'God already gave me another chance at life': Steve Scalise announces bid for House speakership



House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) has announced a bid for the House speakership.

Scalise, who survived being shot in 2017, announced earlier this year that he was battling cancer. But he later provided a positive update, noting that "the cancer has dropped dramatically" due to chemotherapy.

"God already gave me another chance at life. I believe we were all put here for a purpose. This next chapter won't be easy, but I know what it takes to fight and I am prepared for the battles that lie ahead. I humbly ask you for your support on this mission to be your Speaker of the House," Scalise said in a letter to colleagues.

— (@)

The announcement comes after GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California was removed from the House speaker role on Tuesday, a move that marked the first such ouster in U.S. history, reports indicate.

After eight House Republicans joined with Democrats to vote in favor of booting McCarthy from the speaker's slot, the former speaker announced that he would not seek the position again.

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio has also announced that he is seeking the role.

"The problems we face are challenging, but they are not insurmountable. We can focus on the changes that improve the country and unite us in offering real solutions. But no matter what we do, we must do it together as a conference. I respectfully ask for your support for Speaker of the House of Representatives," Jordan noted in a letter to colleagues.

— (@)

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has thrown his support behind Jordan.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, according to GOP Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, Republican Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma informed the Texas delegation that he plans to seek the speakership.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Career abortionist admits most late-term abortions he performs involve healthy babies and mothers; unwittingly exposes savagery sought by House Democrats



A career abortionist recently provided the Atlantic with insights into both his butchery and his victims. While the horrific details provided by Warren Hern paint a bloody picture of what actually takes place behind closed doors in blue-state abortion clinics, they also serve to indict the House Democrats who now seek to see similarly ruthless and limitless abortion enshrined as a national right.

Warren Hern is the abortionist who literally wrote the book on the barbaric practice.

Hern, a founding member of the National Abortion Federation, is notorious for performing late-term abortions in Colorado on viable human beings at the bulletproof Boulder Abortion Clinic, which he founded in 1973. He has been the subject of numerous profiles and articles.

A 2010 Guardian piece cast him as a brave survivor of pro-life hostilities and criticism by the kind of people who reckoned him monstrous on account of his late-term execution of a child with dwarfism and many other such human beings.

Esquire once profiled the man, noting that pregnant women are "not moms until they have a baby." Up until the baby is born and not killed by an abortionist is the woman no longer a "patient" and the baby no longer on death row.

In the same piece, Hern noted he hated the word "abortionist," suggesting that it had become a "degrading and demeaning word that has the same negative connotations as the most despicable racial epithet."

Over the weekend, the Atlantic published a profile on Hern, 84, noting that the abortionist, nearing his fifth decade killing babies in Boulder, is "obstinate, utterly certain of his position, and intolerant of criticism even as he dishes it out."

While 14 states now ban most forms of abortion, Colorado enables Hern to legally abort babies at any stage in pregnancy.

Hern readily admitted that he doesn't just kill unhealthy babies — those the eugenicists of the 1930s and their ideological descendants might think unsuitable.

"Hern is reluctant to acknowledge any limit, any red line," reported Elaine Godfrey of the Atlantic. "He takes the woman's-choice argument to its logical conclusion, in much the same way that, at this moment, anti-abortion activists are pressing their case to its extreme. Hern considers his religious adversaries to be zealots, and many of them are. But he is, in his own way, no less an absolutist."

The geriatric abortionist "estimates that at least half, and sometimes more, of the women who come to the clinic" are carrying children who are healthy, who do not have "devastating medical diagnoses," and Hern will gladly charge around $6,000 to kill them.

In two instances, Hern indicated he killed babies simply on the basis of their gender.

According to the Atlantic, "The reason doesn’t really matter to Hern. Medical viability for a fetus — or its ability to survive outside the uterus — is generally considered to be somewhere from 24 to 28 weeks. Hern, though, believes that the viability of a fetus is determined not by gestational age but by a woman’s willingness to carry it."

Godfrey asked Hern, "So if a pregnant woman with no health issues comes to the clinic, say, at 30 weeks, what would you do?"

The abortionist responded, "Every pregnancy is a health issue! ... There’s a certifiable risk of death from being pregnant, period."

Hern admitted to having been, at least on one occasion, psychologically affected by what he was doing.

"In the 1970s, physicians did not induce fetal demise during abortion, and once or twice, during a procedure at 15 or 16 weeks, he used forceps to remove a fetus with a still-beating heart. ... But for a long while after, a vision of that fetus would wake Hern from sleep. He could see it in his mind, the inches-long body and its heart: beating, beating, beating," wrote Godfrey.

Unlike Edgar Allan Poe's unnamed narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart," these bad dreams about the beating heart of one of his victims did not ultimately drive Hern to confess a murder to the police. However, the nightmare he has committed his life to shows the state of things Democrats seek for America.

House Democrats reintroduced the so-called "Women's Health Protection Act" in late March in hopes of enshrining limitless abortion as a national right.

The bill echoes Hern's absolutism, stating, "Reproductive justice requires every individual to have the right to make their own decisions about having children regardless of their circumstances and without interference and discrimination."

It similarly discounts the personhood of the children involved, claiming, "Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures in the United States."

If enacted, health care providers would be unencumbered by allegedly "harmful or unwarranted limitations or requirements" that "do not significantly advance reproductive health or the safety of abortion services, or make abortion services more difficult to access."

Since the House is Republican-dominated, it is unlikely that this legislation will pass, but it is clear that Democrats will continue to try.

After all, this is not the first time in recent years Democrats in Washington have sought to legalize limitless abortion across the nation.

Senate Democrats attempted to advance an earlier version of the same bill in May 2022 to codify Roe v. Wade, thereby enshrining limitless abortion as a national right. They came close, but ultimately failed in a 49-to-51 vote.

National Review reported at the time that the bill would "supersede any federal or state law in conflict with it, including long-standing conscience laws protecting health-care workers and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act."

It would scrap 24-hour waiting periods before abortions, requirements that abortion clinics distribute information about adoption to mothers, laws requiring parental consent, and some state laws prohibiting infanticide. Sex-selective abortions would also be allowed.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who voted against the legislation, said, "It wipes 500 state laws off the books. It expands abortion."

In the event this law or one similar to it is ultimately passed, late-term abortions of the kind executed by Hern on all varieties of human beings will be permissible in all 50 states.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!