Bioethicists Propose Time-Delayed Suicide Implants for Dementia Patients

Prominent bioethicists are proposing that dementia patients could be implanted with time-release suicide devices that could kill patients at a future time of their choosing.

In a recent article for Hastings Center Report, the world's most prominent bioethics journal, bioethicists proposed that dementia patients could be implanted with "advance directive implants" or ADIs.

The article, titled "Ending One's Life in Advance," reads:

"The ADI would require extensive engineering and may not be feasible with current technologies. Still, we suspect it could become feasible in the near future. We imagine the ADI as something like a computerized subdermal implant containing a lethal dose of a medication or combination of medications. Release of these medications would occur rapidly after a predetermined interval or after some specific event had occurred. The ADI would likely require a long-lasting battery, computerized control, and a pump or microfluidic mechanism."

Assisted suicide, including suicide with ADIs, involves the intentional killing of one human being by another. Allowing the idea of assisted suicide to become a normal part of our culture dehumanizes those with conditions like dementia, and that should not be allowed to happen. Regardless of their circumstances, human lives are valuable, and they should be cared for.

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Washington Church Files Brief with 9th Circuit Over Abortion Coverage Mandate

Cedar Park Assembly of God in Washington state is taking another step in its ongoing fight against a law requiring religious institutions to include abortion coverage in all employee healthcare plans with maternity benefits.

On July 9, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a brief before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals asking them to overturn a lower courts ruling, which threw out the church's lawsuit. ADF attorneys argued that Washington state is violating the church's constitutional rights to practice their religious beliefs about the sanctity of human life. The attorneys also argued the law specifically targets churches, since it provides exceptions for healthcare providers but not religious organizations.

“We’re standing for the rights of people of faith to not be forced into being complicit with something inconsistent with our faith,” said senior pastor Rev. Jay Smith, according to SeattlePi. “Abortion is the antithesis of who we are as an organization, what our beliefs are, and how we live our faith.”

According to the Washington Times, attorneys for the state argued that the church was not injured or burdened by the law because they can buy insurance from providers who are exempt from the abortion coverage requirement. The court filing rebuked the state's argument, stating, “No evidence supports the court’s assumption that Cedar Park could obtain an abortion-excluding group health plan from a different insurance provider. That such a plan might be available to a few ministries elsewhere has no impact on Cedar Park’s injury or standing to challenge [the law].”

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Pro-Abortion Groups File Unusual Class-Action Lawsuit Over Texas Heartbeat Law

Last Tuesday, a coalition of pro-abortion groups and individuals filed a class-action lawsuit over a new Texas law that will ban the abortion of unborn children whose heartbeats can be detected (generally at six weeks). This case will be very different from other legal battles over pro-life legislation because of the Texas law's unique enforcement mechanism.

The Texas heartbeat law, which goes into effect on Sept. 1, allows individuals to file lawsuits against abortionists or anybody who aids them in aborting an unborn child after the child's heartbeat would be detectable. This is different from normal pro-life laws, which are enforced directly by states.

The pro-abortion coalition didn't just file a lawsuit against the state to challenge the constitutionality of the heartbeat law. The Texan reported that the "unusual lawsuit" was filed “against the Texas Medical Board, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the entire Texas court system, and one individual man: Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the ‘Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative.'”

Dickson is a pastor and the director of Right to Life East Texas. He helps cities throughout Texas and the rest of the country become sanctuary cities for the unborn. These cities enact ordinances banning abortion within city limits. He was included as a defendant for posting on Facebook that he is willing to file lawsuits against abortionists if they violate the heartbeat law.

In a statement to Live Action News, Dickson said,

“Does the sound of our heartbeat mean more outside the womb than it did when we were inside our mother’s womb? Are we really any more human than the babies we see on the ultrasound monitors? Texans cannot ignore the facts. We all came from our mother’s womb. Many of us, in bringing our own children into this world, have heard the heartbeat and have seen the 2D, 3D, and 4D ultrasounds. How could we ignore those unmistakable evidences of life? This is, most certainly, a fight worth fighting.”

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Chicago Public Schools to Give Condoms to Children in Grades 5-12

A new policy passed by the Chicago Public School (CPS) Board of Education last December will require Chicago public schools to provide condoms to children as young as ten years old when in-person classes begin next month.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the policy requires schools that teach grades 5-12 to "maintain a condom availability program." The Sun-Times reported that the policy will require over 600 public schools to distribute condoms to children.

“Essentially what we want to do is make condoms available to students for if and when they think they need them,” said Dr. Kenneth Fox, CPS’ chief health officer.  “…When you don’t have those protections and don’t make those resources available then bad stuff happens to young people. You have elevated risks of sexually transmitted infections, of unintended pregnancies, and that’s very preventable stuff.”

When asked why fifth-graders were included, Fox said the policy was “informed by a developmental understanding of children.”

Citing a column by former Planned Parenthood manager Ramona Treviño, Live Action argued that abortion businesses stand to profit from introducing children to sex at a young age. Treviño wrote:

"Working for a non-abortion center made it clear to me that contraception and abortion are two sides of the same coin. One does not exist without the other… Contraception creates a market for abortion by promoting promiscuity and providing men and women a false sense of security against an unintended pregnancy. The more promiscuous people are (especially young people), the more likely they’ll become pregnant.

The more people use birth control and adopt a contraceptive mentality, the higher the odds that they’ll seek an abortion. Because, let’s face it, if they’re using birth control, a child is not part of the ‘plan.’ Abortion is the backup, so to speak, for contraceptive failure, misuse, or lack of self-control."

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Appeals Court Grants Rehearing of Missouri Discriminatory Abortion Ban

Last week, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated its ruling which struck down portions of the Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act and agreed to hear it once again en banc beginning this month. The Missouri law banned abortions committed purely due to an unborn child's diagnosis with Down syndrome, or the baby's sex or race. The law also had tiered abortion restrictions at eight, 14, 18, and 20 weeks. The law was written so that if a court blocked one of those restrictions, the next tier would come into effect.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt had already appealed this case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Eighth Circuit's decision to rehear it overrides that. In Schmitt's appeal to the Supreme Court, he wrote:

“Unborn children with Down syndrome are aborted at epidemic rates, In the face of this genocidal crisis, Missouri and at least 11 other states have enacted laws restricting the eugenic abortion of the disabled, especially those with Down syndrome. In 2019, this Court declined to review the Seventh Circuit’s decision invalidating one of these laws — Indiana’s — because no circuit split yet existed. Since then, a clear and well-developed split of authority has emerged.”

This decision may also affect an Arkansas law that could be headed to the Supreme Court. Briefs for the rehearing will be heard on July 23.

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Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Kentucky AG's Petition to Defend Dismemberment Abortion Ban

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron

The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron's appeal to be allowed to defend a Kentucky law banning dismemberment abortions. The case will be heard on October 12, 2021.

Kentucky's House Bill 454 was signed into law by former Gov. Matt Bevin in 2018, but it never took effect. It was quickly enjoined and struck down by U.S District Judge Joseph McKinley Jr. when pro-abortion organizations filed a lawsuit. After that ruling, pro-abortion Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (who recently won an election) declined to defend the law.

Pro-life Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron petitioned the Supreme Court in March 2021 to be given the right to defend the law as the state's duly elected attorney general. The court accepted his petition, and it will hear arguments on October 12, 2021.

Attorney General Cameron is asking the Supreme Court:

Whether a state attorney general vested with the power to defend state law should be permitted to intervene after a federal court of appeals invalidates a state statute when no other state actor will defend the law.

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Pro-Abortion Orgs Plan to Continue Distributing Pills Online Even if Roe v. Wade is Overturned

Pro-abortion organizations are preparing for the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade by creating more ways to order abortion pills online for mail order. These organizations plan to undercut state abortion laws by delivering pills regardless of whether a state outlaws abortion.

On its own, the overturning of Roe v. Wade would not make abortion illegal. It would simply allow states to make the determination regarding whether abortion will be allowed within their borders. If the Supreme Court chooses to overturn the landmark decision, however, pro-life states will likely pass laws outlawing abortion, including the distribution of abortion pills. Several pro-abortion organizations plan to thwart those regulations (as they did when the FDA banned the mail distribution of abortion pills) by making abortion pills available to order online.

A recent article by Politico highlighted several organizations preparing to keep abortion available in the circumstance that states outlaw abortion or online abortion pill distribution. The Mountain Access Brigade, Aid Access, the Yellowhammer Fund, and Plan C are just a few of these pro-abortion groups.

“If Roe goes down — we hope it won’t — there are always going to be ways to access abortion,” Plan C co-founder Elisa Wells told Politico. “Plan C included, we’re already working on alternative ways to access the pills.”

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Protection Order Filed Against Kansas Abortion Facility Guard

Trust Women security guard Carl Swinney approaching
pro-life activists with papers he called "contaminated material"

Carl Swinney, a security guard at the Trust Women abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, has had a protection order filed against him for the second time after handing a pro-life advocate papers that he claimed were contaminated.

Jennifer McCoy, the pro-life activist targeted by Swinney, took the threat seriously because he had harassed, threatened, and assaulted her in the past. His previous acts against her include giving her a bag of vomit from a sick patient, putting his hand on his gun and threatening to use it against her and other pro-lifers, and twisting McCoy's arm to create a long-lasting injury.

McCoy had a protection order filed against Swinney for these actions, but it expired in May of this year.

“His behavior has always been erratic and threatening for the twenty years I have known him,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “The clinic’s owner and administrator, Julie Burkhart, is aware of his dangerous behavior, and I believe she not only tolerates it, but encourages it.”

The most recent incident occurred when Swinney took papers that had flown off a table McCoy and other pro-life activists were using to help women considering abortion. He took them inside the abortion facility and later gave them to McCoy, saying that he made sure they were contaminated.

Swinney is scheduled to appear in court on July 22, 2021.

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Biden Appoints Former Population Council Director Stephanie Psaki to HHS Position

Pro-abortion Dr. Stephanie Psaki, the sister of White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, has been appointed by the Biden administration to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She will take the position of Senior Advisor on Human Rights and Gender Equity in the Office of Global Affairs.

Psaki served as the deputy director of the Population Council's Girl Innovation Research and Learning (GIRL) Center. The Population Council is known for its eugenic agenda focusing on population control.

The Population Council takes credit for bringing the abortion pill to the United States and granting Danco Laboratories an exclusive license to manufacture and market the pill here. Its past leaders have been known for their membership in groups such as the American Eugenics Society and involvement in pro-abortion advocacy. Council members have even advocated for policies as extreme as forced sterilization.

In 2019, Psaki contributed to a report that claimed “access to modern contraception, safe and legal abortion” is among the “suite of SRH [Sexual and Reproductive Health] services, products, and information” which are “critical to girls’ and women’s health, education, and participation in society and the economy.”

The report suggested that governments should remove all barriers to abortion, even for adolescents. This includes laws requiring parental involvement. It recommended that policymakers, “Liberalize abortion laws to enable all adolescent girls and women to obtain safe abortion services. Remove restrictions involving parental or partner consent to access abortion services and family planning methods….”

It went on to recommend that governments “guarantee the availability of affordable, accessible, and appropriate youth-friendly SRH services—including a wide range of discreet and on-demand contraceptive options… safe abortion and post-abortion care, maternal and newborn care free of stigma, discrimination, coercion, and violence.”

Psaki yet another in the long list of pro-abortion Biden appointees.

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Study Reveals Late-Term Abortionists Experimented on Hundreds of Women

Dr. Carmen Landau

Keisha Atkins, a woman who died during a late-term abortion after being drugged repeatedly, might have unknowingly been participating in an experiment by abortionists at Southwestern Women's Options (SWO) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Atkins visited SWO in 2017 to have an induced abortion. This would involve an abortionist injecting feticide into the preborn baby's heart, and then returning several days later to deliver the dead baby. Atkins was six months pregnant at the time.

Documents obtained last year by Abortion on Trial revealed that Atkins was given multiple doses of powerful medications and sedatives in the days leading up to her death. Staffers did not monitor her condition and continued to give her the drugs even after she started having difficulty breathing.

New documents obtained just last week by Abortion on Trial reveal even more, however. Carmen Landau and Shelley Sella, two abortionists who work at SWO, were conducting experiments on hundreds of women by administering the abortion drug mifepristone during a late-term abortion. Mifepristone is the first part of the two-pill abortion pill regimen, but that method of abortion is only used for early stages of pregnancy. Landau and Sella were attempting to incorporate the pill into their induced abortion method to find out if it would help them complete late-term abortions more quickly.

501 women participated in this study. Half of them were given mifepristone during their induction abortions, while the other half were not. All of these women were past 24 weeks pregnant, and 48 of them were minors. Atkins's death was included in the medical research article published after the study was completed.

The medical examiner for the research article said that Atkins died after suffering pulmonary thromboembolism, or blood clots in the lungs. Her autopsy report does not indicate any signs of pulmonary thromboembolism, and emails from University of New Mexico Hospital staff disagree with this cause of death.

“Everything about her course was consistent with septic abortion→ refractory septic cardiomyopathy [heart failure due to infection] → death,” emergency medician physician Trenton Wray wrote. Dr. Gary Hatch agreed, writing “Second review reveals no segmental or larger emboli. There just simply isn’t PE [pulmonary embolism]… There was no massive PE present at the time of scan. Period… I am also confident there was no segmental or greater PE.”

Sepsis is a known side effect of the abortion pill regimen. Both pills were given to Atkins before her death. The study concluded that there was "no perceived benefit" to using abortion pills during induction abortions.

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Father Accused of Murdering Daughter Three Years After Attempting Forced Abortion

A Canadian woman appeared in court last week to testify against her daughter's father, who is accused of abducting and murdering their three-year-old girl. In her testimony, she said that he attempted to forcibly abort the child before she was born.

Frank Nausigimana is accused of first-degree murder for allegedly kidnapping and his three-year-old daughter at knifepoint and stabbing her to death in the back of his car on July 7, 2021. Court records show that Nausigimana had a domestic violence order against him after he assaulted the mother in 2017 while she was pregnant. In an attempt to forcibly abort their child, Nausigimana tried to force the pregnant mother to drink “a poison of some sort, a liquid” the mother said in her testimony.

According to her, that was the first and only position Nausigimana ever held on their daughter.

“That was the first thing he said. He said he didn’t want to have anything to do with it and then he thought, yes, he wanted to abort the baby and he started to plan and I had told him, no, I don’t want to. But he said he wants to — he was going to force me to, and then he tried to,” she said.

Legalized abortion dehumanizes unborn children; thereby enabling men to have sex and aggressively coerce women into abortion. Most of the time this involves abortion businesses such as Planned Parenthood, and the public might never hear many of those stories. Abortion businesses are entirely willing to slip those instances under the rug. Planned Parenthood of Illinois and other abortion businesses recently revealed this through their support of bills repealing the Parental Notification of Abortion Act. If that law is ever repealed, sexual abuse can be hidden even more easily by abortion businesses.

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House Subcommittee Advances Pro-Abortion Spending Bill

photo credit: Phil Roeder / Flickr

On Monday, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies voted in favor of a pro-abortion spending bill for the fiscal year 2022.

Most notably, the bill does not include the protections of the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment has been attached to every spending bill since 1976, blocking the use of federal tax dollars to pay for or subsidize abortions. Without the amendment, the agencies such as the HHS could use tax dollars to fund elective abortions across the country.

The bill also threatens the conscience rights of health care providers who benefit from Medicare Advantage or Title X funding. If a health care provider refuses to provide, pay for, cover, or refer for abortions, pro-abortion HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra will have the power to deny them participation in those programs. Becerra is well-known for going after churches and pro-life pregnancy centers as California's attorney general, where he attempted to force them to pay for abortion under unconstitutional state laws.

The spending bill is expected to be heard soon by the full appropriations committee. After that, it would go before the full House of Representatives for debate and vote.

Comments by House Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) indicate that it is likely to pass a vote by the full committee. “Quite frankly, allowing the Hyde Amendment to remain on the books is a disservice not only to our constituents, but also to the values we espouse as a nation,” she said.

Another spending bill threatens to use foreign operations to promote and fund abortion in foreign countries by eliminating the Helms Amendment and Mexico City Policy, which block that kind of spending.

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Kansas AG Appeals Decision Striking Down Dismemberment Abortion Ban

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt

Last Wednesday, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said that he is appealing a district court's decision which struck down a 2015 Kansas law banning the dismemberment of living unborn babies.

The decision came following a 2019 decision by the Kansas Supreme Court which found a "fundamental right to abortion" implied by the Kansas Constitution's Bill of Rights. A district court used that questionable decision earlier this year to strike down the dismemberment abortion ban. State supreme courts that find an implied right to abortion in state constitutions can be even more far-reaching than Roe v. Wade, as the Kansas Supreme Court demonstrated.

Kansas legislators responded similarly to other pro-life states by approving a constitutional amendment declaring that there is no state constitutional right to abortion. That amendment will be on the ballot for voters in August 2022.

A statement from Kansas AG Schmidt's office reads,

"In April, Shawnee County District Court Judge Teresa L. Watson found the law violated the Kansas Constitution, relying on a Kansas Supreme Court decision in an earlier stage of this case that found a “fundamental right to abortion” in Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights. In her ruling, Judge Watson noted that while she disagreed with the Kansas Supreme Court’s legal reasoning and conclusions in that case, she was bound by its decision. Schmidt said that, among other legal issues, he will ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its interpretation of the state constitution from the prior decision."

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Aborted Baby Remains Found in Ohio Clinic's Dumpster

Last month, pro-life advocate Matthew Connolly discovered the body of an estimated 17-week-old preborn child in the dumpster of Northeast Ohio Women's Center (NEOWC) in Cuyahoga Falls.

The baby was found wrapped in a bloody blue surgical sheet. Its limbs were torn in a way indicating that the child was killed in a dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortion. Pro-lifers often refer to these as dismemberment abortions, because abortionists tear individual arms and legs off the unborn baby's body as part of the process.

Monica Migliorino Miller, director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, made the following comments about the discovery:

"This baby found in the NEOWC trash has suffered the greatest injustice that can be inflicted upon any human being. The child is a rejected human person, rejected by his or her own mother, sliced apart in an unspeakable act of violence, and then literally treated as trash!

In this unborn child’s dismembered body is incarnated the injustice of abortion. We must expose this atrocity. It is so painfully obvious that such killing should be a crime and made illegal. Little did the clinic’s neighboring private residents and businesses know the secret buried at the bottom of the abortion center’s trash container.

Furthermore, what was discovered in the NEOWC demonstrates the abortion industry’s disregard for the rights and dignity of women — as the clinic did little to protect their patients’ identity."

The names of 31 women were also found in the dumpster, a potential violation of HIPAA laws.

Earlier this year, NEOWC joined other abortion businesses in suing Ohio over the state's Unborn Child Dignity Act, which requires the humane disposal of aborted children's remains via burial or cremation.

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Iowa Supreme Court Upholds Law Banning Abortion Businesses From Sex Education Programs

The Iowa Supreme Court decided 6-1 on Wednesday to reverse a lower court and uphold a 2019 law that “prohibited abortion providers from participating in two federally funded educational grant programs directed at reducing teenage pregnancy and promoting abstinence.”

The six justices in the majority wrote in their opinion,

"Even if the programs do not include any discussions about abortion, the goals of promoting abstinence and reducing teenage pregnancy could arguably still be undermined when taught by the entity that performs nearly all abortions in Iowa. The State could also be concerned that using abortion providers to deliver sex education programs to teenage students would create relationships between the abortion provider and the students the State does not wish to foster in light of its policy preference for childbirth over abortion. The government has considerable leeway in selecting who will deliver a government message, whether the message is a diversity and inclusion program, a drug prevention program, or, in this case, a sexual education and teen pregnancy prevention program."

The court found that all three stated purposes of the Iowa law passed muster: expressing the state's preference for childbirth over abortion, ensuring state-sponsored sex education isn't delivered by organizations that profit from abortion, and avoiding subsidizing abortion businesses.

The Iowa legislature has recently passed many pro-life bills, including a proposed constitutional amendment that would prevent the constitution from being interpreted to include a right to abortion, as it was in 2018.

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Olympic Gold Medalist Brianna McNeal Says Abortion Trauma Caused her to Miss Drug Test

2016 100-meter hurdles Olympic champion Brianna McNeal (right)

Brianna McNeal, who won the Olympic gold medal for the 100-meter hurdles in 2016, has been suspended from competing for five years by World Athletics. According to a New York Times report, McNeal is being penalized for missing a mandatory drug test two days after having an abortion in January 2020.

The report says that McNeal had an abortion because she thought her pregnancy might prevent her from competing in the 2020 Olympic games. After her baby was aborted, however, she mourned the child's death. This was especially true after the 2020 games were canceled since that meant her child was aborted for no reason.

McNeal says that when the drug tester came to her house on January 12, 2020, she was in bed recovering from the abortion. She originally did not tell officials that she had an abortion. Instead, she said that she had a "surprise medical procedure" and got a note from the abortion facility to excuse the missed test.

World Athletics banned McNeal because she edited the date on the note given to her by the abortion clinic. Her abortion occurred on Jan. 10, but she changed the date on the note to read Jan. 11. McNeal says that she changed the date because she believed the clinic got it wrong. She says that the trauma of her abortion caused her to misremember the date.

"I tried to keep the abortion private, but they just kept tugging and tugging at me, wanting more information," McNeal said. "I couldn’t believe that I was charged with a violation because I had the dates mixed up by just 24 hours. It’s not like the procedure didn’t happen."

McNeal also said that World Athletics did not believe her when she told them she was traumatized by her abortion; claiming that her continued posts on social media, the fact that she continued competing after the procedure, and the fact that she did not contact a psychiatrist prove otherwise. McNeal says that she sought help from a spiritual advisor instead. “For me, growing up in the Black community, that’s how we cope with everything,” she said. “We go to church, and we talk to our pastor or spiritual advisor.”

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United Nations Accused of Lying to Advance Abortion in El Salvador

Pro-life leader Sara Larín, the founder of the VIDA SV Foundation of El Salvador, is accusing the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights of lying about a case of infanticide to advance its pro-abortion goals for the country.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet. Bachelet was known for introducing bills to legalize abortion during her time in office.

Sara Larín told the Catholic News Agency's Spanish language news partner that “it is completely unusual and despicable that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is using Marina de los Ángeles Portillo’s release from prison on parole to pressure El Salvador on abortion.”

Portillo was recently given parole after serving 14 years in prison for murdering her newborn daughter in 2007. Police found the baby girl with a sock stuffed in her mouth and over her nostrils. A second sock was tied around the newborn's neck with a double-knot. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison for her crime.

On June 25, the OHCHR twisted the facts by calling Portillo's parole an "early release" and calling on El Salvador "to continue the review of cases where women have been detained for crimes related to obstetric emergencies and to harmonize the abortion legislation according to human rights standards in order to avoid new incarcerations."

Portillo did not have an "obstetric emergency" and she was not acquitted of her crime, yet the UN body manipulates the facts to continue pushing its pro-abortion agenda on nations that currently ban abortion, like El Salvador.

International organizations often lie about cases of infanticide in their messaging by referring to them as miscarriages, while using the situation to push for the legalization of abortion in countries that currently protect all life from the moment of conception. This is just a recent example.

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"People's Tribunal" Exposes More Details of China's Forced Abortions and Feticide

A "people's tribunal" in London last month involved testimony from Uighur refugees from China. The goal of the tribunal was to bring to light how China is violating the human rights of Uighur Muslims, including through forced abortion and infanticide.

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.

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New Ohio Law Protects Doctors' Conscience Rights

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R)

Last Thursday, Ohio enacted a budget bill including a provision to protect the conscience rights of doctors who oppose abortion and other practices.

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.”

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Missouri Attorney General Asks Supreme Court to Uphold Pro-Life Law

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R)

On July 1, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) requested that the Supreme Court hear a case to reinstate the "Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act."

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?

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