Life Advocacy Briefing

Father Sues for Aborted Baby

AT LONG LAST, A GOVERNMENT ENTITY IN THE UNITED STATES HAS AFFIRMED (even if inadvertently)a father’s right to intervene in the abortion of his child.

Though God Himself put fathers in charge of protecting their families, the father’s role in defending his child against an abortionist has not before – to our knowledge – been acknowledged during the abortion war kicked off by the Supreme Court’s destructive 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton edicts.

But a probate judge in Madison County, Alabama, last Tuesday “formally recogniz[ed] Ryan Magers’ child as a legal person,” reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews.com, “allowing [Mr. Magers’] case against [an] abortion center … to proceed.

“Last month,” writes Mr. Freiburger, Mr. “Magers filed a suit against the Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives (AWC) abortion facility, seeking damages for the 2017 abortion of his and his girlfriend’s six-week-old child, dubbed Baby Roe.”

The suit cites the recently ratified Alabama state constitutional amendment which declares the “‘public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children,’” reports LifeSiteNews. “Three rulings over the past decade, Personhood Alabama notes,” reports Mr. Freiburger, “‘involved wrongful death suits and interpreted the word “child” in the Wrongful Death Act to include unborn children as well as born children.’ On Tuesday,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “Madison County Probate Judge Frank Barger recognized Baby Roe as a person with legal rights, WAAY reports, allowing [Mr.] Magers to represent his child’s estate.

“‘We have already had a victory, and it was the first one of its kind, ever,’ [Mr.] Magers’ attorney Brent Helms said,” in the LifeSiteNews report. “‘This is the first estate that I’m aware of that has ever been opened for an aborted baby.’”

Abortion advocates reportedly expressed shock that the lawsuit had advanced at all. Fathers matter after all, and so do their voiceless children.

Costly ‘Choice’

THE U.S. DEPT. of HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES HAS FILED A ‘FINAL RULE’ in the Federal Register, set to take effect in early May, to exclude abortion shops from federal funding under the Title X (Ten) “Family Planning” program.

Though it falls short of excluding Planned Parenthood from all sources of federal funding, the new rule should cost the abortion goliath about $60 million annually. Planned Parenthood has already dubbed the sensible regulation a “gag rule,” but the proposed rule does not direct the abortion outfit about what it can and cannot say; it simply says that outfits which commit, refer for or advocate for abortion are disqualified from taxpayer largesse under Title X. It also makes clear that a Title X grantee cannot co-locate with an abortion shop. Certainly that excludes Planned Parenthood, but that’s the operator’s choice.

California and Oregon have, of course, filed suit against the rule in litigation which is expected to go through the infamous 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Some 20 other states have joined in the suit. States administer Title X grants, but the cash comes from federal taxpayers.

In the States

• ILLINOIS’s RADICAL ABORTION PROPOSALS HAVE STIRRED a good deal of response from the voting public, prompting three Democratic lawmakers to withdraw as co-sponsors of HB-2495, which last Wednesday was sent to a subcommittee of the House Committee on Human Services. The 118-page “Reproductive Health Act” has more than 2,000 registered opponents under a rule that permits citizens to file “witness slips” through the legislature’s myilga.gov Internet website. And phone calls to lawmakers are coming in via the state capitol switchboard at 1-217/782-2000. The companion bill in the Senate has been assigned to the Executive Committee but has not yet been posted for hearing, as of this writing. The companion bills to repeal the state’s Parental Notice Act appear to be lagging behind, with fewer co-sponsors; HB-2467 was sent to the same subcommittee last Wednesday as HB-2495, and SB-1594 had yet to be assigned to a hearing committee. Readers are encouraged to track these bills via www.ilga.gov and to provide input to their own state lawmakers and to members of the assigned committees. The pro-life community in Illinois is unified against these measures and have jointly called for a rally in Springfield on Wednesday, March 20.
• NEW MEXICO STATE LAWMAKERS HAVE KILLED two pro-life bills which would have required an abortionist to secure written consent from at least one parent or guardian before committing an abortion on a minor, banned abortion of babies who have gestated at least 20 weeks and provided conscience protections for medical professionals refusing to commit the deed. The bills died in committee on a 3-to-2 party-line vote. The radical abortion proposal which repeals existing, unenforceable abortion curbs and strips medical professionals of their conscience rights is on the move in New Mexico, passing the state House 40-29 and advanced through Senate committee. The state’s new governor, former US Rep. Michelle Lujan-Grisham (D), has pledged to sign the radical measure.
• THE MISSOURI HOUSE HAS PASSED “overwhelmingly,” according to Calvin Freiburger of LifeSiteNews.com, “what has been called the strongest pro-life bill in America.” Combining “almost every pro-life legislative proposal in the current session,” the House voted 117-39 “after ‘two days of circuitous, occasionally bizarre, often deeply personal and impassioned debate,’” writes Mr. Freiburger, quoting The Kansas City Star’s characterization. HB-126 combines the Heartbeat Bill with a requirement for two-parent notification, notes LifeSiteNews, “and adds a ban on abortions motivated by a baby’s race, sex or Down syndrome, as well as ‘trigger’ language that would automatically ban abortion once Roe v. Wade is overturned.” Democrats in the State Senate plan, writes Mr. Freiburger, “to mount a filibuster in hopes of derailing” the measure. Republicans have a 24-to-10 majority in the Senate. The state’s governor, Mike Parson (R), has said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.
• GEORGIA LAWMAKERS HAVE FILED two significant pro-life bills, the Heartbeat Bill (HB-481) and a measure that would ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned; this second bill (HB-546) unfortunately would not protect babies conceived in a sex crime or those who, reports LifeSiteNews.com, “[have] been determined to have a ‘profound and irredeemable’ condition that is supposedly ‘incompatible’ with sustained life after birth.” The trigger would not be automatic but would take effect via a joint legislative resolution. Gov. Brian Kemp (R) reportedly supports both bills.
• THE ARKANSAS HOUSE advanced to the State Senate a bill to protect unborn babies from abortion at age 18 gestational weeks. The late February vote was 77 to 13. Republicans control the State Senate by 26 to 9.
• KENTUCKY REPRESENTATIVES HAVE VOTED 67 to 25 to advance a bill to the State Senate which would ban abortions committed because of disability, race or sex. And the House is expected soon to take up the Senate-passed Heartbeat Bill, which cleared House committee in late February.
• MONTANA’s HOUSE-PASSED BILL TO BAN EUTHANASIA – long needed in response to a Montana court ruling – is pending in the State Senate Judiciary Committee after passing the House 53 to 46.
• UTAH’s HOUSE HAS PASSED AN 18-WEEK ABORTION BAN, which will now be taken up by the State Senate, where it has been referred to the Judiciary Committee. The House vote was 57 to 15. Another pro-life bill is on its way to the desk of Gov. Gary Herbert (R), after the Senate passed the Down syndrome baby protection bill 20 to 6; the bill originated in the House, which passed it 54 to 15.

Sex Ed Big Issue in Colorado

STUDENTS FOR LIFE OF AMERICA STAGED A SIGNIFICANT RALLY at the Colorado State Capitol in late February to protest HB-1032, which, according to SLA, “would essentially allow groups like Planned Parenthood to write sex ed curriculum in the state. The language in the legislation is also overly vague,” charges SLA, “which should worry Colorado parents.

“The bill clarifies content requirements for public schools that offer comprehensive human sexuality education and prohibits instruction from explicitly or implicitly teaching or endorsing religious ideology or sectarian tenets or doctrines,” reports SLA, “using shame-based or stigmatizing language or instructional tools, employing gender norms or gender stereotypes or excluding the relational or sexual experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individuals.”

SLA called together a prayer rally, which drew “about 300 people …, both community members and students,” reports the national campus-based group. “The Pro-Life Generation knows that Planned Parenthood sex ed does not belong in our schools. Using terms like ‘medically accurate’ and ‘age appropriate,’ Planned Parenthood and their allies have taught things like: teaching kids about BDSM, including using whips, chains and gagging; teaching 11-year-olds about anal and oral sex. Recently,” SLA notes, “Planned Parenthood also introduced a chatbot that allows kids to go behind their parents’ back to ask about sex and abortion.”

The bill passed the Colorado House 39 to 23 in mid-February and is now in the Senate Committee on Appropriations after consideration by the Senate Committee on Health & Human Services.

March for Life Speech Transcript

Speech by Ben Shapiro opening the March for Life Rally at the National Mall in Washington, Jan. 18, 2019, transcribed by Life Advocacy Briefing

            What an amazing event, what an amazing showing for Life. Thank you all for being here. America’s story is an incredible story; it’s the story of a shining ideal pursued over the centuries, extended to the full range and scope of humanity. America was founded on the promise of God-given rights, chief among them the rights to life and liberty. While America may have imperfectly fulfilled that promise, we always move forward toward the perfection of that promise. Over time, those unjustly omitted from the founding bargain were admitted and embraced the American family group. Only one group was left behind. That group had once been the most prized possession of a great and moral people – its children, the souls entrusted to us by the Creator, given to us with care and love. We built a country for our children; we built our lives for our children, and then something happened. We as a country decided to erase them.

            We decided that the present was more important than the future. We decided that convenience was more important than basic decency. We decided that we could safely blot out millions of souls who could not protect themselves, still forever voices that could not speak. We dehumanized the most human, the most innocent among us. We lied to ourselves, and then we built walls around that lie. We lied about the science. We falsified anti-scientific arguments about the origin of life. We pretended that human beings were not actually human beings. We pretended that human beings with DNA different from their fathers’ and their mothers’, human beings producing their own red blood cells by twelve weeks, their own fingerprints by week eight, their own developing eyes, legs and hands by week five, their own forming nervous systems by week three. We pretended that these were not human beings, human lives at all, but disposable balls of meat.

            We fought to avoid looking directly at the ugly truth of what we had done. We created euphemisms – termination of pregnancy, abortion, choice.

            What we were really engaging in was the mass killing of the unborn, of course. Millions of children who would never be held, who would never open their eyes, who would never see the sun rise, who would never become parents and then grandparents. The dismemberment of babies in the womb, the torture of tiny babies.

            And we told ourselves that we are virtuous for our lie. We reversed good and evil. We told ourselves that the killing had to continue, because if it didn’t, we’d be disadvantaging women or raising crime rates or imposing economic hardship. We told young women that abortion wasn’t merely a choice – it was a valuable, worthwhile choice. We told them to shout their abortion, to be proud of participating in the killing of the unborn.

            We excised those who stood for Life. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York said just a few years ago that those who were right to life “had no place in the State of New York.” Just this week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that pro-lifers were not in line with “where we are as a society.” Well, you know what? Maybe they’re right. Maybe we today here are not in line with society. We do live in a time when the Democratic Party has embraced abortion as a sacrament and, by the way, a time when many in the Republican Party spent years pledging to defund Planned Parenthood and then didn’t do it when they were given the power to do so. We live in a time when pro-life nations around the world are loosening their restrictions on the killing of the unborn. So perhaps we are out of line with the rest of society. To which I say: Good! So were the abolitionists, so were the civil rights marchers, so were the martyrs in Rome and the Jews in Egypt. Righteousness doesn’t have to be popular, it just has to be righteous.

            And so we march. We march for those who can’t. The media will ignore us, because they always do. They’ll cover other marches – you know – the five people who show up tomorrow.* They’ll cover the marches they prefer politically. They bet that the tens of thousands of us who brave the cold every year to stand here for the souls of the future America will be forgotten.

            We will not be forgotten. Our children, slaughtered over the decades, remember. They look at us from above, and they know that they meant something, that they do mean something so long as we keep them in our minds and in our hearts. Our children standing here with us – the ones who are here today – they will remember, too. They will remember, and they will march until they no longer have to march. Our children yet unborn will remember, and they will thank us in their prayers.

            And most of all, God – the God Who built and preserves nations, Who brings life and maintains it, Who stands with those who suffer most at the hands of evil – He will remember us, too. He will remember America, and He will bless her. God will bless us because we are the guardians of His most precious creation.

            We stand between America and the darkness, and we will march until that darkness is banished forever and all our children can stand together in the sunlight. Thank you so much.

*Mr. Shapiro refers to the media-celebrated ‘Women’s March,’ which was held the next day.

Shining Light on Radicalism

March 4, 2019, Washington Update commentary by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins

            The Senate may have already killed its Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection bill, but the issue is far from dead. In a new op-ed from Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), Republicans make it clear: the fight over infanticide is just beginning.

            “Liberal states and politicians argue that unwanted babies who survive abortions – including late-term abortions – should not receive the highest level of medical care and would simply be ‘made comfortable’ before they are murdered. While horrific, this isn’t far-fetched. Twenty-four states do not have explicit protections for live births,’ the duo points out. ‘It is appalling, and Congress must act. That is why we support the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. It should be common sense in a just and moral society.”

            Democrats don’t want a vote on infanticide, they explain, “because they know the rest of the country doesn’t agree with them – 77% of Americans support protections for abortion survivors and 62% oppose late-term abortion.” But there’s a way around Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) “iron grip” in the House, the men write. It’s called the discharge petition. “If a majority of the Members of the Congress sign the discharge petition on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, the Speaker will be forced to bring it to the floor for a vote. Whip Scalise has begun the process of a discharge petition in the House, which will become eligible for signatures early in April.”

            That’s a public process, thanks to work that Sen. Inhofe did in the 1990s. Every signature will be out in the open, in plain view of voters. Do your Representatives just give lip service to ending infanticide – or do they mean it? Americans are about to find out. …