Life Advocacy Briefing

A Crack in the Wall

THE 6th CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HAS RULED that Ohio has the authority to withhold federal pass-through funds from Planned Parenthood; though Medicaid was not included in the ruling, it does affect Ohio’s administration of six other federal programs.

The decision overrides an adverse ruling by a three-judge 6th Circuit panel from last April, when Judge Helene White claimed, reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews.com, “that Planned Parenthood had a ‘due process right’ to commit abortions, and that making tax dollars contingent on not doing so violated its ‘right not to be penalized in the administration of government programs based on protected activity outside the programs.’”

Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote the majority opinion for the full 6th Circuit, handed down last Tuesday. Directly addressing Judge White’s claim, Judge Sutton wrote, reports LifeSiteNews, “‘Affiliates do not have a due process right to perform abortions. … Governments generally may do what they wish with public funds, a principle,’” Judge Sutton wrote, “‘that allows them to subsidize some organizations but not others and to condition receipt of public funds on compliance with certain obligations’ … unless it does so ‘on a basis that infringes [a recipient’s] Constitutional rights.’

“However,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “while the US Supreme Court currently claims (incorrectly) that the 14th Amendment bars states from imposing ‘undue burdens’ on abortion ‘access,’ [Judge] Sutton explained that it doesn’t follow that the abortionists have a ‘freestanding right’ to perform them. ‘Whatever constitutional status the doctor-patient relation may have as a general matter,’ Sutton quoted the Supreme Court as ruling in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, ‘in the present context it is derivative of the woman’s position’” and therefore does not require governments to facilitate abortion businesses by funding them.

Abortion for All, Even at Our Expense

IN CASE ANYONE AMONG OUR READERS HAS GIVEN EVEN A SINGLE THOUGHT to considering the Left’s “Medicare for All” (MFA) scheme, heed the words of Ilyse Hogue – but particularly heed who Ilyse Hogue is and whom she represents.

Speaking of the lead sponsor, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), on the occasion of her introduction of MFA (along with more than 100 House Democrats as co-sponsors), Ms. Hogue said, quoted by Christine Rousselle, writing for the Catholic News Agency: “‘Rep. Jayapal has been an unwavering champion for women and reproductive freedom, and we applaud her leadership today,’ NARAL Pro-Choice America president and CEO Ilyse Hogue said in a statement. ‘Rep. Jayapal’s Medicare for All proposal recognizes the simple truth,’” claimed Ms. Hogue, quoted by CNA, “‘that women will never be equal members in society until we have full access to reproductive health care. Put simply, a right is not a right if you cannot access it.’” (Translation: Y’all should be paying for our abortions, not just allowing them.)

The MFA bill, notes CNA, “would require the Hyde Amendment to be repealed,” removing the long-standing statutory bar to forcing all federal taxpayers to underwrite the businesses of the abortion cartel.

The CNA story goes on to quote a statement from Tom Shakely, chief engagement officer for Americans United for Life (AUL), in which, notes Ms. Rousselle, he “underscored the need to retain the Hyde Amendment and prevent government funds from being used for abortions. He also,” she writes, told CNA that he was concerned by the bill’s aim to ban private insurance, noting it could have serious consequences for healthcare choice and accountability.

“‘Every American of good will endorses medical care for all persons who need care,’” he said, according to CNA, “‘but Medicare for All’s regressive approach would create a single and unaccountable government monopoly on health care. … We would never want the US Postal Service to be granted a monopoly over the delivery of all goods in America. Take that principle and apply it to health care, if you’re not certain of how you feel about Medicare for All.’”

We are certain, and we’ve a hunch our readers are certain as well. If you can’t tell a book by its cover, it is nearly always appropriate to judge it by its authors.

Together for Life

TWO MAJOR PRO-LIFE MINISTRIES HAVE ANNOUNCED A JOINT EFFORT to proclaim justice for unborn children in response to recent radical bursts from the abortion cartel and its political fellow travelers. Focus on the Family and the Colson Center for Christian Worldview are inviting citizens who embrace the right to life to join them in an online petition, whose text we publish at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing, and to travel to New York’s Times Square on Saturday, May 4 for a public demonstration of Americans for Life.

The Times Square rally will feature a live 4-D ultrasound of a living unborn child, shown on a massive screen in the nation’s most celebrated marketplace and media center, just days before Americans observe Mothers Day on the calendar.

The “Declaration for Life” may be “signed” electronically via the website https://www.focusonthefamily.com/pro-life.

The Stall Cannot Stand Forever

PRO-LIFE HOUSE MEMBERS ARE CONTINUING TO PRESS House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a vote on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection bill, but the SanFrancisco Democrat is standing firm against any action which would put her radical Members on record, through their expected “no” votes, against infanticide.

Though the House Leadership’s continued silence is frustrating,it is also indicative of the power in this issue to affect votes in the 2020 elections for the US House. We hope the GOP is taking note of this not just as a legislative tool but as a key issue to be raised in House campaigns next year. Voters who are shown the contrast between candidates on such fundamental issues as immediate medical care for children born alive during attempted abortion will choose Life and pro-life candidates in overwhelming numbers, and the radical abortion advocates have demonstrated again and again in 2019 that their extremism extends now even to embracing infanticide.

In the States

• ARKANSAS’s GOVERNOR, FORMER U.S. REP. ASA HUTCHINSON (R), will soon have on his desk a bill to ban abortion in his state after an unborn child has gestated 18 weeks. Unfortunately, the bill was amended in the State Senate to allow the aborting of babies conceived in the commission of a sex crime. The Senate vote on HB-1439 as amended was 28 to 6, with little debate, reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews.com, citing the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as source. It had previously passed the Arkansas House 77 to 13.  Gov. Hutchinson has indicated he plans to sign the reform. Current state law bars abortion at 20 weeks.
• MISSISSIPPI LAWMAKERS ARE PREPARING TO SEND A ‘HEARTBEAT’ abortion bill to Gov. Phil Bryant, who has urged the legislature, reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews.com, to “‘get this bill to my desk so I can sign it.’” The legislation would ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can be as early as six weeks post-conception. The bill has passed both houses of the legislature, but the Senate version was amended in the House and has been sent back to the Senate for concurrence in the amendment; if concurrence is achieved, the bill will go to the governor. Votes in the Senate: 34 to 14; and in the House: 78 to 37. “‘The pro-life community has waited years for the courts to recognize the obvious,’” State Sen. Angela Hill (R), a leading sponsor, told LifeSiteNews, “‘that a baby with a beating heart is deserving of its life being legally protected. … I remember,’” she said, “‘how thrilled I was to first hear the heartbeats of my own children. I knew that they were unique individuals growing inside my body. I was just their shelter and their food for (nine) months.’”
• GEORGIA’s PROPOSED ‘HEARTBEAT’ BILL has passed the state House 93 to 73. The bill “makes exceptions,” notes Grace Carr for The Daily Caller, “in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. It also,” she writes, “allows for abortions in cases of rape and incest, but only if a woman files a police report.” Writes Maya Prabhu for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Debate around the proposal was contentious and personal, with at least 20 Democrats standing with their backs turned while the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Ed Stezler, introduced his legislation. ‘It shouldn’t be a partisan issue that a child in the womb should be worthy of full legal protection,’ the Acworth Republican said,” quoted in the AJC, which also reports that “a half-dozen women Democrats walked out of the chamber in protest of the vote.” Abortion advocates obviously view the Heartbeat Bill as harmful to their political and commercial health.
• A CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLYMAN named Jesse Gabriel is plowing new ground in the abortion lobby’s fight to build an even more massive cartel. He has filed AB-624 to require the listing of Planned Parenthood’s hotline telephone number on the back of the ID card for every California student aged 12 to 24, whether attending public or private school, including Christian colleges. Notes Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, “Planned Parenthood forked over $4,400 for [Rep. Gabriel’s] 2018 campaign. This isn’t about wellness,” opined Mr. Perkins. “It’s about a down payment on future contributions.” The bill is currently nestled in an Assembly committee. “Imagine the uproar,” writes Mr. Perkins in a commentary published by The Daily Signal, “if conservatives tried to put the contact information for a pregnancy care center on the back of student IDs?” What is more, the legislation reportedly would publish the Planned Parenthood number in place of the suicide hotline number currently printed on the IDs.

Stanching the Spread?

THE U.S. FOOD & DRUG ADMINISTRATION HAS PUBLICLY RELEASED warning letters the FDA has issued to two Internet websites where RU-486 is offered without prescription or supervision of any kind.

“The letters put them on notice,” notes Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews.com, “to ‘promptly cease causing the sale of unapproved new drugs and misbranded drugs to US consumers and correct all other violations of the FD&C Act’ or else face regulatory action potentially ‘including seizure or injunction, without further notice.’ The websites,” notes Mr. Freiburger, “have 15 days to confirm their compliance.”

The drugs involved in the baby killing combination, mifepristone and misoprostol, can cause serious side effects in aborting mothers, as well as the death of their developing babies. When RU-486 was approved by the FDA in the waning days of the Clinton Regime, warnings and restrictions were attached, none of which appear to be involved in the packaging or provision of the drugs at the Internet outfits Aidaccess.org and Rablon.

The FDA, under the current Administration, appears to be taking seriously the reports of 2,740 severe complications from the drug cocktail from 2000 to 2012 and the December 2017 “‘reports of 22 deaths of women associated with mifeprex since the product was approved in September 2000,’” notes the FDA, quoted by LifeSiteNews, “‘including two cases of ectopic pregnancy resulting in death and several cases of severe systemic infection (also called sepsis), including some that were fatal.’”

Meet the Survivors

March 13, 2019, BreakPoint commentary by John Stonestreet & G. Shane Morris

            A chilling quote is often attributed to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin: “One death is a tragedy. One million deaths are a statistic.” Stalin is alleged to have said this in the days leading up to one of the largest man-made disasters and mass murders in history: the 1932 Ukrainian famine.

            It may be that the quote actually dates back even earlier, to a 1916 anarchist periodical. Either way, the line captures the awful reason that mass murders like Stalin’s are so often overlooked or ignored while they’re happening. As the anarchist periodical explained, we tend to find the starvation of one child more shocking that the starvation of a million children because our minds are simply “unable to grasp” death on such a scale. “Suffering,” said the publication, “is so intimately personal a thing that it must be explained through the personal equation, if at all.”

            Anyone who wants to truly communicate the horror of killing needs to do more than cite statistics. They have to tell stories. This holds true for any atrocity, including one that has claimed more lives than even the highest estimates of Stalin’s regime.

            Princeton Professor Robert George recently shared a collection of five abortion survivors’ stories on Facebook. The stories were compiled by the pro-life website Human Defense and include detailed videos of each man or woman giving their gut-wrenching, first-hand testimonies of an ongoing, legal mass killing – and how they escaped it.

            Some of these are names you may have heard before, like Gianna Jessen, who survived a saline abortion at seven months gestation. As a result, she was born with cerebral palsy. Gianna has overcome her disability to become a powerful speaker, a household pro-life name, and one of the world’s most effective advocates for the unborn.

            Other survivors on the list you may not have heard of. Melissa Ohden survived a second-trimester abortion attempt because she was actually older than doctors thought. Ohden was subsequently adopted and only found out about the abortion as a teenager. She responded by tracking down her birth parents and forgiving them. Since then, she’s linked up with over 200 others with similar stories through her organization, Abortion Survivors Network.

            Then there’s Nik Hoot. A botched abortion that destroyed parts of both of his legs and several fingers. Nik was adopted by an Indiana family and soon learned, faster than anyone expected, how to get around on prosthetic legs. In 2013, he made it to his state high school wrestling championship and finished the season with 24 wins. He’s also played baseball, basketball and football and says he considers his life a miracle.

            But it’s more than a miracle. His life – and the life of every abortion survivor – is a profoundly powerful testimony to the humanity of the millions whose lives end when abortion succeeds. The scars and disabilities many survivors bear are a silent witness to the grisly reality of what our society calls “choice.”

            Among the miracles of these stories are how many abortion survivors make a very different choice. In story after story, the children of abortion say they’ve forgiven their birth parents – often even in person. Can you even imagine that? Well, with God, even this is possible. Many survivors of abortion are outspoken about their Christian faith, and they’ll share it with anyone who will listen.

            Come to BreakPoint.org, and I will link you to these stories of survival. I hope you’ll read all of them and watch their videos. These incredible men and women have a razor-sharp moral clarity about abortion. After all, for them abortion is not an issue. It can’t be understood merely by the scale of the numbers. Abortion is part of their biography.

            I’m convinced that if we are to see this legal atrocity end in our lifetimes, it will largely be because enough people come face-to-face with the real victims who find themselves on the other end of the so-called right to choose.

Declaration for Life

Online petition jointly crafted and sponsored by Focus on the Family and Colson Center for Christian Worldview; may be “signed” at https://www.focusonthefamily.com/pro-life

            As our nation nears the terrible milestone of 50 years of legalized abortion – an era that has robbed an estimated 60 million Americans of their very right to life – we lament the extermination of an entire generation of talent, productivity, and potential. Now we face aggressive efforts to even expand this tragic practice. This is not progressive or compassionate; it is madness. Therefore …

WE PROCLAIM that abortion at any stage of development represents the taking of a human life. Science, reason, and common sense attest to this. Because this is true, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must extend to babies in the womb just as much as to every other citizen.

WE EMBRACE the indisputable scientific reality that life in the womb is worthy of protection from the moment of conception. The same DNA and genetic markers that testify to our uniqueness at birth are also present when we are conceived. Life in the womb is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Sacred scripture and prenatal science both proclaim this.

WE DECLARE that legalized abortion is wholly incompatible with the virtues of compassion, freedom, and equality that characterize a healthy and just society. As state legislatures expand abortion up to the moment of birth and some leaders advocate outright infanticide, our culture’s decades-long embrace of legalized abortion has reached a tragic new low point.

THEREFORE, as concerned citizens, we are reinforcing our commitment to speak up on behalf of the most vulnerable among us. It is imperative that churches, individuals, and communities – people of faith and all people of goodwill – work together to end this tragedy.

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, do hereby affirm our commitment to: 1) advocate for pro-life legislation at the state level, including a ban on late-term abortions and those targeting babies on the basis of disability, sex or race; 2) promote the end of government funding of the abortion industry; 3) vote for candidates who respect the sanctity of life; 4) urge the appointment of constitutionalist judges who will protect the fundamental right to life; 5) support both women in unplanned pregnancies and their babies through the good work of Pregnancy Resource Centers; 6) encourage and promote the beauty of adoption; and 7) pray fervently for a nationwide reawakening to the value and sanctity of every human life.

            Until that day comes, we will continue to push back against the culture of death. This is the moment we unite with one voice and proclaim, “No more.”

            We are pro-life.