Arkansas Gov. Signs Bill to Protect Conscience Rights

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R)

In addition to the ultrasound law that he signed this week, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson also signed a bill last week that protects the conscience rights of pro-life healthcare workers.

On March 26, Hutchinson signed a bill that allows health care workers to refuse to participate in non-emergency treatments if those treatments violate their consciences. These protections apply to medical workers, hospitals, and insurance providers.

“I support this right of conscience so long as emergency care is exempted and conscience objection cannot be used to deny general health service to any class of people,” said Hutchinson in a statement. “Most importantly, the federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, and national origin continue to apply to the delivery of health care services.”

Arkansas Surgeon General Greg Bledsoe underscored the importance of these protections:

“In short, there is a concerted effort underway to compel the entire medical sector to adopt a utilitarian secular ethical outlook that would either force pro-lifers, orthodox Catholics, etc. to violate their deepest held moral beliefs as the cost of medical licensure, or compel them — as a matter of personal conscience — to get out of medicine.”

This new Arkansas law is set to take effect later this summer.

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Secretary of State: "Sexual and Reproductive Rights are Human Rights"

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that his department will once again judge countries on their support for abortion in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices reports.

The Trump administration had removed the "reproductive rights" section from its human rights reports starting in 2017. Instead, it included a section with statistics on “coercion in population control.”

Terms such as "sexual and reproductive health" or "reproductive rights" almost always include abortion, especially when used in foreign policy discussions.

Blinken said as much when elaborated on the Biden administration's goals regarding the human rights reports and several other recent pro-abortion foreign policy decisions:

“It is one of many steps – along with revoking the Mexico City Policy, withdrawing from the Geneva Consensus Declaration, resuming support for the United Nations Population Fund – that we are taking to promote women’s health and equity at home and abroad.  Because women’s rights – including sexual and reproductive rights – are human rights.”

The Geneva Consensus Declaration was a statement signed by the U.S. and 31 other countries declaring that there is no international right to abortion.

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Arkansas Gov. Signs Law Strengthening Ultrasound Requirement

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R)

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson this week signed a bill that requires abortion facilities to show women the images of their unborn children.

This is notable because ultrasound right to view laws usually just require abortion facilities to offer pregnant mothers the opportunity to view an ultrasound of their children. This was the case in Arkansas before, but now clinics will be required to place the ultrasound screen within the mother's line of sight during the ultrasound. Arkansas is the sixth state to have such a requirement.

Additionally, abortion facilities will be required to describe the unborn baby's development and tell the mother how many children are shown in the ultrasound.

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Pro-Life Amendment to Kentucky Constitution Approved for 2022 Ballot

photo credit: Matt Turner / Flickr

In the evening of Tuesday, March 30, the Kentucky Senate voted to pass HB 91. This bill approved an amendment to the Kentucky Constitution which reads: “To protect human life, nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.”

In November 2022, Kentucky voters will have the chance to decide whether to ratify this amendment. If voters pass it, judges will be unable to find an implied right to abortion in the state's constitution.

When Kentucky Right to Life explained HB 91, it wrote,

In numerous states, abortion advocates have sued to overturn pro-life laws, and their respective Supreme Courts have “found” a right to abortion in their state constitution. This technique is how Roe v. Wade became our nation’s case law.

A number of states have passed constitutional amendments to protect their pro-life laws from such court decisions. Rep. Joe Fischer testified during a Senate committee hearing that HB 91 assures, “No Kentucky court will be able to fashion an implicit right to abortion from the language in our state constitution: there will be no Roe v. Wade decision in Kentucky. The regulation or elimination of abortion will be vested in the Kentucky General Assembly, not in the courts.” HB 91 ensures that it is the lawmakers of Kentucky who make the laws, not rogue judges.

Even though pro-abortion Andrew Beshear is currently Kentucky's governor, the governor does not have the authority to veto proposed constitutional amendments.

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New Report Shows Continued Decline in Teen Pregnancies and Abortions

photo credit: Marcel Fagin / Unsplash

Earlier this month, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute released a new report showing a continued long-term decrease in both teen pregnancies and abortions overall.

The new data shows that between 1980 and 2017, females between the ages of 15 and 19 chose to have abortions 82 percent less. Comparatively, the abortion rate for 35-to-39-year-olds only decreased by 8.5 percent over the same period.

Teenage women are also much less likely to become pregnant. The Guttmacher report shows that the teen pregnancy rate has declined by 73 percent since its peak in 1990. In that year, the organization found a pregnancy rate of 11.76 percent for women between the ages of 15 and 19. In 2017, the organization only found a pregnancy rate of 31 percent for the same demographic.

More can be done, but these continued decreases show that the pro-life movement is having an impact.

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Pennsylvania Court Ruling Protects State Abortion Funding Ban

Abortion businesses suing the state of Pennsylvania were disappointed by a court ruling on March 26 supporting the state's abortion funding ban.

The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court decided 6-1 in favor of the state's 1982 Abortion Control Act, which bans the state from using taxpayer funding to cover abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

In the majority opinion for the case, Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote that the court decided to adhere to the 1985 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision supporting the law. Additionally, she wrote that abortion businesses did not have the legal standing to challenge the law on behalf of Pennsylvania women.

Notably, the plaintiffs charged that Pennsylvania's abortion coverage ban violated Pennsylvania's Equal Rights Amendment. They argued that because abortion is only sought by women, a funding ban discriminates against women. This serves as further proof that pro-abortion advocates would attempt to use a federal Equal Rights Amendment to require abortion funding nationwide from a constitutional level.

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Senators Continue to Pressure SBA to Investigate How Planned Parenthood Received Millions in COVID Relief Funds

photo credit: Andy Feliciotti / Unsplash

On March 25, a group of 25 pro-life Senators sent a letter to the Small Business Administration (SBA) to once again request an investigation into how the giant abortion corporation was able to receive millions of dollars in COVID relief funding meant for small businesses.

The senators write that Planned Parenthood was ineligible for the funding because it is “a national organization with central control over its affiliates which has nearly $2 billion in assets, and over 16,000 employees nationwide…” The SBA rules for COVID relief required that recipients be small businesses with fewer than 500 employees.

After it was revealed that Planned Parenthood affiliates had received millions of dollars, the SBA told those affiliates that they must return the funds. The Senators mention 38 affiliates that received funding in their letter, but they note that only seven of them returned the funding. Furthermore, two affiliates received a second round of funding.

“It is unconscionable that SBA continues to approve PPP loans made to organizations which are clearly ineligible for funding,” states the letter. “This is unacceptable, not only because SBA, like other agencies, must be a faithful and responsible steward of taxpayer dollars but also because continuing to make funds available for Planned Parenthood affiliates is in direct violation of the law.

“We urge that the SBA promptly open an investigation into how these loans were made in clear violation of the applicable affiliation rules and if Planned Parenthood, relevant lenders, or staff at the SBA knowingly violated the law, and that appropriate legal action be taken if so.”

This is the fourth letter Members of Congress have sent to the SBA addressing this issue.

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Sen. Tammy Duckworth Introduces Bill to Require Taxpayer Funding of Abortion

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)

Last Thursday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) introduced a bill that would require all health insurance plans (including Medicaid) to cover elective abortions.

Duckworth's bill, titled the "Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act," would reverse Hyde Amendment protections in existing law so that taxpayer-funded health plans must cover the cost of elective abortions.

When speaking about her bill at a press conference, Duckworth said that it was designed to increase access to abortion for people of color.

“This isn’t about what side you’re on in the abortion debate, it’s about equality and opportunity plain and simple,” Duckworth said. “Whatever you think about the procedure, we should all agree that what’s legal for wealthy Americans should not be so inaccessible for Americans of color and low-income Americans.”

This is a common talking-point for pro-abortion politicians, but it is not supported well by the facts. The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion organization that records abortion statistics, reports that while African Americans only make up 13 percent of the U.S. Population, they also account for 36 percent of the nation's abortions. This overrepresentation- while notable- indicates that African Americans are not having a difficult time accessing abortion. 

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) has sponsored the House version of the bill.

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ERA: North Dakota Legislature Passes “Count Us Out” Resolution

North Dakota State Capitol
photo credit: Jimmy Emerson, DVM / Flickr

On March 19, North Dakota became the first state in the nation to pass a resolution notifying federal authorities that its ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) has expired.

The resolution instructs that North Dakota “should not be counted by Congress, the Archivist of the United States…[or] any court of law…as still having on record a live ratification,” because the state's ratification officially expired on March 22, 1979.

The ERA was written to expire on that date if it was not ratified by two-thirds of the states by then. Pro-abortion politicians, however, are making a constitutionally-questionable effort to resurrect the dead legislation by retroactively amending the deadline in Congress. Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia have voted to ratify the dead amendment in recent years, and some politicians argue that the amendment has surpassed the required two-thirds margin as a result.

In 1975, North Dakota's legislature voted to ratify the ERA. Not only has the amendment expired since then, but the state's legislature holds the opposite view on whether the pro-abortion amendment should be ratified. The legislature passed this resolution to help ensure that the amendment isn't ratified now because the state voted the other way over 40 years ago.

According to many interpreters, the ERA would create a universal right to abortion. Courts could strike down pro-life laws across the country. Even if the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, a universal right to abortion could still threaten the lives of unborn children throughout the US.

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Researchers Suggest Experiments on Humans Embryos Grown in Artificial Wombs

photo credit: ZEISS Microscopy / Flickr

A group of Israeli researchers recently published research showing that they successfully grew mouse embryos in an artificial uterus for 12 days. The lead researcher on that experiment is suggesting that human embryos should be grown in similar wombs for research purposes.

Dr. Jacob Hanna, working for the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, led this team of researchers. He wrote that his experiments on mice could help scientists understand how miscarriages and gene mutations occur. Hanna also said that he would like to experiment on human embryos in the future.

“I do understand the difficulties. I understand. You are entering the domain of abortions,” Hanna told MIT Technology Review. “So I would advocate growing it [the human embryo] until day 40 and then disposing of it.”

Hanna says that tissue created from this practice could replace the tissue currently obtained by harvesting it from the bodies of aborted children. Ethically, however, this practice would not be much different. It can be argued that creating human beings specifically to harvest their tissues or organs is even worse than getting the tissue from aborted babies. The bodies of human beings should not be used as commodities.

“Once the guidelines are updated, I can apply, and it will be approved. It’s a very important experiment,” says Hanna, referring to a ban on conducting research on human embryos past 14 days of development. “We need to see human embryos gastrulate and form organs and start perturbing it. The benefit of growing human embryos to week three, week four, week five is invaluable. I think those experiments should at least be considered. If we can get to an advanced human embryo, we can learn so much.”

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Sign up for a Legislative Training Session and Learn How to Protect Illinois's Parental Notification Law

To fight against the repeal of the Parental Notification of Abortion Act, Parents for the Protection of Girls will be holding several legislative training sessions with the goal of educating pro-lifers on how to speak with legislators using Zoom.

If you are interested in speaking with legislators to advocate against this pro-abortion bill, please sign up for one of these training sessions. You can register to attend one of the four scheduled webinars by visiting this website: 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/parents-for-the-protection-of-girls-legislative-training-sessions-registration-147188385423

Repealing the parental notification would protect human traffickers and harm victims of rape and incest.

More resources can be found on the Diocese of Springfield website here:

https://www.dio.org/plasm/resources.html

Catholic Conference of Illinois Defends Parental Notification of Abortion Act

As pro-abortion lawmakers continue to fight for the repeal of Illinois's Parental Notification of Abortion Act, the Catholic Bishops of Illinois have taken a stand in favor of the pro-life law.

On March 16th, the Catholic Conference of Illinois sent out a call to action letter in which they warned that repealing parental notification would lead to “tragic and irreversible outcomes.”

"In every other facet of life, we are taught–and we teach–that parental involvement is key to the child’s best interest. Repealing the Act is nothing less than an invasion into the sacred space of family life by the state, with no provision to support the minor emotionally, humanly or materially at a critical moment in her life."

The bishops go on to argue,

"Simply put, the Parental Notice of Abortion Act works. According to statistics gathered by the Illinois Department of Public Health, since the law’s final enactment by the Illinois Supreme Court in 2013, abortions performed on minors in Illinois have decreased over 30 percent. The lives saved by this law are real and present among us.  

These are the reasons every state in the Midwest and 37 states overall have laws requiring some form of parental involvement in the decision of a minor to have an abortion. Illinois has been among those states for 8 years and no obvious problems or detriments have been publicly exposed. The repeal of Parental Notice of Abortion is a tragic solution in search of a problem."

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Rachel Levine Confirmed as Assistant HHS Secretary

Rachel Levine, the transgender nominee for assistant secretary of the HHS, was confirmed to the position by a 52-48 vote in the Senate on Wednesday.

Every Democrat voted in favor of the Biden nominee, with Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine joining them.

In addition to her controversial opinion that minors should be allowed to undergo sex-change procedures, Levine is also known for opposing religious exemptions to the HHS contraceptive coverage mandate. Levine called the exemptions granted to the Little Sisters of the Poor by the Trump administration "immoral and unethical."

ACLU Report Argues that Parental Consent (Rather than Family Abuse) Causes Harm to Minors

photo credit: Anthony Tran / Unsplash

The ACLU and Human Rights Watch recently collaborated to create a report arguing that Illinois's Parental Notification of Abortion Act causes "real harm" to minors seeking abortions.

The report, titled, “The Only People It Really Affects Are the People It Hurts” argues that parental notification laws violate human rights.

Margaret Wurth is a researcher at Human Rights Watch who authored the report. In an article for the Chicago Sun-Times, she said, “For me, the real takeaway is that this violates people’s rights and it causes real harm. It’s a human rights imperative to repeal it.”

Wurth said to WSILTV, “Most often, according to the data presented in our report, young people fear being forced to continue a pregnancy against their own will or being kicked out of the home or cut off financially.”

Under current law, parents cannot force their children to continue a pregnancy against their will. The Parental Notice of Abortion Act only requires what its title states: notification. Parental consent to the abortion is not required. Therefore, parents who abuse their children in response to their decision to abort a child can be held criminally liable for their actions.

If a minor experiences abuse by parents or guardians and fears the parental notification requirement, getting rid of parental notification will not solve the problem. The minor will simply go back to her abusive household after having an abortion and nothing will change.

Young girls can instead receive support from organizations that will remove them from abusive environments. If child protective services and police are allowed to take action, then parental notification no longer threatens these girls.

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Los Angeles Court Ruling Prevents Sofia Vergara's Ex-Fiancé from Bringing IVF-Conceived Children to Birth

Sofia Vergara
Photo attribution: © Glenn Francis
www.PacificProDigital.com (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Earlier this month, a court in Los Angeles, California ruled in favor of actress Sofia Vergara to prevent her ex-fiancé from bringing embryos they conceived through IVF to birth.

Nick Loeb, Vergara's ex-fiancé, has sought custody of the embryos they had created while they were a couple. He says that Vergara had told him that embryos should never be destroyed, but her opinion allegedly changed after they split. Now, she wants the embryos either frozen indefinitely or destroyed.

The court granted Vergara a permanent injunction which bans Loeb from bringing the embryos to birth.

In a statement, Loeb said, “It’s sad that Sofia, a devout Catholic, would intentionally create babies just to kill them.”

Loeb has said that he is willing to provide for the girls they conceived, whom he named Emma and Isabella. He would waive any parental or financial responsibility for Vergara, but she was not swayed.

The court cited a contract both parties signed requiring them both to agree to do anything with the embryos. These kinds of agreements, which treat human beings as though they are property to be created or destroyed at a whim, are not uncommon in the realm of IVF.

Loeb wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in 2015 decrying how his daughters' lives are being treated.

“When we create embryos for the purpose of life, should we not define them as life, rather than as property?” he wrote. “Does one person’s desire to avoid biological parenthood (free of any legal obligations) outweigh another’s religious beliefs in the sanctity of life and desire to be a parent? A woman is entitled to bring a pregnancy to term even if the man objects. Shouldn’t a man who is willing to take on all parental responsibilities be similarly entitled to bring his embryos to term even if the woman objects?”

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Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas Gave Texas Police "Watch List" of Pro-Life Advocates

screenshot of the "watch list" Planned Parenthood
sent to the Lubbock Police Department

Before a Texas March for Life event in January, Planned Parenthood gave the police department of Lubbock, Texas a "watch list" of pro-life activists.

L. Scott Mann, who writes for the Lubbock Lights, said that the Lubbock Lights learned about the list from a police department employee.

“...the watch list was widely distributed at the Lubbock Police Department in its raw form because that’s how we learned about it: from someone who thought the information was being mishandled as a matter of police policy and standard procedure,” said Mann.

When Lubbock Lights asked Lubbock Police Chief Floyd Mitchell about the document, he responded with the following message in an email the next day:

Yesterday, you asked about a document referencing individuals associated with the March for Life protest on Friday, Jan. 29, 2021. After further review, the public information unit learned of a document produced by Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas and supplied to the Lubbock Police Department as part of communications prior to the protest. Chief Mitchell believes this is the document Scott was referring to as a “watch list.” This document included 13 individuals Planned Parenthood identified as living “in and around the city of Lubbock, while the others were the ‘big names’ who will be coming in and are listed as speakers at the rallies on Friday and Saturday.”

Officers assigned to coordinate police operations surrounding the logistics of the march conducted a search using open source methods of the individuals and found that all were publicly associated with the March for Life, West Texas For Life or speakers expected at the events being hosted during the weekend’s events. LPD does not maintain lists of protestors identified as pro-life or pro-choice.

Lubbock Lights's article on the incident further notes that Planned Parenthood's email to the department also gave the pro-life activists labels such as "aggressive." The email also included information about the individuals’ families and personal histories.

Planned Parenthood sought to make Lubbock police officers especially suspicious of specific pro-life advocates and encourage their arrest during a legal protest event. It is unknown whether Planned Parenthood employs this tactic regularly. 

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HHS to Propose Revised Title X Regulations Next Month

On March 18, the HHS Office of Population Affairs published a press release with an update on its review of Trump administration Title X rules.

President Biden issued an executive order on Jan. 28 directing the HHS to review the 2019 "Protect Life" Title X rule issued by the Trump administration. That rule barred Title X grant recipients from offering abortion, co-locating with organizations that offer abortions, or referring patients for abortions. That executive order asked the HHS to “consider, as soon as practicable, whether to suspend, revise, or rescind, or publish for notice and comment proposed rules suspending, revising, or rescinding, those regulations.”

In last week's press release, the HHS Office of Population Affairs announced that it would issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking no later than April 15, 2021. After comments and review, the HHS plans to finalize new rules by early fall and have them be effective by the Fiscal Year 2022 funding announcement in December 2021.

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Virginia Gov. Signs Bill Expanding Abortion Coverage

VA. Gov. Ralph Northam (D)

On March 12, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) signed legislation that expands abortion coverage in the state.

The legislation Gov. Northam signed allows abortion to be included in health plans on Virginia exchanges without any limits. Because health plans often receive subsidies funded by taxes, Virginia taxpayers will now be forced to fund abortions by law.

This new law repealed legislation that banned abortion coverage on the state exchange except for cases of rape or incest. On July 1, health plans on the Virginia exchange will cover abortions for any reason.

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As St. Louis Planned Parenthood Resumes Abortions, Facility Hospitalizes 77th Patient

photo credit: Operation Rescue

Shortly after it began offering abortions again, Operation Rescue documented the 77th time the St. Louis Planned Parenthood hospitalized one of its patients.

A new video recording obtained by Operation Rescue shows a woman covered with a sheet lying on a gurney as she is loaded into a St. Louis Fire Department ambulance parked near the Planned Parenthood facility’s front door. This incident occurred on March 15, 2021.

In January, Operation Rescue published a report noting that Missouri was an abortion-free state. The Reproductive Health Services (RHS) Planned Parenthood facility in St. Louis is the only abortion clinic in Missouri, but at the time it was not offering abortion to patients. Instead, the facility was presumably referring patients to the Planned Parenthood "mega-clinic" in Fairview Heights, Illinois. In response to that report, the St. Louis clinic resumed abortions on a limited basis.

RHS Planned Parenthood faced the threat of closure in 2019 after an investigation by the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services moved to revoke its license. That investigation found that four women who had botched abortions at RHS Planned Parenthood suffered life-threatening injuries. In May 2020, however, Missouri Administrative Court Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi issued a ruling that allowed the facility to stay open despite its clear record of harming women.

“There is no reason to allow the dangerous St. Louis Planned Parenthood to continue harming women. It should have been shut down in 2019 when the state found it was too dangerous to operate. That Planned Parenthood is no better than a back-alley chop shop,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “If future performance can be predicted on past behavior, I guarantee this will not be the last woman harmed by RHS Planned Parenthood, as long as the state allows it to stay open, and that poses an unacceptable danger to the public.”

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Senate Votes to Confirm Pro-Abortion Xavier Becerra as HHS Secretary

photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr

On Thursday, the Senate voted 50-49 to confirm pro-abortion California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as the new secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The vote was mostly along party lines, with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) being the only Republican to support Becerra's nomination. Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono (D) did not vote. Self-proclaimed pro-life Democrats Joe Manchin (WV) and Bob Casey (PA) joined the rest of their party in support of Becerra.

“Xavier Becerra has no health care experience but plenty of abortion advocacy and he is being rewarded by the Biden administration for that extremism,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life.

“The nation needs a Secretary with the public health experience necessary to help put an end to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Tobias. “Becerra’s confirmation looks more and more like a deal with abortion groups to confirm an activist because Xavier Becerra brings no healthcare experience to the position but plenty of abortion advocacy.”

During his time as California's Attorney General, Becerra defended California's Reproductive FACT Act (which required pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise where free or low-cost abortions were available), sued the Trump administration to take conscience protections away from organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor, and prosecuted pro-life undercover journalists for exposing Planned Parenthood's practice of selling body parts harvested from aborted babies. His cases regarding the Reproductive FACT Act and conscience protections failed at the Supreme Court, but they made his position on the issue of abortion well-known.

Becerra also led numerous efforts by state Attorneys General to oppose other states' pro-life laws in federal court and had a 100% voting record with the pro-abortion lobby while he was a California state senator.

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