questions in the cluster of issues often classed as “abortion” or “pro-life” issues, and when we broaden it out to include the whole range of “social issues,” there are hundreds of very real unresolved matters.

There is no sincere and actual question to be resolved about the legal and moral standing of a recognizeable human child who is acquiring language and responding to pain.  You may just barely be able to argue that torturing a dog to death is not the sort of thing we have an obligation to stop (you would be wrong, but you could make a case for it).  You might honestly be unable to commit to the idea that the first four cells of a human being are just as human as the next thirty trillion (the cure for that is some basic medical knowledge, or spending time among loving families welcoming life). It is simply impossible to make a rational argument for slaughtering recognizeable humans; the only way to do it is to flatly refuse to evaluate the actual evidence, and substitute distractions for that evidence. 

Do not waste my time talking about the feelings of whales, or the needs of Gaia, while you kill infant humans.  Do not waste my time talking about Turing tests and the meaning of the Singularity, while you kill infant humans.  Do not waste my time preening about the relative merits of Palestinian and Israeli human rights violations while you kill infant humans.  And do not waste my time arguing for your preferred set of tax benefits and carve-outs for your preferred corporatist-regulatory conglomerates while you kill infant humans.

To maintain that we have no obligation to prevent the deliberate and brutal killing of recognizeable, suffering, helpless members of our own species–human beings–is bigotry, unscientific bigotry, the sort of thing that medieval Christendom rescued us from; it is the very essence of the Dark Ages and the dark side of pagan empires.

Sooner forward to Judgment than back to that, people.

Those with ears will hear.  May God have mercy on our souls.