2016 100-meter hurdles Olympic champion Brianna McNeal (right) |
July 8, 2021
Olympic Gold Medalist Brianna McNeal Says Abortion Trauma Caused her to Miss Drug Test
July 7, 2021
United Nations Accused of Lying to Advance Abortion in El Salvador
"People's Tribunal" Exposes More Details of China's Forced Abortions and Feticide
A nine-member panel headed by human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice met from June 5-7 to hear testimony regarding China's human rights violations. The International Criminal Court said that it would not investigate the situation, so this panel event was created to spread awareness.
Shemsinur Abdighafur gave some of the most memorable testimony at the event. She left China in 2010 in fear for her life, and she told the panel stories about witnessing forced abortion and the murder of newborns on a regular basis.
“In my time working in hospitals, we could sometimes hear that some babies were born, and they started crying and from this we knew they were alive,” she said. “But we knew all babies would be given the injection so we knew they would die before they got home.”
She also witnessed Chinese doctors administer injections directly into the wombs of pregnant women, so that their babies would be killed.
“If any women got injected with this (drug) the baby died,” she said. “The syringe and the needle are very long, and it is directly injected into the womb. When they put the needle in, they see if a liquid comes out, if it does it confirms it is in the right place. I witnessed the injection being done. It was done daily.”
Other refugees told stories about other human rights violations including concentration camps, rape, forced sterilization, and organ harvesting. China continues to deny all accusations.
July 6, 2021
New Ohio Law Protects Doctors' Conscience Rights
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) |
A section of the budget bill says that doctors and healthcare institutions can refuse to provide services that conflict with their “moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or principles.” The bill states:
"Notwithstanding any conflicting provision of the Revised Code, a medical practitioner, health care institution, or health care payer has the freedom to decline to perform, participate in, or pay for any health care service which violates the practitioner’s, institution’s, or payer’s conscience as informed by the moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or principles held by the practitioner, institution, or payer."
While some were unsure whether Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) would use his line-item veto powers to block these protections, pro-lifers were relieved when he said the conscience rights clause was "not a problem."
“In the real world, most of those rights are not only recognized and exercised by medical professionals, but they’re being accepted by other medical professionals,” the governor said. “That is the way the world generally works. This is basically put in statute and codified.”
“Let’s say the doctor is against abortion,” he continued. “If the doctor is not doing abortions, if there’s other things that maybe a doctor has a conscience problem with, it’s worked out. Somebody else does those things. This is not a problem, has not been a problem in the state of Ohio and I do not expect it to be a problem.”
Missouri Attorney General Asks Supreme Court to Uphold Pro-Life Law
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) |
The 2019 law bans abortions committed purely due to an unborn child's race, sex, or prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome. The law also contains tiered abortion bans after eight, 14, 18, and 20 weeks of gestation. Hearing the challenge to this law would require the court to analyze each stage independently and state exactly if/when abortion bans are allowed.
According to the AG Schmitt's office, the Petition “presents three questions for the Supreme Court’s review”:
- Whether Missouri’s restriction on abortions performed solely because the unborn child may have Down syndrome is categorically invalid under Casey and Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), or whether it is a valid, reasonable regulation of abortion that seeks to prevent the elimination of children with Down syndrome through eugenic abortion?
- Whether Missouri’s restrictions on abortions performed after eight, fourteen, eighteen, and twenty weeks’ gestational age are categorically invalid, or whether they are valid, reasonable regulations of abortion that advance important state interests?
- Whether the “penumbral” right to abortion recognized in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and partially reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), should be overruled?
July 5, 2021
Louisiana Gov. Signs Abortion Pill Reversal Disclosure Act
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) |
July 2, 2021
Proposed HHS Rule Allows Affordable Care Act to Pay for Abortions
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) |
“Abortion is not healthcare and taxpayers should not be subsidizing it,” said Senate Pro-Life Caucus chair Steve Daines (R-MT) on Tuesday. “This is another move by President Biden and Secretary Becerra to promote their abortion agenda above following the law, and is even more alarming as Democrats look to increase taxpayer subsidies for Obamacare,” he continued.
The ACA originally contained Hyde Amendment language when it was passed by the Obama administration, making it illegal for federal funds to subsidize abortion through the program. A 2014 Government Accountability Office report found that many insurers ignored these requirements, however, and abortion coverage was not being separated from other kinds of health insurance coverage.
Federal courts blocked President Trump's 2019 attempt to prohibit abortion funding through the Affordable Care Act by requiring separate bills for abortion coverage.
The new rule would only require a single bill and payment of federally-covered services, including abortion coverage.
Biden Nominee Believes Children are an "Environmental Hazard"
July 1, 2021
Judge Issues Temporary Injunction Against Indiana Abortion Pill Reversal Law
HB 1577 was passed by both houses of the Indiana legislature and signed into law in April by Gov. Eric Holcomb. If Judge Hanlon had not issued a temporary injunction, the law would have gone into effect on July 1.
APR works by counteracting the effects of mifepristone, the first drug in the two-pill chemical abortion regimen. Mifepristone starves an unborn baby by blocking the pregnancy hormone progesterone, which facilitates the flow of oxygen and nutrients from a mother to her child. APR is a process by which the mother is given additional progesterone, thereby restoring the flow of oxygen and nutrients. APR has saved over 2,000 babies to date.
Judge Hanlon agreed with the pro-abortion plaintiffs that HB 1577 could violate the First Amendment rights of abortion businesses by requiring compelled content-based speech. He also implied that APR is unproven and unsafe, which discounts the success of APR.
Win! Federal Appeals Court Unanimously Rules ERA is Dead
In a bizarre move, pro-abortion legislators in Illinois (2018), Virginia (2020), and Nevada (2017) voted to ratify the amendment 42 years after it expired. After doing so, pro-abortion legislators claimed that the ERA had been ratified by two-thirds of the states (the minimum amount required to amend the Constitution). Not only had the amendment expired, however, but legislatures in several states now have different opinions than the ones that initially voted on the amendment nearly half a century ago.
In particular, the ERA as interpreted by many could codify abortion rights into the Constitution. A ratified ERA might prove to be much harder to overturn than Roe v. Wade, which based its decision on the idea that abortion is legal under the Constitution's implied right to privacy.
In a win for the pro-life movement, the courts continue to agree that the ERA ratification process legally ended decades ago, and the amendment is not a part of the constitution.
“Today’s ruling continues an unbroken, 40-year losing streak by advocates of the ERA-is-alive cult in the federal courts, before federal judges of every stripe of judicial philosophy and political background,” said Douglas Johnson, director of the National Right to Life Committee’s ERA Project.
This particular lawsuit was brought by an organization named Equal Means Equal (EME). In a separate lawsuit, the attorneys general of Illinois, Virginia, and Nevada have appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. A district judge ruled that the states' votes for ratification "came too late to count" but their appeal is likely to be heard later this year.
June 30, 2021
HHS Secretary Becerra Shuts Down Fetal Research Ethics Advisory Board
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr |
137 congressional Republicans responded by sending Becerra a letter asking him to reverse his decision. The letter cites documents obtained by Judicial Watch revealing the FDA's routine “orders for eyeballs, livers, skin, brains, skulls, and sometimes fully intact bodies of infants aborted in the second trimester” from Advanced Bioscience Resources. In these exchanges, Advanced Bioscience Resources serves as a middle man between the federal government and Planned Parenthood.
The letter also cites a report by the Center for Medical Progress revealing horrifying experiments done by the University of Pittsburgh using tissue harvested from aborted children. The University grafted tissue from baby scalps onto lab rats and observed how the rats grew human hair.
AP Poll Shows Strong Opposition to Second and Third Trimester Abortions
Unfortunately, 61% of Americans said that abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances during the first trimester. Encouragingly however, 65% said most or all second trimester abortions should be illegal. This increased to 80% in the third trimester.
For second trimester abortions, the poll found that, "34% say they should usually [19%] or always [15%] be legal, and another 30% say they should be illegal in most but not all cases."
Regarding third trimester abortions, 26% said that they should be illegal in most cases, 54% said that they should be illegal in all circumstances.
Statistics from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute indicate that over 100,000 abortions killed unborn babies in the second trimester or later during the year 2017 alone. Clearly government policy on abortion does not reflect public opinion.
June 29, 2021
Pro-Life House Members Sign Discharge Petition to Vote on Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) |
The petition must receive 218 signatures to bring the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act out of committee and put it before the full House of Representatives for debate and a vote.
Pro-abortion legislators continue to argue that this legislation is redundant and unnecessary, but this is not true. The 2002 Born-Alive Infant Protection Act (which is often referenced by opponents of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act) does not include an enforcement provision, and therefore has no consequences for abortionists who refuse to provide care for babies who survive attempted abortions. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act requires these babies to be transported to hospitals where they must receive the same degree of care as any other baby.
In the last Congress, pro-abortion representatives blocked the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act for months.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds to Appeal Decision Overturning 24-Hour Waiting Period
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) |
At a news conference last Wednesday at the Iowa Capitol, Gov. Reynolds said, “I absolutely don’t agree with the decision, and that’s what the process is for. Certainly, we’ll be appealing that decision, and we’re pretty confident that we can get the outcome that we’re looking for.”
Judge Truner's decision relied on precedent from the Iowa Supreme Court's 2018 decision regarding a 72 hour waiting period law. That waiting period was decided to be unconstitutional, but the court went even further than that; declaring that women have a fundamental right to have an abortion under the Iowa Constitution.
Five of the seven justices on the Supreme Court have been replaced by pro-life Gov. Reynolds since the 2018 decision. This includes four out of the five justices who were in the majority on that decision.
Legislators have also started the long process of amending the Constitution to guarantee that it cannot be interpreted to secure a right to abortion. If the process continues to be successful, Iowans will have the opportunity to vote on that amendment in 2024.
June 28, 2021
North Carolina Gov. Vetoes Bill Banning Discriminatory Abortions
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) |
To overcome the governor's veto, “about two Democrats in the Senate and three in the House would need to vote with Republicans in favor of the abortion restrictions,” the Herald Sun reported.
HB 453, known as the Human Life Nondiscrimination Act/No Eugenics, would require abortionists to confirm before the abortion that the woman is not seeking an abortion because of any of the following: the actual or presumed race or racial makeup of the unborn child; the sex of the unborn child; the presence or presumed presence of Down syndrome.” This makes it different than legislation in other states, which don't require abortionists to proactively ask questions of pregnant mothers. They just prohibit the abortionist from carrying out an abortion if they happen to learn that the reason is discriminatory.
“This bill simply puts an end to eugenics,” Sen. Amy Galey said in a statement responding to Gov. Cooper's veto. “It shouldn’t be controversial to protect an unborn child with Down syndrome, but Gov. Cooper proves once again that he’s unwilling to stand up for North Carolinians when his left-wing donors demand his loyalty.”
June 25, 2021
Pro-life Representatives Advocate for "No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act" on House Floor
HR 18 Sponsor Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) |
"Let’s be clear: The Hyde Amendment is not discriminatory. Instead, it’s an essential safeguard that not only protects Americans’ right of conscience, but also has saved more than two million lives from abortion since it was first enacted in 1976.Until recently, it was also overwhelmingly bipartisan. In fact, one of its most vocal supporters in Congress was then-Senator Joe Biden. He told one of his constituents in 1994, ‘the government should not tell those with strong convictions against abortion, such as you and I, that we must pay for them.’ Well said, Mr. President.Since then, the purpose of Hyde hasn’t changed.
The strong convictions of the American people against abortion haven’t changed. In poll after poll, they tell us they strongly support a wall of separation between abortions and taxpayers.And the science hasn’t changed. If anything, it has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that human life begins at conception."
Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) the sponsor of H.R. 18, addressed the House on June 23, asking that Representatives call his bill to a vote. He decried the harm caused by abortion throughout the US:
Over 2.4 million people who would have been aborted instead survived because taxpayer funds were unavailable to effectuate their violent demise.
Growing numbers of Americans continue to be shocked to learn that the methods of abortion include dismemberment of a child’s fragile body including decapitation, and that drugs like RU 486 starve the baby to death before he or she is forcibly expelled from the womb.
The multibillion-dollar abortion industry cleverly markets the sophistry of choice while going to extraordinary lengths to ignore, trivialize and cover-up the battered baby-victim.
By reason of their age, dependency, immaturity, inconvenience, fragility and/or unwantedness, unborn children have been denied justice—and the most fundamental of all human rights, the right to life.
22 State Attorneys General Petition Congress to Restore Hyde Amendment
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) |
June 24, 2021
"For the People Act" Fails to Overcome G.O.P. Filibuster
National Right to Life wrote in a letter to Senators,
"Enactment of [H.R. 1] would not be a curb on corruption, but is itself a type of corruption – an abuse of the lawmaking power, by which incumbent lawmakers employ the threat of criminal sanctions, among other deterrents, to reduce the amount of private speech regarding the actions of the lawmakers themselves. Further, this legislation would add a commissioner to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), causing a partisan takeover by significantly increasing the likelihood that the agency could make decisions benefiting the political party in power."
The bill would have created an expansive definition for "the functional equivalent of express advocacy" which would apply to "communications that “when taken as a whole, it can be interpreted by a reasonable person only as advocating the election or defeat of a candidate for election for Federal office." Any organization that gives commentary on the votes or positions of incumbent Congress members could be interpreted to fall within this definition. Thus, these organizations could be forced to keep and report additional records. H.R. 1 would even require these organizations to post identifying information about their financial supporters online, thereby opening them up to harassment and intimidation by those who disagree with them.
By failing to surpass the 60-vote threshold required to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, H.R. 1 cannot pass and limit our freedom of speech.
Press Secretary Refuses to Answer Whether Biden Believes Preborn Children are Human
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to answer a reporter's question on Monday when she was asked, "Does the President believe that a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being?"
Psaki replied to the question, “Are you asking me if the President supports a woman’s right to choose? He does.”
Several pro-abortion politicians have been asked this question recently, since the Supreme Court is preparing to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization this fall. The case is a challenge to a Mississippi law banning abortion at 15 weeks gestation. The Supreme Court's decision has the potential to significantly change how abortion is treated under federal law- perhaps even overturning Roe v. Wade entirely.
A simple "no" would have sufficed. https://t.co/PtohtYL2D5
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 21, 2021
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told CNS news that he would “wait for the Supreme Court decision” rather than tell reporters whether he believed an unborn child should be considered human at 15 weeks. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) similarly refused to answer questions about the humanity of an unborn child at that stage of development.
If pro-abortion politicians concede that unborn children are human, which is supported by the fact that unique human genetic code is created during conception, they would also acknowledge that abortion kills human beings. Thus, these politicians would either be denying science or condoning the killing of certain humans. Pro-abortion politicians know how precarious their position is, so they refuse to answer questions like this one.
June 23, 2021
Pro-Abortion Advocates Claim Abortion is Good for the Economy
The study further argues that getting rid of abortion restrictions would cause over 500,000 women to enter the workforce, thereby increasing annual earnings for women by over $1,600 per year.
The IWPR study implies that caring for children is something that women should reject, and it reinforces the idea of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace. Businesses often pressure women to choose abortion if they want to keep their jobs, and the widespread availability of abortion only helps businesses discriminate in this way.
Ending abortion restrictions is not the answer to this problem. It will only amplify it. Childcare resources and support from fathers can empower working women without the sacrifice of unborn children.