This Monday, New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith (R) introduced the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in the US House. The law would ban most abortions after the child reaches 20 weeks gestation- when some medical experts believe babies are able to feel pain.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has introduced a similar ban in the Senate.
Unfortunately, since votes on this issue are nearly party-line, the law is unlikely to pass. Only 142 representatives (less than one-third of the 435 total representatives) in the House co-sponsored Smith's bill.
20-week abortion bans passed the House in 2015 and 2017, but they failed in the house on both occasions.
The most recent bill of this type was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Graham in 2020. It failed to gain the needed 60 votes, however. That vote also closely followed party lines, with four exceptions. Sens. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) voted in favor of the bill, but Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted against it.
Nicole Truhill gave birth via C-section at Tucson Medical Center (TMC) in Tucson, Arizona after complications put both her and her baby's lives at risk. Born after only 25 weeks gestation, doctors said that her baby, Henry Augustus Truhill, only had a 50% chance at survival. To everyone's relief, Henry survived the process and is now even breathing on his own.
Nicole was diagnosed with placental abruption according to Tucson Local Media. This condition deprives the unborn child of oxygen and can cause the mother to hemorrhage. The family also said that Nicole had pre-eclampsia, a complication that results in extremely high blood pressure and can require an emergency C-section.
“When baby Henry was born, there was a tense stillness in the room until a tiny cry was let out, which provided Mom, Dad and hospital staff a small sense of relief,” TMC officials wrote in a press release.
“I have never seen something so beautiful, small and fragile in my whole life,” Kyle said. “I felt overwhelmed with emotion in that moment…gratitude, a sense of miracle, relief and sheer terror all at the same time. I’ve never cried so much in my whole life as I have this week. We just want our baby to live.”
Doctors say that Henry may have to stay at TMC until the beginning of June, but are hopeful that he will make a full recovery.
The family says that Henry has gained seven ounces since his birth on Feb. 1.
If he had been born just two weeks earlier, some hospitals in the US would not have provided any care to help Henry survive. In 2020, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the HHS to investigate instances in which hospitals denied care to preemies simply due to their gestational age. Preemies as young as 21 weeks have survived if given proper medical care. Without enforcement by the executive branch, more hospitals may be able to deny care- and the right to life- to preemies under the Biden administration.
Not only does abortion kill innocent unborn children- it poses significant
health risks to the women who have them.
Operation Rescue is an organization that helps shed light on the medical
emergencies caused by abortion clinics across the US. Sidewalk counselors and
pro-life bystanders who witness medical emergencies can send information to
Operation Rescue, which then helps inform pro-lifers and expectant women by
calling attention to these stories.
Last week, Operation Rescue published a 13-minute video highlighting the 67
medical emergencies and one maternal death reported to them during 2020. This number is lower than the 100 it recorded in 2019, due in part to some clinics being temporarily closed during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as fewer pro-life advocates protesting or sidewalk counseling. It is important to note that there are likely far more medical emergencies caused by abortion clinics that pro-life advocates did not make Operation Rescue aware of.
In its final tally, Operation Rescue recorded the following types of medical
emergencies during 2020:
Unknown complication: 27
Hemorrhage: 20
Uterine perforation/internal injuries: 6
Sick/vomiting: 6
Severe pain: 3
Possible heart attack or stroke: 3
Seizures: 2
Sedation overdose: 2
Not responding/unconscious: 2
Incomplete abortion: 1
Life-threatening complication from the abortion pill: 1
The nation of Thailand has now legalized the practice of abortion on demand through 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Thai legislators rejected a proposal to legalize abortion through 24 weeks of pregnancy, but it did end up legalizing abortion through 12 weeks for any reason. Abortion remains legal after that point if the pregnancy resulted from rape, giving birth poses a physical or mental health risk to the mother, or if the baby is diagnosed with a disability.
This comes just two months after Argentina legalized the practice of abortion within its own borders.
After LifeSiteNews made several videos arguing against the use of COVID-19 vaccines that used cells derived from aborted children during their research and/or production, YouTube has permanently banned the pro-life organization from posting videos there.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, uses a "three-strikes" policy when enforcing its rules against video creators. YouTube channels will gain a strike when they post a video that Google believes violates the website's guidelines, and three strikes within 90 days will result in a channel's permanent removal. The strikes recently gained by LifeSiteNews were all related to YouTube's COVID-19 misinformation policy, according to the tech giant. Google said that LifeSiteNews had created “content that promotes prevention methods that contradict local health authorities or WHO.”
Before the channel was removed, LifeSiteNews had accrued 300,000 subscribers and had a regular show with an average of 50,000 views.
LifeSiteNews editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen told CNA, “Our best guess is that the channel was taken down for our frank and factual discussion of the controversy around abortion-tainted medicines and vaccines. The origins of these vaccines and their association with abortion is acknowledged by the vast majority of scientists. Prior strikes were given for speaking the truth about COVID lockdowns and the presence of aborted fetal cells in the vaccines.”
The largest reason that abortion pill complications may be underreported is that abortion clinics often aren't involved in the aftermath of those complications. The study found that over 60% of surgeries initiated due to abortion pill complications were handled by a different medical facility than the one that provided pills to the patient. If the abortion clinic is never made aware of a complication, it will not report it.
Live Action News has reported instances in which the abortion industry has told women to say that medical problems stem from miscarriage rather than the abortion pill if they have to go to the emergency room. This would further limit the number of reports that the FDA receives showing the dangers of mifepristone.
The study's authors wrote,
“Many of the AEs [adverse events] experienced by women were unknown to the abortion provider until the follow-up examination, which is troubling considering the poor follow-up rate and elimination of the requirement for an in-office follow up visit. Some of the patient deaths were not known to the abortion provider until they saw the death in an obituary or were contacted by an outside source.”
Other studies indicate that between 5% and 8% of women seek follow-up care at an urgent care clinic or the emergency room. This would suggest that thousands of women require medical attention after taking mifepristone every year.
"Five to eight percent is no small number and may represent anywhere from 17,000 to 27,000 possible emergency or urgent care visits in one year, based off the most recent data (2017) showing 339,640 medication abortions were committed nationally out of 862,320 total abortions reported."
The study goes on to say that the quality of reports received by the FDA varies drastically. Researchers said that many of them "didn’t even have enough information to tell the FDA or anyone else what actually happened to the woman."
A report recently released by Americans United for Life (AUL) documented health code violations at abortion facilities in 39 states across the country. While the other 11 states do not inspect abortion facilities at all, the report still found that "more than 300 facilities in 39 states were cited for more than 2,400 health and safety deficiencies between 2008 and 2020, including hundreds of significant violations of state laws meant to ensure basic health and safety."
AUL's report, titled "Unsafe," tackles a variety of issues including "the dangers of chemical abortion drugs, abortionists’ disregard for patient safety, and their failure to report the trafficking and rape of young girls."
One topic in the report that stood out to pro-life advocates was the sheer number of clinics that violated state informed consent laws. These laws require abortion facilities to inform women about the risks involved with abortion or about alternatives to abortion.
Unsafe placed these violations into several categories, including:
Failure to obtain required informed consent at the required time, such as on the same day of procedures or within the state’s required window of time;
Failure to have the appropriate licensed staff member obtain the required informed consent;
Failure to post or provide patients with contact information for complaint hotlines;
Failure to post clinic’s license information in a place where patients could easily see it.
In Illinois, the report showed that Advantage Health Care (which is located in Dale, IL) and Whole Woman's Health of Peoria were caught violating informed consent laws.
20 other states were also found to have facilities that violated informed consent laws.
A group of researchers studying whether preborn children can feel pain
recently released a new study indicating that the answer is likely "yes."
The study
involved thirteen mothers with babies between the gestational ages 28 and 34
weeks. Five of these babies had diaphragmatic hernias requiring intrauterine surgeries. The other babies were placed in two different control groups.
The group undergoing the surgery received an injection of anesthesia, and
those children were recorded via ultrasound for 45 seconds before and after
the injection. One control group was stimulated with acoustics while being
recorded, and the other group was recorded after the mother sat in a quiet,
dark room for five minutes.
Researchers who did not know which babies were which analyzed the facial
expressions of the ultrasound images to find indicators of pain.
"The researchers watched for brow lowering, eyes squeezing shut, deepening of
the furrow of nose and lip, open lips, horizontal mouth stretch, vertical
mouth stretch, and neck deflection. Each baby received one point for each
action that was present."
On their seven-point scale, the researchers found that the group which experienced injections scored no lower than five, and scored about six on average. The control groups, on the other hand, scored in a wide range between
zero at the lowest and four at the highest.
After analyzing the results, the researchers concluded “[O]ur data indicate AP
[acute pain] group participants exhibited an acute nociceptive-related
[pain-related] facial response, that may have been experienced as pain.”
This would suggest that unborn children in the third trimester would in-fact
feel pain. During that trimester, abortionists often practice dilation and evacuation abortions, which involve tearing the arms and legs off an unborn child before crushing its skull. This is because the child has grown too large to be removed from a mother's womb by other means.
Iowa legislators will soon consider a constitutional amendment declaring that their constitution neither grants a right to abortion nor requires the state to fund abortion. If the amendment is approved by both houses, the people of Iowa will have the ability to vote on it in 2024.
The amendment would add Iowa to the growing list of states considering such amendments. Louisiana voters accepted their state's "Love Life" Amendment last month, and the Kansas legislators approved the "Value them Both" Amendment just two weeks ago.
Iowa's amendment, similarly to the others, simply states, “Iowa does not recognize, grant, or secure a right to abortion or require the public funding of abortion.”
These amendments will allow states to ban abortions within their borders if Roe v. Wade is overturned at the federal level. They will also allow state governments to withdraw funding to abortion clinics if judges previously found that their constitutions implied a right to abortion. This is the case for Iowa, which had a 72-hour waiting period law overturned when the Iowa Supreme Court opined, “a woman’s right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy is a fundamental right under the Iowa Constitution.”
Last Friday, pro-life Republican Claudia Tenney declared victory in the close race for New York's 22nd congressional district seat. This comes after the courts took months to check ballots and ensure the integrity of the election- largely at the request of Tenney's Democratic opponent.
When a state judge certified the results on Feb. 5, Tenney led by the slim margin of 109 votes over Democrat Anthony Brindisi.
“We celebrate a record-breaking 30 pro-life women elected to the House as proof that life is winning in America,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, on Friday.
Ironically, Brindisi tweeted on Feb 5: "I am shocked and surprised by this decision because of the countless errors and discrepancies that have occurred throughout this initial count. I believe a full audit and hand recount is the only way to resolve this race."
Tenney's rematch with Brindisi, whom she had lost to in the 2018 election cycle, was the final race to be certified.
Emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show that the Small Business Administration (SBA) hid its communications with Planned Parenthood regarding Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. This comes after Republican lawmakers asked for an investigation into how the abortion giant received $80 million PPP loans meant for small businesses and non-profits.
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly claimed that Planned Parenthood obtained the PPP loans illegally, but the SBA has so far declined to comment on those accusations.
“Americans have a right to know why their tax dollars went to Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics instead of struggling small businesses, non-profits, and churches,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told the Daily Caller. “The Small Business Administration ought to disclose how Planned Parenthood affiliates gamed the system to illegally receive PPP loans—and then refer those affiliates to the Department of Justice for prosecution.”
The Daily Caller issued a Freedom of Information Act request to the SBA in May 2020, and now they have received heavily redacted emails showing previously unreleased communications between the SBA and Planned Parenthood employees.
According to the Daily Caller, some of those emails appeared to discuss the concerns regarding whether the loans were legal.
The Daily Caller wrote:
"Due to the redactions, it is not clear what the SBA decided or how the SBA rationalized its decision. However, one May 18, 2020 email from an SBA employee to a Sun Trust email address said that the SBA did not have the ability to make a final determination on eligibility as 'these decisions are the responsibility of the applicant and the lender.'
The email noted that an unnamed applicant met the needed 501(c)(3) criteria.
'If other eligibility criteria is met then the submission may be eligible,' the email said."
The SBA also actively avoided answering the Daily Caller's questions about an email with the subject line "PPP funds in new account." SBA spokeswoman Megan Moore originally told the Daily Caller that the financial director's name was left unredacted by mistake. She also said that the SBA could not release information on applicants who “did not ultimately receive a loan.”
The Daily Caller knew, however, that Planned Parenthood of Northern England had received $2.72 million. When the news outlet pushed Moore to explain, she acknowledged that what she had said was false, but insisted that she still couldn't provide information about communications with Planned Parenthood. This included communications between the SBA and Planned Parenthood of New England that happened after its PPP loan was issued.
Last Friday, 48 Republican senators sent a letter to Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declaring that they would oppose any spending bills that do not contain the Hyde amendment (which is supposed to prevent federal tax dollars from paying for abortions) or other pro-life protections.
Every Republican senator signed the letter except for Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. No Democrats signed the letter.
A copy of the letter was received by the National Review Online, which wrote:
"'Abortion is not health care; rather, it is a brutal procedure that destroys the life of an innocent unborn child,' the letter states. 'The Hyde Amendment reflects a consensus that millions of pro-life Americans who are profoundly opposed to abortion should not be coerced into paying for it or incentivizing it with their taxpayer dollars.'"
The National Review writes that Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who founded and chairs the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, spearheaded the effort.
Daines, in a statement to the National Review, said, “We have a message for Democratic leader Schumer: We will vote to block any radical, pro-abortion agenda. That includes any bill that undermines the Hyde amendment and other longstanding pro-life protections.”
Because 60 votes are required to overcome a filibuster, these senators hold enough votes to block any abortion-promoting legislation from being passed.
In a roll call vote in the Senate last Thursday, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act failed to meet the 60 votes required to be passed as an amendment to the 2021 Budget Resolution.
All 50 Senate Republicans supported the amendment, along with Democratic Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Bob Casey Jr. (D-PA). All other Senate Democrats voted against the amendment. This meant that the final vote was 52-48, but a simple majority is not enough to pass legislation in the Senate.
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act requires health care professionals to give the same degree of care to a child born during a failed abortion as they would to any other child born at the same gestational age. It further requires them to immediately transport the baby to a hospital.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), when arguing against the bill, referenced the infamous abortionist Kermit Gosnell. He said that because Gosnell was convicted of three counts of murder in 2013 for killing newborn babies, current federal laws already address the issue of babies being killed after they survived abortions.
National Right to Life President Carol Tobias disagrees. “Senator Durbin’s comments regarding convicted abortionist Kermit Gosnell were disingenuous,” she said. “Kermit Gosnell was discovered not because he was killing babies born alive but because law enforcement was conducting a raid on Gosnell who was suspected of selling prescriptions for narcotics.”
“This vote shows just how extreme the majority of Senate Democrats are,” said Tobias. “This bill is not about abortion but pro-abortion groups and their allies in the Senate have tried to make it about abortion.”
It was expected last week that Planned Parenthood would no longer be awarded Medicaid funding by the state of Texas; since the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the government's decision to do just that. Before the ruling was scheduled to take effect, however, a county judge undercut the Appeals Court by issuing a restraining order preventing Texas from removing three Planned Parenthood clinics from the state's list of eligible Medicaid providers.
After Planned Parenthood argued that Texas did not issue a "proper termination notice" under the state law, Travis County Judge Maya Guerra Gambala issued a restraining order late on Feb. 3 to prevent Texas from blocking Planned Parenthood from Medicaid funding. Gambala set a hearing for Feb. 17 to determine whether she will issue a temporary injunction to keep Planned Parenthood in Texas's Medicaid program.
Texas argues that it did issue a termination notice in Jan. 2016, sparking five years of litigation.
National Right to Life, which has been following this battle since the beginning, wrote,
"Planned Parenthood was notified of the final decision to terminate contracts in December of that year, more than a year after Texas officials first moved to remove Planned Parenthood from all Medicaid programs. The following month, after three days of testimony and arguments in the U.S. District Court in Austin, Judge Sam Sparks, a reliable Planned Parenthood ally, issued the initial injunction."
After a movement partially funded by Planned Parenthood succeeded in legalizing abortion up to the 15th week of pregnancy in Argentina, a judge has blocked the law from taking effect in the country's northern province.
After Argentina's Law 27.610 on Access to Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy (IVE) was passed in the early morning of Jan 27, 2021, pro-lifers filed an injunction against its enforcement. Now, Argentina Judge Marta Aucar of the country's northern province of Chaco has blocked the law from being enforced there. For the time being, the province will revert to Argentina's previous laws governing abortion. Those laws state that abortion is a crime punishable by up to four years in prison.
LifeSite News writes that the legal proceedings in this case, as they often are in the United States, will be slow; eventually culminating in a battle in the Argentine Supreme Court. It also writes that more regions are preparing to take similar pro-life actions to protect unborn Argentinians from the threat of this new legislation.
Live Action News recently published an article summarizing the stories told by
Dr. Ulrich Klopfer's brother-in-law during an I Choose Life podcast last year.
In it, Mark, who chose to keep his last name anonymous, told his personal story of dealing with abortion, since he and his girlfriend were pressured into aborting their child when he was a teenager, and how that experience struck him with guilt. After he became a pro-life advocate, he married a
pro-life woman who happened to be Klopfer's sister.
After Klopfer died in 2019, 2,246 bodies of aborted children were found in his
Illinois home; transported from the Indiana abortion clinics he worked at.
Hopefully following in the footsteps of Louisiana, Kansas voters will have the opportunity next year to declare whether their state's Constitution can be interpreted to include a right to abortion.
Last Thursday, the Kansas Senate approved the Value Them Both Amendment by a vote of 86-38. It was previously approved by the House of Representatives by a vote of 28-11. As a result, Kansas voters will have the opportunity to vote on the constitutional amendment in August 2022.
The Value Them Both Amendment, much like Louisiana's Love Life Amendment, would state that “the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion.”
Kansas lawmakers were motivated to approve the amendment after the 2019 case Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt, in which the Kansas Supreme Court declared that the state's constitution included a broad right to abortion. The verdict threatens various pro-life laws in the state, which together have reduced the Kansas abortion rate by 50% since 1999.
Last week, several US legislators introduced pro-life bills in Congress. While they approach the issue of abortion from different angles, they all have the goal of saving the lives of unborn children.
The SAVE Moms and Babies Act
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) and Congressman Bob Latta (R-Ohio) reintroduced the Support and Value Expectant (SAVE) Moms and Babies Act last Thursday. The bill would prevent already-approved abortion drugs from having their regulation status changed. If the bill is passed, regulations such as the FDA's Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy could not be removed from current abortion drugs, and the FDA would be prevented from approving any new abortion drugs.
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act
Also last Thursday, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) reintroduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act in the US Senate. Representatives Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) followed up last Friday by introducing the same legislation in the House of Representatives. This bill would require physicians to provide the same degree of health care to babies who survived attempted abortions as they would to any other child born alive at the same gestational age. Physicians at an abortion clinic would then be required to transport the child to a hospital.
The Defund Planned Parenthood Act
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) reintroduced two pro-life bills over the weekend as well. The first of these is the aptly-named Defund Planned Parenthood Act. This would prohibit federal funding from being given to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America or any of its affiliates. The abortion business kills more unborn children than another other US organization and while receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer funding.
The Life at Conception Act
Sen. Paul's second bill, the Life at Conception Act, would give unborn children the protections of the 14th Amendment. These protections would begin at the moment of conception.
Family Planning Associates abortion clinic in Chicago photo credit: Operation Rescue
To close out 2020, newly released records show that a Chicago abortion clinic sent a 27-year-old woman to the hospital after aborting her child.
Family Planning Associates on West Washington Boulevard in Chicago, according to 911 records obtained by the Pro-Life Action League, damaged the young woman's womb during an abortion on New Year's Eve. An audio recording of a 911
call made by the clinic was made public by Operation Rescue.
While on the 911 call, an employee with Family Planning Associates said, “We have a patient who just had a surgical abortion. We
believe that she has an injury to her uterus, and we need an ambulance to go
to Northwestern Hospital.”
The damage caused by a lacerated or perforated uterus is potentially deadly.
Some cases require emergency surgery or even hysterectomy- the surgical
removal of a woman's uterus.
According to Operation Rescue, this is the eleventh known medical emergency
requiring an ambulance to transport a patient from Family Planning Associates
in the past three years.
“I’m sure that no woman ever walks into an abortion facility thinking she will suffer a botched abortion or end up sterile, but this happens more often than people think,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “We want women
to know that no matter what the abortion businesses say, abortion is not safe.
Women seeking abortions are literally rolling the dice with their health future and their lives. We pray instead that pregnant women will seek out life-affirming help with whatever challenges they face. It may just save
them much grief in the end.”
A December 2020 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and Marie Stopes International (recently rebranded to MSI Reproductive Services) received almost $2 billion of taxpayer funding.
The GAO works for Congress as a watchdog to find how tax dollars are spent. In its report, it stated that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) provided the majority of the funds given to the abortion organization.
The data comes from the years 2016-2018.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America received $1.6 billion, the International Planned Parenthood Federation received almost $21 million, and MSI Reproductive Services received $86.5 million.
Additionally, the GAO report found that $124 million from Medicaid and the HHS went to four other US abortion providers: Family Planning Associates, American Women's Services, All Women's Health Center, and Whole Women's Health.
The Biden administration has already done away with Trump's pro-life Title X rules and the Mexico City Policy. Biden has also stated that he supports getting rid of the Hyde Amendment, an amendment applied to congressional spending bills designed to prevent federal tax dollars from funding abortions. Given these policies, government spending to promote abortion could increase dramatically under the new administration.
