The death penalty for Miss Pennsylvania?

Should Valerie Gatto, the 2014 Miss Pennsylvania, be killed because of a crime her father committed?

According to the exceptions in HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, the answer is yes — at least if we’re talking about her full 9 months in utero. 

{mosads}Miss Pennsylvania’s biological father was a rapist. Her mother was a survivor. But Miss Pennsylvania’s mother recognized that the child conceived after that brutal rape shouldn’t be punished because of the violent circumstances of her conception — something both mother and daughter had no control over.

The pro-abortion lobby, led by groups like Planned Parenthood, and backed by powerful political allies like DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and President Obama, consistently and vehemently reject any and all abortion restrictions or limitations. Rape, many abortion advocates argue, is always a justification for abortion — and not only a justification, but, they insist, the compassionate solution to the trauma endured. Enter the perpetual exceptions included now in HR 36 and its Senate counterpart, S. 1553. 

Proponents of the bill recognize the brutality of killing pre-born children, especially drawing attention to the fact that currently U.S. federal law does nothing to prevent the killing of pre-born children at 5 months, 6 months and even up until the moment of birth. The Pain-Capable Unborn Protection Act bill attempts to protect children at 5 months and beyond, but not children conceived in rape or incest like Miss Pennsylvania.

Rape and incest are horrific crimes, and abusers should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Yet in our country where some states permit the death penalty, rape has been ruled as insufficient grounds to warrant death. Why, then, should innocent children be faced with lethal consequences not even their guilty fathers will receive?

Women who experience the trauma of sexual assault deserve every support and help. They deserve advocates. But when pro-abortion advocates promise that abortion will alleviate the trauma of rape, they lie to women in some of their most vulnerable and painful moments. Abortion is not a pathway to healing for women struggling to recover from the violence of rape, but a second violence. Killing an innocent life conceived in rape doesn’t heal a mother, but can instead leave emotional and psychological scars that many testify are lifelong. And offering abortion as a solution to rape destroys an innocent third party, violating his or her basic human rights.

Jeff Bell, whom Sen. Cory Booker (D) defeated for U.S. Senate in New Jersey in 2014, put it well:

“I would have a hard time looking a woman in the face and saying, ‘even though you became pregnant through a rape you should carry your child to term because it has a body, it has its own life.’ But I would find it even harder to go to the most recent Miss Pennsylvania, who has worked for rape victims but who herself was the product of a rape, and tell her, ‘you don’t deserve to live.’”

The Pain-Capable Unborn Bill continues to expose pro-abortion groups and politicians for their extreme positions, and works to protect some children from brutal late-term abortions. But let’s not allow the pro-abortion lobby to continue to spread the mythology that abortion somehow helps a rape victim heal, and that the lives of people like Miss Pennsylvania don’t matter before birth. Her story — and her rights — matter, too.

Rose is president and founder of Live Action.