April 7, 2021
Ohio Humane Disposal Law Halted by Planned Parenthood Lawsuit
Charges Against New Mexico Patient Arrested after Botched Abortion Dismissed
Last September, Women's Reproductive Clinic in New Mexico had one of its patients and her husband arrested for disturbing the peace after she complained that the clinic had wrongfully taken the remains of her aborted child from her. Now, seven months later, that woman has won in court against the abortion business.
The client, who is known publicly as "Jane Doe," had suffered two botched abortions on the same pregnancy by Women's Reproductive Clinic. She had attempted abortion via the abortion pill regimen, but she later had a surgical abortion after that failed. After she returned home from the surgical abortion, she unexpectedly delivered remains of her deceased baby there. Doe and her husband called the abortion business, which told them to return.
When they arrived, however, clinic workers wrongfully took custody of the child's remains. This upset Doe, who wanted to have her child cremated. When she complained, the clinic called the police and had them arrest the couple.
Lawyers from the pro-life organization Abortion on Trial came to the defense of the couple. Last Friday, the organization announced in a press release that the charges against Doe and her husband had finally been dropped. Furthermore, Women's Reproductive Clinic was unsuccessful in its attempt to make Doe liable for the abortion business's legal fees.
“We hope Jane’s story will continue to spread as a beacon of awareness and precaution to those considering abortion.” Says AOT Executive Director, Jamie Jeffries. “We hope those who oppose abortion see this case and realize just how much women need compassionate care after abortion.”
April 6, 2021
Don't Forget: Legislative Training Sessions this Week
Pro-Abortion Vivek Murthy Confirmed as Surgeon General
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy |
At the Washington Ideas Forum in 2015, Murthy voiced his support of giving taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood:
“There are many people around the country, many women, that I have cared for when I was practicing medicine up in Boston, who rely on Planned Parenthood for important services. I think what’s important, whenever we’re making any policy decisions, is to try to take it out of the realm of ideology, and put it back in the realm of science and public health. And the truth is, a lot of women around the country looked at Planned Parenthood as an important source of primary care services. The debate is focused a lot on a narrow spectrum of services, but the truth is, many women get their — they get basic health care and preventative care from Planned Parenthood.”
Planned Parenthood sometimes tries to lean on the argument that because it provides some services other than abortion, it is not simply an abortion business. While this might be true in a sense, it is disingenuous at most. Planned Parenthood often markets itself as an abortion business, and the number of non-abortion services it provides has declined year after year.
Statistics from Planned Parenthood's own annual reports show that the business has provided 294,493 prenatal services between 2000 and 2021. In that same time period, it also aborted six million unborn children.
The Hill further reported that Planned Parenthood gave Vivek thousands of dollars in recent years for speaking engagements. There is no indication that his pro-abortion views will have changed since the Obama administration.
April 5, 2021
Planned Parenthood Sues to Block Ohio Telemedicine Abortion Ban
Planned Parenthood argues that the law violates the Ohio Constitution and doesn't improve patient safety. In a press release, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America wrote, “Medication abortion [chemical abortion] is safe, effective, and a vital part of reproductive health care. Requiring that a patient see a physician in person to obtain the medication for a medication abortion does not improve patient safety, no matter what might be said by legislators who ignore science.”
Physically visiting a doctor is not simply a formality, however. It is important for a pregnant mother's safety that she sees a doctor in-person before she receives a prescription for abortion pills. When visiting a doctor, the doctor can administer an ultrasound to determine the gestational age of the unborn child and ensure that there are no pregnancy conditions that would make the abortion pill regimen unsafe. This is important because the abortion pill regimen poses serious health risks to a woman if it is used too late in the child's development. The same is true if she has a pregnancy condition, such as an ectopic pregnancy.
After the law was passed, Ohio Right to Life president Mike Gonidakis said in a press release,
“The signing of the Telemedicine Abortion Ban into law is a victory for life and for women’s safety. No woman should be subjected to a dangerous telemedicine abortion in order to pad Planned Parenthood’s pockets. Pro-Life Ohio will not let the abortion industry continue to treat vulnerable women and children as money-making opportunities. Women and children deserve to be put first. This law is a crucial step towards that end.”
April 2, 2021
Arkansas Gov. Signs Bill to Protect Conscience Rights
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) |
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.
Secretary of State: "Sexual and Reproductive Rights are Human Rights"
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken |
“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.
April 1, 2021
Arkansas Gov. Signs Law Strengthening Ultrasound Requirement
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) |
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.
Pro-Life Amendment to Kentucky Constitution Approved for 2022 Ballot
photo credit: Matt Turner / Flickr |
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.
March 31, 2021
New Report Shows Continued Decline in Teen Pregnancies and Abortions
photo credit: Marcel Fagin / Unsplash |
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.
Pennsylvania Court Ruling Protects State 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.
March 30, 2021
Senators Continue to Pressure SBA to Investigate How Planned Parenthood Received Millions in COVID Relief Funds
photo credit: Andy Feliciotti / Unsplash |
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.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth Introduces Bill to Require Taxpayer Funding of Abortion
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) |
March 29, 2021
ERA: North Dakota Legislature Passes “Count Us Out” Resolution
North Dakota State Capitol photo credit: Jimmy Emerson, DVM / Flickr |
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.
March 26, 2021
Researchers Suggest Experiments on Humans Embryos Grown in Artificial Wombs
photo credit: ZEISS Microscopy / Flickr |
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.”
March 25, 2021
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:
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:
Catholic Conference of Illinois Defends Parental Notification of Abortion Act
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."
Rachel Levine Confirmed as Assistant HHS Secretary
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."
March 24, 2021
ACLU Report Argues that Parental Consent (Rather than Family Abuse) Causes Harm to Minors
photo credit: Anthony Tran / Unsplash |
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.
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) |
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?”