Life Advocacy Briefing

Abortion Industry Exposed in California Courtroom

THE PRELIMINARY HEARING IN THE CRIMINAL TRIAL against pro-life heroes David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt began last week, reports Lianne Laurence for LifeSiteNews.com, “with a retired late-term abortionist describing the unborn baby as a ‘tough little object’ in an undercover video shown in court on the first day.”

The showing of videos recorded by the undercover journalists is needful for the prosecution in the SanFrancisco courtroom of Judge Christopher Hite. Ironically, it is also an unveiling of the detestable practices of the abortion industry and its complicity in fetal tissue harvesting. “The video’s screening in a SanFrancisco court is the first time the footage has been seen publicly,” explains Ms. Laurence, “because the undercover videos are under a federal injunction.” The investigators could not release them, under orders from SanFrancisco-based federal Judge William Orrick, but they must be shown in the state court as evidence in the state’s criminal case, where the two pro-life heroes are, notes Ms. Laurence, “facing 15 felony charges for ‘intentionally and without the consent of all parties’ recording ‘confidential’ communications,” even though the California law provides exemptions for undercover journalists.

According to defense lawyer Peter Breen, as he told LifeSiteNews, “The case is ‘historic.’ It’s the ‘first time in California history’ an attorney general has prosecuted under the illegal taping law and is ‘actually bringing that claim against an undercover journalist.’”

The video shown last Wednesday was recorded by Mr. Daleiden at a 2014 abortion trade show put on by the National Abortion Federation, and in that video, reports Ms. Laurence, “The abortionist, referred to in court as ‘Doe 3’ [protecting the identity of the accusers while prosecuting the whistleblowers] also admitted in the video … that she routinely ‘didged’ or killed the baby in utero with digoxin, because that gave her and the mother more ‘peace of mind.’ It also,” notes Ms. Laurence, “prevented the ‘delivery of a live fetus,’ which is ‘the biggest disaster, and it never goes away,’ Doe 3 said,” disclosing how the abortion industry gets around federal law requiring medical personnel to provide ordinary care in the event an abortion target survives.

“The shocking recordings,” notes Ms. Laurence, “which capture Planned Parenthood executives haggling over the prices of baby body parts, picking through bloodied arms and legs of aborted babies in a pie tray and discussing how to alter abortion methods to obtain better body parts for sale, spurred a Congressional investigation and calls for the abortion giant to be stripped of its federal tax dollars. They also spurred the abortion industry and allies to attack Daleiden and Merritt, who are being sued by Planned Parenthood as well as facing criminal charges.

“Moreover, Daleiden lost a bid in June,” reports Ms. Laurence, “to overturn a $195,000 fine for contempt that District Judge William Orrick III levied against him in 2017. He has since launched a GoFundMe page to pay the penalty.” At our press time, the donation total had reached $132,999 of the $195,000 goal. (https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-david-daleiden-fight-195000-video-fine)

Warning from Justice Thomas

THE MISSOURI STANDS FOR THE UNBORN ACT HAS GONE INTO LAW, enjoined only in the provisions criminalizing abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. (We publish a commentary about this judicial ruling, as well as our own editor’s note, at the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing.)

In effect in Missouri now is therefore statutory law prohibiting abortions, notes Kaylee McGhee in a Washington Examiner commentary, “based on the physical characteristics of an infant. … The law’s anti-discrimination provision[s] are still in place,” she reports, “protecting the lives of unborn infants whose imperfections could factor into a mother’s decision to obtain an abortion.

“Never has this been more important,” opines the writer. “After the Supreme Court refused to take up a case about a similar anti-discrimination abortion ban in Indiana last week, Justice Clarence Thomas warned that sex-specific, race-based and disability-targeted abortions could move the US one step closer to returning to the eugenics doctrine it has long rejected.

“‘Enshrining a Constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates,’” wrote Justice Thomas, reported by Ms. McGhee, “‘would constitutionalize the views of the 20^th-century eugenics movement. … In other contexts, the Court has been zealous in vindicating the rights of people even potentially subjected to race, sex and disability discrimination.’ Laws like Missouri’s, Indiana’s and ‘other laws like it promote a state’s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics,’ he continued.

“Even the most vocal pro-choice advocates should agree with [Justice] Thomas,” writes Ms. McGhee. “But they won’t, for the same reason pro-choice politicians in Congress have refused to touch a bill that would protect the lives of infants born alive after botched abortions. Infanticide is already illegal, they argued, as is eugenics – even as some in their ranks (Gov. Ralph Northam [D-VA], specifically) talk up infanticide as no big deal.

“Our culture’s desensitization to abortion and its lack of respect for life, love and family,” opines Ms. McGhee, “should force us to question whether these crimes really are impossible [to enact and enforce] in the US. This is especially true as we see the Left enter a new stage of head-in-the-sand denial regarding the historical connection between overt racism and pro-abortion advocacy. Laws can be overturned, the culture can change and evil can return. And it will if we let it.”

Perspective

AUG. 28 WAS NOTED BY MANY AS THE ANNIVERSARY of the venerated “I Have a Dream” speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial. LiveAction’s Carole Novielli reminds us, “On this day in 1963, approximately 250,000 people gathered in Washington, DC, to listen” to the speech, having marched with Dr. King to appeal to the nation for justice.

“Tragically, today,” she writes, “approximately that same number of black Americans are killed by legal abortion every year.

“LiveAction News previously noted that, in 2015, although blacks made up just 12% of the US population, they accounted for 36% of reported abortions,” writes Ms. Novielli. “Depending on the source of statistics used, this means that an estimated 229,740 (CDC/2015) to 259,336 (Guttmacher/2014) died from abortion in just one year.

“Multiply this by 46 years of legalized abortion,” notes LiveAction, “and it appears to be a terrible act of black genocide.”

As disturbing as that death toll is, it is not surprising, since the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was an overt racist and eugenicist, and her board adopted strategies targeting black Americans. One of those strategies – siting abortuaries in or adjacent to minority communities – is evident to this day. Is there any doubt, then, why America’s abortion statistics are so racially skewed?

Unsettling Contrast

HOW IRONIC for America to have to look at South Africa – just three decades after the huge African nation emerged from international pariah-hood – as more respectful than America in the embrace of human life.

For starters, a 1996 statute in South Africa outlaws abortions after 12 weeks of a baby’s development, and in the cases of rape, incest and financial hardship, still outlaws abortions after 20 weeks. An imperfect law, to be sure, but superior to the wild-west abortion climate established by the US Supreme Court since 1973.

But aside from the law, South African culture appears to be even less hospitable to abortion. Research by the Guttmacher-Lancet Commission in Johannesburg last year found, reports Catholic News Agency (CNA), citing Health E-News as source, “that out of the 8,000 medical clinics in South Africa, about seven percent performed abortions.” And the manager of Doctors Without Borders’ Choice of Termination of Pregnancy in Rustenburg [South Africa] said, according to CNA, “it is hard to find clinics willing to perform abortions or doctors willing to give referrals.”

The CNA story quotes a nurse who trains doctors on abortions, arguing “that conscientious objection is a problem. [Aww.] ‘You’ll find an operations manager who says, “We won’t perform it [an abortion] because it’s against my religious beliefs,”’[nurse] Ranape said, calling for restrictions on conscientious objection.

“However, surveys show,” notes CNA, “that the general population in the country is strongly opposed to abortion. The South African Social Attitudes Survey, conducted 2003-2006,” reports CNA, “found that nine out of ten adults in South Africa believed abortion to be wrong in times of financial dilemma, and three-quarters said abortion was still immoral if the child was to be born with a disability.”

Americans simply do not grasp the degree to which the abortion culture here clashes with the culture in the rest of the world, where nearly all countries outlaw at least most of the abortions perpetrated here. In so many respects, America is seen around the world as the “shining city on a hill” of which President Reagan spoke so glowingly. But not when it comes to our legal system’s treatment of Life itself, which viciously undercuts the very principle of our nation’s fundamental charter.

In the States

• WASHINGTON STATE HAS JOINED the State of Maine and Planned Parenthood in withdrawing from the federal Title X (Ten) family planning program in protest over the Trump Administration’s exclusion of abortionists from the program’s grantees, claiming the federal government is forcing the state out of the Title X program.

In the Courts

• U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE HOWARD SACHS ISSUED A TEMPORARY INJUNCTION in late August against Missouri’s new Heartbeat Abortion Ban, a day before the Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act was slated to take effect. The order did not affect the now-effective enactment of provisions of the law which bar abortions committed because of a baby’s race, sex or diagnosis with Down Syndrome.

• THE LEFTISH ATTORNEYS GENERAL OF 14 STATES and the District of Columbia – led by the State of Illinois – have chimed in together on a federal lawsuit challenging Indiana’s enforcement of its abortuary regulatory law, seeking to force the state to renew the license of the South Bend shop of the notorious Whole Women’s Health. The Dept. of Health turned down the outfit’s license renewal application, reports Laura Nicole for Live Action, “due to several serious problems, including failure to disclose information related to additional abortion facilities in its chain, failure ‘to meet the requirement that the Applicant is of reputable and responsible character,’ and evidence uncovered by the Dept. of Health that Whole Woman’s Health provided ‘inaccurate statements or information.’” The abortuary is currently operating without a license, by permission of a federal judge. The Live Action report quotes former Illinois State Representative Peter Breen, vice president of the Thomas More Society pro-bono pro-life law group: “‘Illinois is an aberration in the Midwest. Not content with setting itself up to be America’s “abortion destination,” its attorney general has now led a group of east and west coast states in attacking our neighbors in Indiana for their attempt to safeguard their women and children.’” The states which have joined Illinois and DC in attacking Indiana’s sovereignty are California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington State.

Enforcing Protections Already in Law

Aug. 28, 2019, Report by Family Research Council legislative affairs aide Connor Semelsberger

            The Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS) announced today that they are issuing a violation notice to the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) because they forced a nurse to participate in an abortion despite a conscience objection.

            In 2017, UVMMC (located in Burlington, Vermont) began performing abortions on site without notifying their employees. A nurse had expressed objection to assisting in abortions for many years and was even included on a list of staff with objections. However, UVMMC purposefully assigned the nurse to assist in an abortion despite her objection to the horrific procedure. The nurse did not know that the procedure was an abortion until the nurse walked into the operating room and the abortionist said, “Don’t hate me.” The nurse then objected to assisting in the abortion. There were other staff on site who could have assisted with the abortion, but UVMMC forced the nurse to participate in the abortion or be subject to discipline that could include loss of licensure. In the end, the nurse decided to participate over fear of harsh retaliation by the health center.

            Choosing between your sincerely held religious or moral beliefs and your career is a decision that no health professional should have to make. When someone is pressured to violate their conscience or lose their livelihood, it leaves the healthcare provider in a situation that creates great emotional and spiritual turmoil. Even though abortion has been legal in America for over 40 years, our federal laws have fortunately protected the conscience rights of healthcare providers. In the 1970s, the Church Amendments were enacted to protect the conscience rights of individuals and entities that object to performing or assisting in the performance of abortion or sterilization if it would be contrary to the providers’ religious or moral convictions.

            On May 9, 2018, the nurse from Vermont filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at HHS. HHS responded by fulfilling their duties to enforce the Church Amendments and launched an investigation into the complaint, contacting UVMMC to seek cooperation, but the hospital refused to conform its policies to the law and would not produce witnesses to be interviewed about this incident. Now UVMMC has 30 days to notify HHS that they will change their current policies that force staff to participate in abortions and take steps to remedy the effects of their past actions. If they do not comply in this timeframe, they could be barred from the $1.6 million in federal funding they received.

            This is now the third conscience complaint that OCR has investigated since Pres. Trump took office. The other complaints dealt with the states of California and Hawaii forcing pregnancy resource centers to post materials that advertise for abortion. Because of action by OCR, both complaints have been resolved. The enforcement of these conscience protections is yet another example of how the Trump Administration has followed through in protecting life, conscience and religious liberty. These enforcement actions should encourage healthcare providers who feel like their employer is coercing them to participate in an abortion to file a complaint with OCR, for as we see above, the Trump Administration will certainly enforce our conscience laws and defend their rights.

Has ‘Heartbeat’ Caused Cartel to Stumble?

Aug. 30, 2019, Commentary by National Right to Life News Today reporter Dave Andrusko

            On Wednesday NRL News Today discussed a surprise editorial in the very pro-abortion Kansas City Star which ever so gently wondered aloud whether it was okay to abort a child for eugenic reasons. The newspaper was prodded to attention by Judge Howard Sachs’s Aug. 28 decision which, while invalidating a ban on abortions performed at or after eight weeks of pregnancy, did not ban enforcement of Missouri’s ban on abortions for the reasons of race, sex or that the unborn child may have Down syndrome. Two things need to be added.

            First, pro-abortion sites, such as Rewire News appear to have caught on late. “This week, a federal court blocked Missouri’s multi-week gestational ban,” wrote Jessica Mason Picklo and Imani Gandy. “But did you know that another restriction banning abortions based on the race, sex or Down syndrome diagnosis of a fetus was allowed to take effect?”

            These are the kinds of “feminists” who can live with a legal regime that allows babies to be killed because they are the “wrong” sex, or would end the life of a preborn baby because he or she won’t be “perfect.”

            Second, as Missouri Right to Life thoughtfully commented, beyond upholding the state’s ban on eugenic abortions, there was a lot of HB-126 that Judge Sachs did not sack.

• An increase in tax credit to 70% of the donation [to pregnancy resource centers] and removes the state limit on tax credits.

• A required increase in the malpractice insurance for those performing or inducing abortion, bringing it in line with medical standards.

• A requirement that abortion or family planning facilities, referring a woman to an out-of-state abortion facility, give that woman Missouri’s printed informed consent information.

• The ban on abortion when Roe v. Wade is overturned.

            These provisions were never challenged by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood and therefore never came before Judge Sachs for a ruling. …

[Life Advocacy Briefing editor’s note: Having observed for decades the speed with which the abortion cartel rushes to court to seek orders invalidating any and every pro-life statute enacted by state legislatures, we find remarkable the fact that so many provisions of Missouri’s new law have been allowed to stand as a consequence of the abortion industry and its fellow travelers in the ACLU not taking the trouble to challenge them at the same time the usual plaintiffs took Missouri’s Heartbeat Abortion Ban provisions to court. Though disagreements persist within the pro-life movement over whether Heartbeat bills ought to be pursued, it occurs to us that Missouri’s abortion plaintiffs heartily fear Heartbeat, certainly more than they fear the other provisions. Heartbeat bills, then, may at the least provide useful cover for some useful advances in laws undermining the abortion industry.