Nancy Pelosi Says Federal Taxes will Fund Abortion if Democrats Win the House

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr

According to the Los Angeles Times, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has signaled to House Democrats that funding bills will no longer include the Hyde Amendment next year if Democrats maintain a majority in the House of Representatives. The amendment prohibits federal taxpayer funds from going towards elective abortion.

The Hyde Amendment represents 44 years of bipartisan precedent on federal spending. After being passed in 1976 and named after Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde, the Charlotte Lozier Institute estimates that the policy results in 60,000 fewer abortions each year.

Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have similarly voiced their support of ending the precedent of the Hyde Amendment, while President Trump has been vocal in his support.

According to CNA, several House Democrats, including Illinois congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, have attempted to undo Hyde's legacy by repealing or undercutting the policy within the past two years.

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Surgeon Nun Speaks at RNC: The Largest Marginalized Group in the World is the Unborn

In her speech at the Republican National Convention last week, pro-life advocate and surgeon Sister Deirdre “Dede” Byrne gave empowering remarks in defense of the unborn. In her address, she said that life begins at conception, pointed out that unborn children are incredibly marginalized, and called on others to stand up for the lives of unborn children in the face of modern political correctness.

“As a physician, I can say without hesitation: Life begins at conception,” she said. “While what I have to say may be difficult for some to hear, I am saying it because I’m not just pro-life, I’m pro-eternal life. I want all of us to end up in heaven together someday.”

Later in Byrne's speech, she decried the marginalized status modern culture has thrust upon unborn children:

“...we tend to think of the marginalized as living beyond our borders, the truth is the largest marginalized group in the world can be found here in the United States,” she said. “They are the unborn.”

She argued that by fighting the politically-correct pro-abortion culture of today, pro-life advocates would be living like Jesus, who fought against the politically correct Jewish leaders throughout the Bible.

“As followers of Christ, we are called to stand up for life against the politically correct or fashionable of today,” said Byrne. “We must fight against a legislative agenda that supports and even celebrates destroying life in the womb.”

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Sept. Court Date Set for Lawsuit Challenging “Missouri Stands For the Unborn Act”

Last week, the date for oral arguments in the pro-abortion challenge to Missouri HB 126, known as the “Missouri Stands For the Unborn Act” was finally set. They will be heard on Sept. 24 in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

HB 126 was signed into law by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson on May 24, 2019. The law includes numerous pro-life measures: a parental notification rule for when a child attempts to obtain an abortion; bans against discriminatory abortions based on race, sex, or Down syndrome diagnosis; and a "trigger-clause" designed to outlaw all abortion in the state immediately if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned by the Supreme Court. The law also includes tiered bans of abortion at 14, 18, and 20 weeks gestation. To overturn those aspects of the law, a judge would need to argue that banning abortion at all three of those stages violates Roe v. Wade.

Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Howard Sachs enjoined the ban against aborting children purely because of a Down syndrome diagnosis, as well as the bans against abortion at 14, 18, and 20 weeks gestation. The state appealed Judge Sachs's ruling to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, but the hearing was heavily delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chief Justice John Roberts's recent concurring opinion in June Medical LLC v. Russo may have an effect on this case, but those effects are currently subject to speculation.

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Planned Parenthood Adds “Abortion Patient Navigator” Staff Position

Photo credit: American Life League / Flickr

Planned Parenthood recently created a new staff position at abortion clinics throughout the country. “Abortion Patient Navigators” will work to ensure that women who might not otherwise have an abortion due to obstacles like transportation needs, parental consent laws, and personal reservations still come in to complete an abortion.

According to Planned Parenthood, these staffers serve to “guide the patient through the abortion care system” to overcome “obstacles” to abortion. The duties of patient navigators can include pro-abortion counseling, helping minors find attorneys who will help them get around parental consent laws, and helping clients register to vote (presumably for pro-abortion candidates).

A job listing for an Abortion Navigation Program Manager for Planned Parenthood in Aurora, Illinois says that “the ultimate goal of the AB Navigation Program Manager is to relieve as much of the logistical and practical burdens from the patient as possible, such that the path to obtaining high-quality, patient-centered abortion care is as clear and smooth as possible.”

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U.S. Ambassador Andrew Bremberg Criticizes UN Abortion Advocacy

After the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls criticized U.S. States which did not label abortion as an "essential service" during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Ambassador to Geneva Andrew Bremberg responded with a scathing letter.

The letter, labeled as the official U.S. response to the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls, called the group's remarks, “a perversion of the human rights system and the founding principles of the United Nations.”

The letter accuses the United Nations of ignoring China's policies of forced abortion, forced sterilization, and forced birth control.

“These are actual human rights abuses, implicating millions of women and girls and their health, on an industrial scale, targeting a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority,” the letter reads.

The letter further calls the UN group “self-appointed guardians” who undermine the human rights of others by treating their policy preferences as if they were rights.

“If you truly are concerned about the integrity of the United Nations human rights system,” the letter concludes, “we urge you to reconsider the approach that has led you and your colleagues to this sad point, so far from the noble purpose for which this institution was founded 75 years ago.”

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Texas Asks Full 5th Circuit to End Injunction Against its Dismemberment Abortion Ban

After a legal battle that has lasted for three years so far, the state of Texas has called on the full 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to allow Texas to hear the case and allow the state to enforce its dismemberment abortion ban.

Last week, a three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit declined Texas's petition to allow the state to enforce the law while the court prepared its ruling. In response, Texas officials called for a rehearing "en banc," which would mean the full 17-judge panel would make a decision on the state's request to enforce its law.

Below is an excerpt from the Texas petition (internal citiations omitted for clarity):

"In November 2017, the district court below enjoined the enforcement of an important Texas abortion regulation. Texas filed a notice of appeal the same day. This appeal has been pending ever since. Though the Panel assigned to this case heard oral argument almost two years ago, it has not yet issued its decision, and it has denied Texas’s motion to stay the injunction below pending resolution of this appeal. Whether a State may enforce a duly enacted law is a question of exceptional importance. Furthermore, the Panel’s order creates an acknowledged circuit split with the Eighth Circuit’s decision in Hopkins v. Jegley. Therefore, Texas now asks the en banc Court to stay the district court’s injunction and allow Texas to enforce its law immediately."

Hopkins v. Jegley is a recent case in which several Arkansas pro-life laws were upheld, including the state's own dismemberment abortion ban.

In dismemberment abortions, often referred to by the abortion industry as "dilation and evacuation abortions," abortionists stretch a pregnant mother's cervix open by placing sterilized and absorbent seaweed called laminaria into the cervix. After it has been stretched for 24-48 hours, an abortionist will use this larger opening to reach into the mother's womb with grasping tools. These tools allow the abortionist to tear an unborn child's limbs from its body until all the pieces of the child are removed from the womb.

Dismemberment abortion is a brutal violation of human rights, but it's also a common abortion method. Unborn children that have grown into the second trimester of pregnancy are too large for other abortion methods to succeed.

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Chicago Abortion Clinic Has Two Medical Emergencies within Ten Days

Photo credit: Operation Rescue

Information obtained by Operation Rescue shows that Family Planning Associates Medical Group in Chicago, Illinois recently had two separate medical emergencies within ten days.

On July 8, 2020, an employee working for the clinic called 911 to ask for an ambulance to pick up a post-abortion woman with heavy vaginal bleeding. The strangely-cheerful employee said that the patient only needed to be hospitalized “for observation,” but excessive bleeding caused by abortion procedures can be dangerous if it isn't dealt with quickly.

“This was a serious, potentially life-threatening medical emergency that was downplayed by the caller as simply a jovial request for transport for observation,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “Thankfully, the 911 dispatcher realized it was more serious than that and got help there as quickly as possible. This shows how abortion facilities try very hard to conceal the true dangers of abortion.”

Operation Rescue also received a report from pro-life bystanders that a second ambulance left the clinic with its sirens running in a separate incident just ten days later. Operation Rescue was unable to find 911 records, however, indicating that a private ambulance may have been called to avoid creating public records of another medical emergency at the clinic.

According to Operation Rescue, nine women have required emergency medical transportation from Family Planning Associates Medical Group in the past two years.

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Justice Department Asks Supreme Court to Reinstate FDA Abortion Pill Safeguards

photo credit: Ken Chan / Flickr

The Department of Justice has petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States to reinstate FDA abortion pill restrictions that were placed under a preliminary injunction by a district court judge last month.

On July 13, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang placed a preliminary injunction against the FDA's Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) being applied to mifepristone during the COVID-19 pandemic. The REMS safeguards normally prevent women from being able to obtain abortion pills unless they visit a medical professional in-person. Chuang, however, ruled that the risk involved with seeing a medical professional during the pandemic puts an "undue burden" on women seeking an abortion.

The Justice Department wrote in its petition to the Supreme Court,

“Given that the surgical methods of abortion remain widely available, the enforcement of longstanding safety requirements for a medication abortion during the first ten weeks of pregnancy does not constitute a substantial obstacle to abortion access, even if the COVID-19 pandemic has made obtaining any method of abortion in person somewhat riskier.”

The petition further argues that the district court did not have the power to make such a sweeping injunction:

“This Court has made clear that judges are not to second-guess how officials address public-health concerns in areas of uncertainty, yet the district court dismissed the FDA’s expert judgment in favor of its own view that the safety requirements are medically unnecessary. And setting the merits aside, the scope of the injunction extends well beyond the district court’s remedial authority under Article III and basic equitable principles.”

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Delaware Man Arrested for Threatening Pro-Life Demonstrators with Gun

photo credit: Max Kleinen / Unsplash

A man who started an argument outside a Delaware Planned Parenthood was arrested last Friday after threatening a group of pro-life demonstrators with a handgun.

31-year-old Jerome Aniska was arguing with pro-life advocates on a public sidewalk outside the Dover, Delaware Planned Parenthood facility when witnesses say he pulled out a handgun and threatened the group. Afterward, he returned to his vehicle. When the police arrived they found the handgun and an empty holster in the vehicle.

Aniska was charged with aggravated menacing, terroristic threatening, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. He was released on a $26,000 bond.

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CMP Video Shows Planned Parenthood Officials Under Oath Admitting to Altering Abortion Procedures to Harvest Body Parts

A video released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) on Monday shows several Planned Parenthood officials admitting under oath that they illegally altered abortion procedures to obtain intact fetal body parts.

In the video, three Planned Parenthood officials were asked to explain statements they made in undercover videos published by CMP in 2015.

In one clip from 2015, Planned Parenthood Federation of America senior medical services director Deborah Nucatola suggested that whether an abortionist changed the procedure didn't matter as long as they signed a form saying that they originally did not intend to do so (even if they actually do intend to do so). In her April 2019 testimony, Nucatola walked back her statement by saying that she was simply explaining how some lawyers interpret the law. She also admitted, however, that she would change where she gripped an unborn child with forceps, if she knew that the child's tissue was going to be harvested.

Former Planned Parenthood Los Angeles medical director Mary Gatter similarly admitted to altering the abortion process so more intact fetal tissue could be harvested. Under oath, she said, “Sometimes there was a lively discussion about whether it was permitted or not permitted to change the technique, and we were still debating that in Los Angeles when I left,” she said. “But by the time I met Mr. Daleiden and his associates I had evolved in my thinking to changing the technique to get better tissue was allowed.”

Federal law specifically prohibits changes to the "procedures used to terminate the pregnancy," and the testimony from Planned Parenthood officials further proves that the abortion giant has broken the law to obtain tissue samples from unborn children.

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Judge Rules Undercover Journalist Daleiden Must Pay $600K Bond or Let Planned Parenthood Seize his Assets

David Daleiden
photo credit: American Life League / Flickr

United States District Judge William H. Orrick ruled on August 19 that undercover journalist David Daleiden must pay a $600,000 bond to appeal his case against Planned Parenthood by Sept. 2 or else allow Planned Parenthood to seize his assets.

David Daleiden was a major factor in undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) back in 2015; which exposed Planned Parenthood for participating in the sale of human body parts harvested from aborted children.

After a retaliatory lawsuit by Planned Parenthood and a criminal investigation by then-California-Attorney-General Kamala Harris, United States district judge William H. Orrick rendered a judgment of $2.3 million in damages against Daleiden and his compatriots. CMP  investigative journalists David Daleiden, Sandra Merritt, and Geraldo Adrian Lopez, alongside CMP founding board members Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, and veteran pro-life activist Albin Rhomberg are liable for the damages.

Thomas Moore Society lawyers defending Daleiden and the CMP would like to appeal the ruling, but Orrick ordered that Daleiden pay a $600,000 bond within 14 days to secure his right to appeal.

“If we cannot post a $600,000 bond in this 14-day period, Planned Parenthood’s high-priced collections lawyers can come after David with asset seizures, garnishments, and strip him and the Center for Medical Progress bare,” Thomas Moore Society lawyer Peter Breen said in an interview with LifeSiteNews.

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Planned Parenthood Drops Lawsuit Against Indiana Ultrasound Requirement

Photo credit: Andrew Malone / Flickr

On August 19, Planned Parenthood formally announced that it is dropping a lawsuit against an Indiana law requiring women to have ultrasounds before they can have abortions.

A court filing from the state of Indiana and Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky reads, “Due to events that have occurred in the more than three years since this court entered the preliminary injunction—including, Plaintiff’s addition of a new ultrasound machine at a new clinic in Fort Wayne—the parties have conferred and agree that, on January 1, 2021, the preliminary injunction should be vacated and this case should be dismissed.”

The 2016 law requires a woman to have an ultrasound at least 18 hours before she can have an abortion procedure. Federal District and Appeals Courts ruled against the ultrasound requirement, but the rippling effects of June Medical LLC v. Russo have come back to revive several previously-dead pro-life laws. While the ultimate decision in June Medical LLC v. Russo benefitted pro-abortion groups in Louisiana, Chief Justice John Roberts's reasoning in his concurring opinion revived several cases regarding abortion restrictions passed by state governments.

Roberts's opinion stated that states have the right to restrict abortion if they meet specific standards. Before this case, courts performed a subjective "cost-benefit test" of pro-life laws to determine whether the "costs" of restricting abortion or ensuring their safety to women outweighed the "benefits" of doing so.

Regarding the revival of the Indiana abortion law, State Attorney General Curtis Hill said, “For women considering abortions, ultrasounds are an important part of informed-consent counseling,” he added. “Anyone interested in protecting women’s health, including their mental health, should support giving them as much information as possible to aid their decision-making.”

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Judge Allows Pharmacies to Mail and Dispense Abortion Pills During Pandemic

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In an August 19 court order, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled that pharmacies can distribute abortion pills either in a pharmacy or over the mail; bypassing FDA safety regulations.

In response to a lawsuit by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang ruled that pharmacies can now distribute abortion pills to those who obtain prescriptions from a healthcare professional. Beforehand, individuals who wished to obtain abortion pills would have to see a healthcare professional in-person to receive pills.

Specifically, the new order reads (in part):

This requirement that dispensing by mail or delivery service remain “by or under the supervision of a certified healthcare provider” permits mifepristone to be sent from a drug sponsor to a certified healthcare provider in the care of a mail-order pharmacy if the pharmacy has a contractual agreement with the certified healthcare provider to receive mifepristone on behalf of the healthcare provider and then to mail the drug to a patient at the direction of that healthcare provider, so long as the drugs were specifically ordered from the drug sponsor by the certified healthcare provider and held on the provider’s behalf, and the mail-order pharmacy has no right to distribute those drugs except at the direction of the certified healthcare provider.

The FDA places mifepristone, the first part of the two-stage abortion pill regimen, under REMS regulations due to the danger it can pose to women. It has the potential to cause side-effects such as hemorrhage (which can lead to death), and the risks are increased if the pregnant mother has an undiagnosed condition such as ectopic pregnancy or is taking the pill later in her child's gestational development.

An in-person visit to a healthcare professional could ensure a woman's safety by diagnosing pregnancy conditions or identifying the unborn child's gestational age. By doing so, a healthcare professional would ensure the woman's safety during the abortion process. These changes enacted by the District Court endanger women by providing them with dangerous drugs before they have had the appropriate medical screening.

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Over 100 U.S. Legislators Ask Sec. of Treasury to End Tax Breaks for Abortion

Photo credit: Jonathan Cutrer / Flickr

Many members of Congress are taking a stand against the IRS subsidizing abortion procedures. On August 12, over 100 U.S. legislators signed a letter addressed to the Secretary of the United States Treasury Steve Mnuchin. The letter asks his department “to take swift action to issue new regulations to protect innocent human life by ending tax breaks for abortion under the guise of medical care.”

Liberty Counsel writes that the IRS changed its definition of "medical care" following the passage of Roe v. Wade to include abortion. This decision causes some IRS tax breaks to effectively subsidize abortion procedures. Abortion simply is not healthcare, and the congress members' letter to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin reflects this sentiment.

“[W]hen the deduction for medical care was first enacted in the Revenue Act of 1942, abortion was a crime in virtually every state. However, shortly after Roe v. Wade, the IRS imposed on the then-three-decades-old statute a meaning of ‘medical care’ that would have been unthinkable to the 77th Congress that enacted it,” the lawmakers wrote.

The IRS considers “medical care” to be any procedures performed “for the purpose of affecting any structure or function of the body.” In their letter, the legislators noted that "long-standing regulations" say that medical care should “be confined strictly to expenses incurred primarily for the prevention or alleviation of a physical or mental defect or illness.”

Since abortion is an elective procedure which the legislators say, “has nothing to do with ‘the prevention or alleviation of a physical or mental defect or illness,” their letter further notes:

“[T]he primary purpose of an abortion… is not to affect the body of the mother, but, tragically, to destroy the body of the unborn child growing within her…. An abortion is considered ‘successful’ not simply when the pregnancy is terminated (since childbirth also does this), but only when the result is a dead unborn child.”

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Federal Reports Find "Mexico City Policy" is Working

At the beginning of this week, The Departments of State and Health and Human Services (HHS), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) gave reports that "Mexico City Policy" stipulations on foreign aid have not created significant gaps in health care provision.

The administration’s Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance rule, often called the "Mexico City Policy," conditions U.S. global health assistance on recipients not performing or promoting abortions.

The reports say that the “vast majority” of recipients who help foreign nations by providing health assistance accepted the U.S. pro-life policy. The reports also say that in most of the few cases where partners refused to adhere to the policy, the U.S. found another health service provider to fund or other groups stepped forward to fill in the gaps.

“Only in limited instances has the Agency struggled to identify new partners or sub-awardees with comparable skill sets, networks, or capacity for outreach,” the report said.

The Trump administration's Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance applies to $8 billion in global assistance funding, while it previously only applied to $600 million in foreign aid (only involving USAID family planning assistance).

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House Judiciary and Oversight Committee Republicans Confront Authorities on Arrests of Pro-Life Advocates

SFLA student leader Erica Caporaletti being arrested
photo credit: SFLA

Republican representatives on the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee have called on the Assistant Attorney General and Washington D.C. Mayor to produce documents and attend briefings regarding the arrest of pro-life advocates in front of a D.C. Planned Parenthood clinic.

On August 1, pro-life advocates with Students for Life of America (SFLA) were arrested outside of the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic for chalking pro-life messages on the sidewalk in front of the building. The advocates were originally there to paint the words "Black Preborn Lives Matter" on the street in front of the clinic. This was in response to the mayor allowing the phrases "Black Lives Matter" and "Defund the Police" to remain painted on the road for an extended period of time.

SFLA claimed that it had received a permit to paint in front of the clinic, but they were confronted by police when they arrived with their temporary paint. Several advocates defied police requests by chalking pro-life messages on the sidewalk, and they were arrested as a result.

“This incident, in light of the District allowing other political messages to appear on public property, raises troubling questions about whether the District is respecting the constitutional rights of individuals in a viewpoint-neutral manner,” Representatives Jim Jordan and James Comer wrote to Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband.

“The District’s prohibition of the ‘Black Pre-Born Lives Matter’ message suggests that the District may have engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination in light of the District’s allowance for other political messages on public property,” they continued. They noted that the District of Columbia only recently removed the "Defund the Police" street painting after leaving it for over two months.

Jordan and Comer asked the Justice Department to give a staff-level briefing on how the office “evaluates and addresses unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination on public property” by Sept. 1.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser's office was asked to “produce all documents and communications between June 1, 2020 and the present referring or relating the arrest of the individuals associated with the Students for Life of America on August 1, 2020.” Jordan and Comer say that her office must provide the documents by Aug. 24 and brief their committees by Aug. 26.

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HHS Ethics Board Announced Decisions on Fetal Tissue Research Proposals

Photo credit: Gerardo Villalobos / Flickr

An independent Ethics Advisory Board working on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its decisions on August 18 regarding 14 research proposals involving the use of aborted fetal tissue.

After it was revealed last June that the HHS had contracts with Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc. (ABR) and the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) to perform research on aborted fetal tissue, all ongoing contracts were canceled, and an independent board was selected to review proposals from these organizations which sought funding.

After a long process, the board came to the conclusion that only one proposal should be approved for funding. This particular project would only involve the use of existing fetal tissue (therefore not requiring any new tissue harvesting from unborn children) and would use that tissue to try to develop alternatives to fetal tissue in medical research.

The FDA terminated a similar contract with ABR in 2018. ABR is known to provide payments to Planned Parenthood so the abortion giant could harvest organs to be used in ABR's ethically-devoid research.

The ethics board’s recommendations will be sent to HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Congress for final approval.

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Sixty Congress Members Ask USAID to Stop US Funding from Going to UN Abortion Projects

Photo credit: Pepi Stojanovski / Unsplash

On August 13, sixty members of Congress sent a letter to the U.S. Agency for International Development administrator to request that the agency take action to protect U.S. funding from being used by the U.N. to promote abortion.

The letter thanked USAID administrator John Barsa for advocating for the removal of abortion references from U.N. COVID-19 relief legislation while uring him to take additional actions against the misuse of funding.

“We agree with you that the U.N. should not use this crisis as an opportunity to advance access to abortion as an ‘essential service,’” the letter reads.

“The UN’s COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan is only the latest example of the U.N.’s brazen imposition of abortion and a fictitious international right to abortion, which violates the sovereignty of its member states and U.N. conventions that affirm the right to life.”

Specifically, the letter calls on Barsa to enforce the Siljander Amendment, a provision applied to international provisions since 1981 which bars the use of U.S. funds to provide or promote abortion.

“United States leaders and diplomats should insist that U.S.-supported international agreements and multilateral assistance do not include abortion under the guise of sexual and reproductive health,” they said. “This insistence is necessary to enforce the Siljander Amendment. This oversight is especially necessary for UN organizations that receive billions of dollars in US funding that are subject to the Siljander Amendment.”

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Abby Johnson and Nick Sandmann to Speak at Republican National Convention

Abby Johnson
Photo credit: American Life League / Flickr

Among others, pro-life advocates Abby Johnson and Nick Sandmann are scheduled to speak at the 2020 Republican National Convention next week.

The Trump campaign told Breitbart News that Sandman's appearance will demonstrate the dangers of "cancel culture." They wouldn't be wrong with that assessment. A pro-life student from Covington Catholic High School, Nick Sandmann was shown repeatedly in the national news, talk shows, and social media after a clip from the January 2019 March for Life rally in Washington D.C. went viral.

He was shown standing and smiling at a Native American man who approached his class while beating on his drum and chanting. Sandmann's expression was viewed as a disrespectful smirk by many, but the truth was that he was simply trying to defuse a complex situation. The clip initially shared online was designed to make people believe that the students were mocking the Native American man, but that simply wasn't the truth.

When several news outlets continued to spread false information about him and his classmates after eyewitnesses and additional video evidence vindicated their story, Nick filed lawsuits against them. In January 2020, CNN and Sandmann settled a $275 million lawsuit.

Abby Johnson is a former clinic director from Planned Parenthood who left the organization and joined the pro-life movement in 2009. Now she leads a non-profit organization called And Then There Were None, which helps workers leave the abortion industry. Her story was turned into the successful film Unplanned, despite initial dishonest treatment by social media and the entertainment industry.

Three days after Unplanned hit movie theaters nationwide, the film's Twitter account was suspended for unknown reasons. After it was reinstated, the account had lost followers and some Twitter users reported that they were unable to follow the account for a short time.

As a final injustice, Unplanned was scrubbed from the Hallmark Channel's showing of the Movieguide award show. Lead actress Ashley Bratcher had given a speech at the in-person event, but all mentions of the film and her address were completely scrubbed from the show when it initially aired on television. Hallmark issued an apology and had the show re-edited to include Unplanned, but the initial censorship of her message didn't go unnoticed.

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Austin Texas City Council Redirects Police Funding to Abortion

Photo credit: Bill Dickinson / Flickr

Following a unanimous vote by the all-Democrat city council of Austin, Texas, the city's 2021 budget will cut $150 million from the Austin Police Department, and increase the funding for "abortion access" to $250,000.

A Texas law passed by the state's legislature prohibits state or local governments from using taxpayer funding to support abortion procedures by giving money directly to abortion providers and their affiliates. The City of Austin, Texas has gotten around these limitations, however, by using taxpayer funding to pay for abortion-related expenses. These include transportation, lodging, childcare, and legal services. Pro-lifers have filed lawsuits against the city for skirting the rules, but they remain pending in county courts.

"Abortion does nothing to improve the safety, wellness, or goodness of our communities," Texas Right to Life said in its response. "A procedure that always ends in the death of a preborn child and leaves women spiritually, mentally, and oftentimes physically scarred cannot be said to promote safety and care."

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