Massachusetts Lawmakers Consider California-like Law Requiring Public Colleges to Provide Abortion Pills

Massachusetts State Capitol
Credit: Nicholas Erwin / Flickr

HB3481 is a new bill sponsored by Massachusetts Representative Lindsay Sabadosa which would require public universities to provide abortion pills to students. The bill would cover the cost of abortion medication using state tax dollars and provide funding for university health centers' equipment and staffing.

C. J. Williams of Massachusetts Citizens for Life said, “If you’re just putting an abortion facility in the middle of their college campus, our daughters are not getting the message that they have a choice. You want to give them options, not abortion.”

The abortion pill process actually involves two pills. The first of these, mifepristone, blocks the flow of nutrients to the baby and starves them to death. The second, misoprostol, causes violent contractions that allow a mother to expel their deceased child.

If this bill passes, the program would be in place by 2022.

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Women Talk About Experiences with Abortionist who Collected Aborted Bodies

Ulrich Klopfer

After Ulrich “George” Klopfer's recent death, it was found that he had collected the bodies of over 2,400 aborted children. When bodies were found by his lawyer and family, the discovery became a national news story. Now, patients of Dr. Klopfer have spoken out about how he treated them while he was still a licensed abortion provider.

“It was excruciating,” said Jessica Bowne, who underwent an abortion with Klopfer when she was 18. “It was so painful… I begged him and asked to stop. I started screaming and crying and I said, ‘Please stop, I don’t want to do this anymore,’ and he looked at the nurse and told her to keep me quiet because I was going to scare the other patients.” The nurse then covered Browne's mouth to silence her.

Another woman almost died after Klopfer did not complete a dilation and evacuation abortion. “She was so sick and her uterus was so infected with bacteria with pieces of the tissue of baby left inside that the antibiotics didn’t work,” said Dr. Geoff Cly to WANE. “We had to do surgery eventually and we had to take her uterus out. So this young woman could never have children anymore. So I was, as a doctor, I was upset.”

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Asylum-Seeker in ICE Custody Removed from Life-Support without Family's Permission

Nebane Abienwi, who fled Cameroon this summer to seek asylum in the United States, was declared dead after hospital staff at an ICE detention center removed life-support. An ICE report states that Abienwi suffered brain damage after falling from a top bunk in his cell. Abienwi’s family communicated with ICE that they would like the ventilator to stay on until a family member could arrive, but their request was not respected.

“We did not approve that,” Abienwi’s brother told USA Today. “One hundred percent, we did not... The family spoke and said, ‘We believe in miracles. It has happened to other families, why not ours?’ I made clear that he should remain like that and the family would decide if we want to take him off that machine or not.”

Abienwi's brother is struggling to cut through red tape preventing him from seeing his brother before his casket is sealed, and doesn't know how to transport his brother's body home. In the meantime, he has borrowed money to pay for expenses and is having Abienwi's body kept at a California funeral home.

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Judge Strikes Down Trump Regulations Protecting Doctors' Conscience Rights

Federal District Judge Paul Engelmayer struck down Trump administration regulations designed to protect the conscience rights of medical professionals who choose not to kill preborn children or refer their mothers to abortionists who would.

The Hill Reported:

"District Judge Paul Engelmayer invalidated the rule on multiple grounds, including a finding that it violated the Constitution’s spending clause by allowing the administration to cut off funds approved by Congress to providers who do not comply with the rule by forcing employees to perform services to which they object.

A number of states, including New York, as well as Planned Parenthood and other groups had sued over the rule, which was scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 22. 

They argued the rule would allow for discrimination in the name of religious freedom."

Of course, without the rule, the medical field can discriminate against those who hold religious beliefs against abortion.

“This rule ensures that healthcare entities and professionals won’t be bullied out of the health care field because they decline to participate in actions that violate their conscience, including the taking of human life,” said Office of Civil Rights Director Roger Severino. “Protecting conscience and religious freedom not only fosters greater diversity in health care, it’s the law.

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Ohio Senate Passes Abortion Pill Reversal Notification and Born-Alive Infant Protection

On Wednesday, November 6, the Ohio Senate passed two pro-life bills. One mandates that pregnant women seeking abortion be notified they may be able to save their children after starting the chemical abortion process through abortion pill reversal. The second requires abortionists to provide care to infants who survive attempted abortions. Abortion facilities are also required to file a report whenever a child does survive abortion.

Pro-life Governor Mike DeWine is expected to sign the bill if it reaches him.

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Senators from Oklahoma Introduce Federal Bill to Ban Down Syndrome Discriminatory Abortions

Credit: Phil Roeder / Flickr

U.S. Senators James Lankford and Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma introduced the Down Syndrome Discrimination by Abortion Prohibition Act, which would make it illegal to abort a child because they are diagnosed with Down syndrome.

In a press release, Inhofe wrote, “Every life has value and that extends to the unborn. To take away the precious life of an unborn baby is murder, but to deny a child the chance at life because of his or her chromosome count is a heinous effort to eliminate a vibrant community through abortion.”

In a separate statement, Lankford said, “If you’ve ever met someone or have a family member with Down syndrome, you know they are joyous, wonderful people who deserve as much out of life as any other person. God has a plan for every life, and we should honor that plan by working together as a nation to ensure each child and his or her family have access to the resources they need to succeed regardless of whether or not a child has an extra chromosome.”

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South Carolina Committee Advances Heartbeat Bill

A Senate Committee in South Carolina has sent a bill out of committee that would ban nearly all abortions in the state. The South Carolina heartbeat bill, similarly to heartbeat bills passed in other states, would ban abortion after a preborn child's heartbeat is detectable. With a vote of 9 to 6, the Senate Medical Affairs Committee advanced the bill only after exceptions for cases of rape or incest were added. Abortion providers who commit abortions after a heartbeat is detectable could face a $10,000 fine and up to two years in jail.

Governor Henry McMaster said that he would will sign this bill into law if legislators pass it.

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Canadian Psychologist Urges Husband to Murder his Terminally Ill Wife

Credit: Matthew Perkins / Flickr

Miranda Edwards was given a terminal cancer diagnosis but was determined to fight the disease anyway, saying “I will fight to the end. I will do every treatment, everything possible to stay alive.” Her husband, Serge Simard, decided to see a psychologist who might help him cope as the situation worsened. The psychologist gave him horrifyingly surprising advice: that he kill his wife.

He secretly recorded the session, which was quoted in a CTV report: “[A]t one point [the morphine] will be a dose too much and she just won’t wake up. It’s the best thing that could happen, really. She won’t be suffering anymore; she’ll be in a better place.”

“That’s not assisted suicide, that’s murder,” Simard said to CTV. “I will not murder my wife. If Miranda voices anything I will respect her wishes. Miranda has never voiced that she wanted to pass away.”

No disciplinary action will be taken against the counselor Authorities have chosen not to investigate because the counselor is now retired.

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Originally Born Two-and-a-Half Months Premature, Sabina Checkett now Works to Save other Premature Children.

Sabina Checkett

32-year-old Sabina Checkett was originally given a 50% chance to survive when she was born two and a half months early. She weighed 3lbs and fit into the palm of her father's hand. After surviving her early days, Checkett now works as a doctor to help save other preborn children facing similar struggles.

“I was just like them all those years ago and now I’m helping to look after them,” Checkett said.

Checkett spent three months in Norwich Children’s Hospital as a baby while she fought for her life. Now Checkett works in Evelina Children’s Hospital in London as a neonatal doctor to help other prematurely born children survive.

John Wyatt, Professor of Neonatal Paediatrics at University College London, presents evidence that 30 years ago only 20% of babies born before 28 weeks gestation survived. Now, a child born at 23 weeks gestation has a 50% chance to survive.

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12-Year-Old Rape Victim Delivers Aborted Baby in Hotel Room.

Eric Jerome Lacy

A court deposition recently surfaced which tells the sad story of a young girl who had to undergo an abortion in a hotel room after her stepfather, Eric Lacy, raped her.

The 12-year-old would not speak about the incident with her mother, but she did tell her that she was experiencing stomach pains. She brought her daughter to a doctor who performed an ultrasound confirming that she was pregnant. The father had previously tried to kill the preborn child by forcing his daughter to drink wine, but that was unsuccessful.

Her mother scheduled an abortion with Southwestern Women’s Options (SWO) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The facility does not offer overnight accommodations but directs patients to stay at nearby hotels with reduced "medical stay" rates. Because the baby was over 22 weeks in development, the girl was to undergo a dilation and evacuation procedure. An abortionist injected the baby with digoxin and then inserted materials into the 12-year-old's cervix that would cause it to open overnight, according to the deposition.

The abortionist planned to remove the deceased child from its mother's womb the next day. The dilation and evacuation procedure involves reaching into the womb with tools that allow an abortionist to tear limbs off a child's body until all that remains is the head. The head is then crushed and removed from the womb piece by piece.

That evening, however, the 12-year old went into labor. She was told to sit on the toilet until the abortionist arrived. "So, what I did was I cut the cord, and I placed it in a bag," she said.

Eric Lacy was convicted of rape and sentenced to 50 years in jail.

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Daleiden Trial: Planned Parenthood Claims Security Upgrades After Undercover Report are "Damages"

CMP undercover journalist David Daleiden

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America had Gregory Regan, a public accountant, taken the stand to explain the "damages" that Planned Parenthood suffered as a result of videos released by the Center for Medical Progress. The videos were recorded by undercover journalists and exposed the sale of aborted babies' body parts.

Between "infiltration" and "security" categories, PPFA claims to have suffered $630,213 worth of damages. This includes costs for increased vetting for conference attendees, badges, ID scanners, and guards.

When he was cross-examined, Regan agreed with defense attorney Vladimir Kozina that he was not giving an opinion on the cause of those damages. Furthermore, the prosecution offered no analysis regarding the necessity of security upgrades.

Defense Attorney Peter Breen issued into evidence an email from Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains CEO Vicki Cowart, who was frustrated at a lack of very basic security measures. Cowart states in the email that a Google search for the "BioMax" address (the fake company that the CMP used to conduct its undercover investigation) showed that it was not a real tissue procurement company. “If you have not been doing this level of security and vetting [a Google search], will you start immediately?” she wrote.

If a Google search could have accomplished the same goal that Planned Parenthood spent over half a million dollars doing, then those costs weren't really necessary.

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PA. Representative Tweets Apology for Calling Early Miscarriages "some mess on a napkin."

PA. Representative Wendy Ullman

Pennsylvania State Representative Wendy Ullman went to Twitter to apologize for a remark she made last week while during a hearing for a bill that would require medical facilities to bury or cremate children who were miscarried or aborted. In that hearing, she said,

“It refers specifically to the product of conception after fertilization which covers an awful lot of territory. I think we all understand the concept of the loss of a fetus, but we’re also talking about a woman who comes into a facility and is having cramps and — not to be, not to be, concrete — an early miscarriage is just some mess on a napkin.”

Women who have miscarried children and felt the pain that comes with that death called her out on her remarks, which devalue not only the lives of preborn children but also their personal struggles dealing with the loss of a child. She responded this week in a series of tweets that acknowledge the harshness of her language, but don't reverse her position.

Some would choose donation for medical research, like my family friend, who I quoted in a committee meeting, saying, “So my loss can have meaning.” 2/4

— Rep. Wendy Ullman (@RepUllman) November 1, 2019

This issue is intensely important to me, and that’s why I struggled for words. My words were poorly chosen, and I apologize. I remain steadfast that every single step of a medical process, including the handling of remains, should be decided by a patient and her doctor. 4/4

— Rep. Wendy Ullman (@RepUllman) November 1, 2019

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California Nurse Charged with Murder for Allegedly Injecting Friend with Assisted Suicide Drugs

Kristie Koepplin
Credit: National Right to Life News

Arizona nurse Kristie Koepplin has been charged with murder by California authorities, who claim that she killed a friend by giving him a lethal injection of assisted suicide drugs. Koepplin is a nurse and has posted $1 million bail, but will not be allowed to practice nursing until further notice.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said that Koepplin helped Matthew Peter Sokalski die, but the circumstances do not align with the criteria of the assisted suicide law.

“It is beyond disturbing that someone who is trained as a nurse to aid the sick and the dying would twist their duty to willingly end the life of another human being,” Spitzer told the Washington Post.

Koepplin pleaded not guilty to the charge.

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Daleiden Trial: Planned Parenthood Agreed to Sell Aborted Baby Livers for $750 Each

David Daleiden
Credit: American Life League / Flickr

In his final day on the witness stand, undercover journalist David Daleiden said that the Texas Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast abortion clinic agreed to sell him the livers of aborted children for $750 each. He was posing as an employee of a fictitious company called BioMax and convinced clinics to sell to him using a brochure that detailed a “specifically criminal transaction over fetal body parts,” including “a per-volume kickback based on the number of body parts sold.”

Only one abortionist ever questioned the procedure, and her question was only “to make sure that she would still get her per-specimen fee,” according to Daleiden.

The trial is centered around recordings of conversations that David Daleiden and Sandra Merrit had with abortionists about the sale of fetal body parts. The prosecution claims that these conversations were confidential in nature and therefore the recordings were illegal. This is not true if the recordings were done to expose violent crimes, so the defense is trying to prove that abortion clinics altered abortion procedures in ways that could harm women so they could obtain more intact body parts.

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March of Dimes Report Card Gives Illinois D+ for High Preterm Birth Rates. Pro-Life Leader Says Unrestricted Abortion is to Blame.

A recent March of Dimes report card for Illinois gave the state a D+ for its high rate of preterm births. One interesting detail to note in this report is that African American women in Illinois are 52% more likely to give birth before their term is complete than other women. Illinois Right to Life Executive Director Mary Kate Knorr responded to the report:

“It is no surprise that Illinois and Chicago have a preterm birth problem – because Illinois and Chicago have an obvious abortion problem. Abortion procedures do irreversible damage to a woman’s uterine wall and cervix, drastically increasing the likelihood she’ll experience future miscarriages or preterm delivery.”

Studies conducted in the last decade suggest that the more abortions a woman has, the more likely she is to give birth before completing their term.

“Who can be surprised that women struggle to sustain their pregnancies when Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers in our state are willfully ending pregnancies by the tens of thousands every year?” said Knorr. “In fact, I’d like to hear from Planned Parenthood. Are they not a women’s healthcare provider? What do they intend to do to address preterm births, which is clearly a major women’s health issue in communities across our state?”

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Connecticut Supreme Court Uses Pseudo-Science Term to Rule Embryos "Marital Property"

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos could be destroyed at the request of a mother even though the father objected. They were ruled "marital property" and the couple who created them had previously agreed to destroy them in the event of divorce.

A quote from the decision includes the term “pre-embryo,” which isn't a scientific term and was constructed purely for the sake of politics.

“Pre-embryo is a medically accurate term for a zygote or fertilized egg that has not been implanted in a uterus,” the court wrote. “It refers to the approximately 14-day period of development from fertilization to the time when the embryo implants in the uterine wall and the primitive streak, the precursor to the nervous system, appears. An embryo proper develops only after implantation.”

A textbook would say something entirely different. The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (6th ed.), by Keith Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, says this:

The term “pre-embryo” is not used here [in their book] for the following reasons: (1) it is ill-defined; (2) it is inaccurate…(3) it is unjustified because the accepted meaning of the word embryo includes all of the first 8 weeks; (4) it is equivocal because it may convey the erroneous idea that a new human organism is formed at only some considerable time after fertilization; and (5) it was introduced in 1986 “largely for public policy reasons.”

By controlling and manipulating the language by which many understand the development of human life, those who don't care about what happens to preborn children can have a powerful influence on how politicians respond to the issue.

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Pennsylvania Representative Calls Early Miscarriage “just some mess on a napkin.”

During a debate on legislation that would require burial or cremation for the bodies of babies who die from miscarriage or abortion, Rep. Wendy Ullman made the statement “Not to be…not to be concrete…An early miscarriage is just some mess on a napkin.”

The Pennsylvania House Health Committee was debating HB 1890 when Ullman made the statement demeaning the value of preborn children in their early stages of development. Preborn children, without the help of legislation like this, are treated as medical waste after death. This legislation, which has been upheld by the United States Supreme Court, calls for human lives to be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their age.

Abortion advocates argue that these kinds of laws decrease access to abortion by increasing the cost that abortion facilities must pay to dispose of bodies.

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Pennsylvania State Representative Privately Apologizes Five Months After Harassing Pro-Life Mom and Teens

Pennsylvania State Representative Brian Sims privately apologized to the family of Ashley Garecht via mail five months after harassing her and her teenage daughters and attempting to dox them for praying outside a Planned Parenthood clinic. The message on the card Sims sent read:

“Dear Ashley, I want to reiterate my sincere apologies to you and your family. I regret the harm that I caused and I have learned a great deal from this. I can only ask for your forgiveness and I wish you all the best in the future. Sincerely, Brian Sims.”

According to Life Site News, Sims had not apologized to the family before sending this care. He did, however, apologize to the Planned Parenthood facility for the negative press this incident generated.

In the original video, Sims said:

“What we’ve got here is a bunch of … pseudo-Christian protesters who’ve been out here shaming young girls for being here. So, here’s the deal, I’ve got $100 to anybody who will identify these three, and I will donate to Planned Parenthood.”

The Garecht family accepted his apology, but also stated, “It is our sincere hope that Mr. Sims will modify his conduct in the future and that he will stand in defense of all citizens who exercise their First Amendment rights in the public square, including those who advocate for life outside of abortion facilities.”

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World Medical Association Declares Opposition to Euthanasia

This month, the World Medical Organization (WMA) released a declaration of its stance on euthanasia, including all forms of medically assisted suicide. Unlike many other organizations, the WMA took a strong stance which reinforces the value of human life, as doctors should:

"The WMA reiterates its strong commitment to the principles of medical ethics and that utmost respect has to be maintained for human life. Therefore, the WMA is firmly opposed to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide."

Furthermore, it stated that doctors should be given the right to conscientiously object to killing a patient in any area where such actions are legal:

"No physician should be forced to participate in euthanasia or assisted suicide, nor should any physician be obliged to make referral decisions to this end."

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Senate Bill Could Prevent Pro-Life Groups from Receiving Foreign Aid

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) inserted an amendment into an omnibus funding bill which “would prop up the abortion industry and overseas promoting of abortion with federal funds,” and create a “vehicle to harass pro-life recipients” according to a letter to senators from March for Life Action.

H.R. 2740, the omnibus funding bill with this amendment, was pulled from a vote on Thursday, but the entire bill or a new bill that still includes this language could be reintroduced. Congress has until Nov. 21 to pass an appropriations bill to fund government agencies in the 2020 fiscal year.

The amendment increases aid to domestic groups that support abortion and also creates an enforcement mechanism against "discrimination" of aid beneficiaries on the basis of sex, “including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy.” March for Life Action is concerned that this enforcement mechanism could prevent pro-life groups from receiving aid which they currently use to provide life-affirming care.

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