August 11, 2021
Legal Group Criticizes DOJ for Dropping Conscience Rights Lawsuit
Louisiana Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Challenging Parental Consent Law
Louisiana 19th Judicial District Court Judge Timothy Kelley |
Much like Illinois's parental notification requirements, minors in Louisiana have the ability to obtain a judicial bypass to have an abortion without parental consent. As a result, abortion businesses around the country found ways to obtain judicial bypasses for minors. These businesses often "shop" for pro-abortion judges who will sign the necessary paperwork to grant a judicial bypass. Louisiana lawmakers were aware of this, so they passed a law that requires a court that grants a judicial bypass to have jurisdiction within the minor's parish of residence (with some exceptions).
“Once again, the abortion industry ran to the shelter of a court to cling to its mission of abortion-on-demand, this time seeking to defend abortion for minors without any barriers or parental involvement,” said Benjamin Clapper, Executive Director of Louisiana Right to Life. “Judge Kelley rightly dismissed this ridiculous lawsuit and told the abortion businesses they can return to court once they actually have a real plaintiff.”
Angie Thomas, J.D., Associate Director of Louisiana Right to Life, echoed Clapper's sentiment: “We also applaud Judge Kelley for dismissing the case for lack of standing. For years, the abortion industry has challenged the laws that were meant to protect women from that same industry without representing any actual patients. Judge Kelley’s decision hopefully puts a stop to this inappropriate legal tool the abortion industry consistently uses to strike at the will of the people of Louisiana.”
August 10, 2021
Appeals Court Upholds Tennessee Waiting Period Law
The Center for Reproductive Rights filed the lawsuit on behalf of Tennessee abortion businesses. According to the court's majority opinion, they could not identify women who were harmed by having to wait 48 hours before they could get an abortion.
“None of the plaintiffs’ witnesses could name specific women who could not get an abortion because the waiting period pushed them past the cutoff date,” Judge Amul Thapar wrote for the majority in Bristol Regional Women’s Center v. Slatery. “None of the witnesses could identify specific women whose medical conditions caused complications or psychological harm during the waiting period.”
Uniquely, this waiting period law was in effect for five years before District Judge Bernard A. Friedman allowed the lawsuit to be resurrected. It was enforced from 2015 until Oct. 2020, which meant that both sides could use data collected during that period to argue their points in court. The appellate court noted that between 2015 and 2020, abortion rates remained steady.
“It is one thing to predict that the sky will fall tomorrow,” the ruling states. “It’s quite another thing to maintain that the sky fell five years ago for women seeking abortions when the numbers tell us otherwise.”
European Court of Human Rights Rules that Life Support can be Removed from UK 2-Year-Old
Alta Fixler with her family |
August 9, 2021
Appeals Court Upholds Indiana Abortion Complications Reporting Law
August 6, 2021
IFRL Legislation Page Updated
photo credit: Keith Ewing / Flickr |
The IFRL's legislation page has been updated in preparation for the upcoming fall veto session. Be sure to visit for information on pro-abortion and pro-life bills that legislators might push. We will be sure to update you with more information when it becomes available.
You can visit our periodically updated legislation page by clicking here or going to ifrl.org and clicking "legislation" on the right-hand side.
Report Reveals HHS Funneled Millions of Dollars to Fetal Tissue Bank
The University of Pittsburgh project sought to "develop a pipeline to the acquisition, quality control and distribution of human genitourinary [urinary and genital organs and functions] samples obtained throughout development (6-42 weeks gestation)." Forty-two weeks is the same as ten months, which is a very late gestational stage.
Judicial Watch obtained documents showing Pitt's interest in harvesting fetal organs for a project called the GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project (GUDMAP).
Pitt came under fire earlier this year for another project that involved grafting scalps harvested from aborted babies and grafting them onto mice. Human hair began to grow from the bodies of these modified mice.
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that Pitt was discussing plans to minimize warm ischemic time, or the amount of time that an organ retains its body temperature after losing blood flow. The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) argued on Tuesday that this, alongside the fact that the tissue was harvested after labor-induced abortions, suggests that these babies could be delivered alive.
"If the fetus’ heartbeat and blood circulation continue in a labor induction abortion for harvesting organs, it means the fetus is being delivered while still alive and the cause of death is the removal of the organs," the CMP wrote in a press release.
CMP founder David Daleiden said on Tuesday, "The NIH grant application for just one of Pitt’s numerous experiments with aborted infants reads like an episode of American Horror Story … People are outraged by such disregard for the lives of the vulnerable. Law enforcement and public officials should act immediately to bring the next Kermit Gosnell to justice under the law."
August 5, 2021
Parents of 2-Year-Old Girl Await UK Court's Decision on Removing Child's Life Support
UK Supreme Court Building photo credit: Cary Bass-Deschenes / Flickr |
Biden DOJ Drops Suit Against Vermont Medical Center that Allegedly Forced Nurse to Participate in Abortion
August 4, 2021
New EACH Act Aims to Codify Roe v. Wade and Expand Abortion Funding
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) Senate Sponsor of the EACH Act |
Pro-Life Senators Urge Biden Administration to Withdraw Proposed Abortion-Funding Rule
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), one of the 26 pro-life senators co-authoring a letter to HHS Secretary Becerra |
August 3, 2021
House Passes Spending Bills Without Hyde Protections
August 2, 2021
Over 200 Congressmembers File Brief Supporting Mississippi in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
- Current Supreme Court precedent is inconsistent regarding whether states can place limitations on pre-viability abortions. The legislators wrote, “Some federal courts have interpreted Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) as creating a bright-line rule that forbids lawmakers from restricting previability abortions in any way, regardless of the strength of the interests at stake.” The brief notes that the Court created an exception to this rule, stating, “the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Act this Court upheld in Gonzales v. Carhart without regard for the viability line.”
- The American public supports pro-life protections. “The second-trimester regulation embodied in Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act is strongly supported by the American public,” reads the brief. This is echoed by a Marist poll conducted earlier this year. 76% of respondents to that poll wanted abortion to be either banned or limited to the first three months of pregnancy.
- States, through their legislators and electors, can be trusted to make laws governing abortion. The Congress members' brief reads, “Mississippi's case provides the Court a chance to release its vise grip on abortion politics, as Congress and the States have shown that they are ready and able to address the issue in ways that reflect Americans’ varying viewpoints and are grounded in the science of fetal development and maternal health.”
- The legistlators' brief reads that states, “have expressed the desire to protect life through a burgeoning number of laws enacted to further the States’ important interests in protecting women from dangerous late-term abortion, ending the destruction of human life based on sexism, racism, or ableism, upholding the integrity of the medical profession against the barbaric practice of dismembering human beings in the womb, and protecting preborn infants from the horrific pain of such abortions.”
- Finally, the brief argues, “It is long overdue for this Court to return lawmaking to legislators.” It then quotes a dissent by Justice Scalia in a 1988 Supreme Court Case: “The most reliable objective signs [of societal views] consist of the legislation that the society has enacted. It will rarely if ever be the case that the Members of this Court will have a better sense of the evolution in views of the American people than do their elected representatives.”
July 30, 2021
Pelosi's Archbishop Says Devout Catholics Can't Condone Abortion
Salvatore J. Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco |
“Let me repeat: no one can claim to be a devout Catholic and condone the killing of innocent human life, let alone have the government pay for it,” he told CNA. “The right to life is a fundamental -- the most fundamental -- human right, and Catholics do not oppose fundamental human rights.”
At a press conference on July 22, Pelosi said that she supported taxpayer funding of abortion because it is “an issue of health, of many women in America, especially those in lower-income situations and in different states.” She mentioned her faith during the conference as well, saying,
“as a devout Catholic and mother of five in six years, I feel that God blessed my husband and me with our beautiful family, five children in six years almost to the day, but... it’s not up to me to dictate that that’s what other people should do, and it [funding of abortion in Medicaid] is an issue of fairness and justice for poorer women in our country.”
Cordileone responded on Thursday,
“To use the smokescreen of abortion as an issue of health and fairness to poor women is the epitome of hypocrisy: what about the health of the baby being killed? What about giving poor women real choice, so they are supported in choosing life?
This would give them fairness and equality to women of means, who can afford to bring a child into the world. It is people of faith who run pro-life crisis pregnancy clinics; they are the only ones who provide poor women life-giving alternatives to having their babies killed in their wombs.”
Pro-Abortion House Members Block "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act"
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) |
July 29, 2021
National Right to Life asks Supreme Court to Value State Interests in Mississippi Abortion Case
The Supreme Court will soon consider Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which involves the abortion lobby's challenge to Mississippi's near-total ban on abortions after 15 weeks. The lower courts have ruled that state abortion bans before viability are unconstitutional. The Supreme Court will decide whether all bans on pre-viability elective abortions are unconstitutional.
National Right to Life and Louisiana Right to Life are asking the Court to make clear what the law actually is since rulings in the past have created confusion among lower courts.
Jomes Bopp, Jr., NRLC's General Counsel for the brief, said:
“Since Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has twisted the normal rules of law to protect an absolute abortion right and not given full effect to powerful state interests such as protecting preborn life and maternal health. Today, we ask the Court to reverse that tangential path, which will allow greater regulation of abortion, lead to stability in the law, and put Roe itself at issue.”
July 28, 2021
Arkansas AG Files Supreme Court Brief Defending Ban on Down Syndrome Discriminatory Abortions
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge |
WHO Updates Guidelines to Promote DIY Chemical Abortions
The new WHO guidelines promote the self-administration of injectable contraception, emergency contraception, and abortion pills—including "in countries where abortion is illegal or restricted."
The WHO has long promoted abortion across the globe and interfered with the beliefs of pro-life countries. International aid from the WHO often includes tools and drugs used during abortions.
Writing for the pro-abortion organization Women First Digital, Lilian Muchoki said that the WHO guidelines are “based on a dream that abortion will be de-medicalized, the same way that contraception and other options are de-medicalized.”
Self-managed abortions can be dangerous not only to unborn children but also to their mothers. If the mother has an undiagnosed pregnancy condition, incorrectly dates her pregnancy, or doesn't correctly follow the process of the abortion-pill regimen (which is especially possible when a doctor is not involved), she is at increased risk of life-threatening complications such as hemorrhage.
July 27, 2021
Mississippi AG Files Brief Asking Supreme Court to Overturn Roe v. Wade
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch |
Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization is the abortion lobby's challenge to a Missippi law banning most elective abortions after 15 weeks. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case this fall, and many pundits believe that this case could cause the Supreme Court to reconsider the standing precedent on abortion.
Fitch argued in her brief that the Roe and Casey decisions created “a special-rules regime for abortion jurisprudence that has left these cases out of step with other Court decisions and neutral principles of law applied by the Court.”
“As a result, state legislatures, and the people they represent, have lacked clarity in passing laws to protect legitimate public interests, and artificial guideposts have stunted important public debate on how we, as a society, care for the dignity of women and their children,” Fitch said.
“It is time for the Court to set this right and return this political debate to the political branches of government,” she wrote.
New Bipartisan Bill Introduced to End Military Policy Encouraging Abortion
The Candidates Afforded Dignity, Equality and Training Act of 2021, or CADET Act, is written to amend policies that encourage pregnant women to abort their children. The current policy at military academies is that students can't have dependents. This leaves women who become pregnant with two options: either dropping out of school or aborting their children. If a woman drops out of school rather than choosing abortion, she will be forced to repay the government for the education she received, since she will not be able to serve in the military.
The CADET Act would allow women who get pregnant to take a year off from school to give birth and recover. They will then be allowed to return and graduate a year later than planned. While the woman finishes school, another person would be named as a temporary guardian for the child.
“Under our current system, cadets who become pregnant must either sign away the rights to their child, get an abortion, pay devastating financial responsibilities, or leave the academy altogether,” Cruz said in a press release, adding,
“I am proud to introduce this crucial legislation ensuring cadets in military academies can retain legal guardianship of their children without unnecessary burdens, and most importantly, keep young military families together. The CADET Act is a commonsense step to ensure the brave young women of our Armed Forces have the right level of support to continue their academy training and go on to fulfill their future service as commissioned officers while raising their family.”