(Official Washington Examiner editorial, May 16) We already knew Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is dedicated to abortion. Now, we see that his radicalism makes him unwilling to enforce the laws he has sworn to uphold.
If he won’t enforce duly passed laws restricting abortion, Becerra should leave office.
First, the background: Becerra is almost ghoulish in his support of abortion. When he was in Congress, his defense of the practice was 100%, and he even voted against a ban against trafficking minors across state lines, without parental knowledge, for abortions. As attorney general of California, he used his position to try to bully Catholic hospitals into performing abortions. He tried to force pregnancy help centers to advertise for abortion providers. He persecuted pro-life activists for exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in aborted human body parts.
Becerra is a man with a seemingly deep emotional investment in what is euphemistically and overgenerously called the “pro-choice” cause.
Now, as a Cabinet secretary, his job is to enforce all health-related laws, including those with which he disagrees. Judging from an exchange he had with Republican U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida at a Wednesday virtual hearing, Becerra is unwilling even to admit that such laws exist, much less enforce them.
Bilirakis asked if Becerra agrees that partial-birth abortion is illegal. The “partial-birth” term is common parlance for a procedure in which a nearly full-term baby is partially removed from the woman’s body, only to have its skull crushed and then be gruesomely disposed of. That method of abortion was outlawed by congressional act in 2003. Becerra is well aware of this because he was in Congress then and voted against the law.
This law was later upheld by the Supreme Court, so Becerra must enforce it as constitutional legislation…. [The full editorial is at this link.]
