Last week a Dallas-area high school valedictorian, Paxton Smith, took to her graduation ceremony’s stage to attack the Texas Heartbeat Act as what she called “a war on my body and a war on my rights.”
Her speech has since gone viral and been featured on major national news networks such as CNN.
One of Texas Right to Life’s major legislative priorities, the Texas Heartbeat Act was passed by the Texas legislature and signed into law by the governor this May. The Texas Heartbeat Act prohibits abortion after a preborn child’s heartbeat is detectable, usually around six weeks by the most common methods.
“I have dreams and hopes and ambitions. Every girl graduating here today does. And we have spent our entire lives working towards our future and without our input and our consent our control over our future has been stripped away from us,” Smith said.
Smith’s speech is truly heartbreaking.
Not because of the passage of the Texas Heartbeat Act, which will save thousands of lives.
The speech is heartbreaking because Smith demonstrates a genuine belief that abortion is the only way a woman can have complete autonomy over her body and find success and fulfillment in Life.
Think about that. The abortion industry has convinced this high school graduate that the murder of an innocent child through abortion, even a child with a detectable heartbeat, is the only way she can possibly find fulfillment in life.
Smith went on, saying, “I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail, I am terrified that if I am raped, then my hopes and dreams and aspirations for my future will no longer matter.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Though rape only accounts for less than .5% of all abortions in the United States, even in rape cases abortion hurts women.
Today, a woman can achieve success and find fulfillment in her professional and personal life without having to take her child’s life through abortion.
Texas Right to Life’s own staff, who have advocated for and advanced the Texas Heartbeat Act to law, is proof of this fact.
Rather than being limited by motherhood, Texas Right to Life has many leaders who are both experts in their fields and mothers of precious children.
What is truly heartbreaking is how bleak and desperate a picture is painted in this speech.
Smith describes the Pro-Life movement, manifested in the Texas Heartbeat Act, as “a war on the rights of your mothers, a war on the rights of your sisters, a war on the rights of your daughters.”
But every single day the daughters and sisters of our society are brutally murdered across the nation through abortion.
Abortion is the messy, gruesome destruction of preborn human Life.
Nothing, really nothing, could be a more direct attack and a more barbaric war on the rights of women than the actual murder of defenseless preborn baby girls.
For too long the abortion industry has trapped, pressured, and limited women to abortion.
For too long the abortion industry has tried to indoctrinate women into believing they cannot succeed or be happy without abortion.
Abortion is not a solution. Abortion is not healthcare. Abortion is the ending of an innocent life, and the destruction of a beating heart.
Women are smarter than the abortion industry.
Science and technology have now progressed so that we can see and prove that Life begins at fertilization and that a six-week-old preborn child has a beautiful, beating heart.
We are proud and thankful that Texas has taken action to defend and protect the most innocent and vulnerable among us by passing the Texas Heartbeat Act.
*Photo obtained via Lake Highlands High School livestream.