Must Read: Rep. Steve O'Ban's Floor Speech on HB 1044

Right not to be Coerced to Take Human Life

Mr. Speaker, this bill is not about one’s views on regulating abortion or a women’s right to choose. This bill is about the value we place on the freedom of conscience. This bill is a test of all of us in this chamber. Do we nurture and celebrate people who follow their conscience? Or, do we burden and undermine conscience? And not just any issue of conscience is at stake.

This bill would force Americans to violate conscience on the most profound moral issue imaginable. This bill would force Americans to assist in taking what they believe to be innocent human life. Since the Quakers in colonial America were jailed for refusing to serve in colonial militias, our nation has affirmed the right of conscience. Their refusal to take life changed colonial laws and in every armed conflict since, Americans have been exempted for conscience sake. Our laws have responded to protect conscience, again and again.

• Within weeks of Roe v Wade in 1973, every state and the federal gov’t enacted exemptions so doctors would not be forced to take human life.
• Our state’s physician-assisted suicide laws, exempt physicians from being coerced to take human life. 
•  Our state corrections employees are excused from participating in state executions.

And yet, not since the Quakers were jailed in colonial America, would a law punish Americans who refuse to take human life, until HB 1044. No other state, no other gov’t has broken with the long tradition of our nation protecting conscience in this way, until HB 1044.

One Dead, Two Wounded

Posted by Christina


You’ve most probably seen the pro-life slogan that runs, “Abortion: One Dead, One Wounded.” I think that this slogan is wonderful for exposing the ruin that abortion brings to both mother and child, and it is a beautiful expression of our compassion for the mothers who are victims of abortion and not just the babies.

But you know, while I see it as truthful and beautiful, I also see it as incomplete. Every abortion does kill a baby, and every abortion does wound a mother, but in this slogan that mentions only the baby and his/her mother, we have again forgotten the father.

If we forget the fathers who are, along with the mothers, victims of every abortion, who will remember them? And if no one remembers them, who will help them?

We cry out indignantly against the pro-abortion movement’s constant downplay of fatherhood’s rights and dignity, and we accuse them of trampling a sacred and irremovable part of every family. And rightly we should. But do we also often forget fathers? Do we, through our forgetfullness, unwittingly assist the abortion industry in burying the importance of fathers in the lives of their children?

Abortion in America is built on two main pillars: lies and silence. One of the favorite lies is, of course, that fathers have no rights or say in the lives of their unborn children. And silence on this issue greatly helps to furthur the lie. Now if we too forget to speak up constantly in the defense of fathers and offer them help, what are we doing to combat such an evil combination of lies and silence?It’s easy to forget the fathers, in our efforts to reach out to the mothers whose babies are threatened by abortion. But if we do, we only furthur the anti-fatherhood cause that the pro-abortion movement has worked so long and so hard to uphold. They know that once fathers are given back the rights that are theirs, abortion won’t stand a chance. Because it is the nature of fatherhood to fiercely protect their children.

Why else would the pro-abortion movement so tenaciously guard the lie that fathers have no rights in regards to their children? Without the shield of this lie, abortion is pretty much gone.

So we can’t for one moment forget the importance and rights of every father in the lives of his children. Not only must we expose the pain of abortion for fathers, but also the responsibility and rights that they have, and that no one can take these away from any father.

The abortion problem is, if we think about it, largely a father’s issue, since in every family it is the father’s duty to protect and guard his wife and children.

Notice the almost unbelievable skill of the pro-abortion movement in effectively furthuring their cause: one of the first things they did in legalizing abortion back in 1973 was too strip fathers of their rights!

It’s up to us to come back in full force against the lies that are destroying the sacredness, duties, and rights of fatherhood! Lies that use a most despicable way to furthur the murder of innocent children! Terribly shameful!

But what else would be so effective a shield for the pro-abortion movement? It is one of hell’s worst deceptions!

Let us do our best to constantly combat one of abortions most supporting lies. And so, it is not, “Abortion: One Dead, One Wounded.” It is, “Abortion: One Dead, Two Wounded”!