Life Advocacy Briefing

6th Circuit Bars Dismemberment Ban

THE BAN ON DISMEMBERMENT ABORTIONS which is moving rapidly through state legislatures across America has met rejection from the 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Cincinnati. The case is a challenge to Kentucky’s law.

Kentucky Atty. Gen. Daniel Cameron (R) expressed disappointment and vowed, reports LifeSiteNews.com reporter Calvin Freiburger, to “‘take any steps necessary to continue defending the law, which protects the unborn from a gruesome procedure.’”

The law was enacted in 2018 and disallows “a second-trimester abortion procedure infamous for dismembering babies in the womb,” notes Mr. Freiburger. US District Judge Joseph McKinley sided with the abortion industry and the ACLU in a 2019 decision which the state appealed.

“McKinley, a Bill Clinton appointee,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “based his ruling on the fact that the ban limits abortion options starting at around 14 weeks, which is well before the US Supreme Court’s ‘viability’ threshold, despite the fact that it still allows second-trimester abortions via other methods.

“Pro-abortion activists have objected to the ‘dismemberment’ label as inflammatory and misleading,” reports LifeSiteNews, “but the abortion industry itself has effectively admitted its accuracy. The National Abortion Federation’s own instructional materials,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “describe ‘grasping a fetal part,’ then ‘withdraw(ing) the forceps while gently rotating it’ to achieve ‘separation,’ and notorious late-term abortion Warren Hern has written, ‘There is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator (of D&E procedures). It is before one’s eyes. The sensation of dismemberment flows through the forceps like an electric current.’”

The LifeSiteNews report further quotes a charge by Kansans for Life executive director Kay Culp: “‘Dismemberment abortion facilitates fetal harvesting. … Clinicians experimenting on aborted baby parts don’t want their research tainted by drugs, and they want fresh organs – packed for shipping within minutes of death.’”

Backers of the now-suspended Kentucky law note, writes Mr. Freiburger, “that in 2000’s Stenberg v. Carhart” – a Supreme Court decision striking down the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which was ultimately upheld in the 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart redo – “pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens admitted that partial-birth abortion and dismemberment abortion were ‘equally gruesome,’ and that it was ‘simply irrational’ to conclude that one was ‘more akin to infanticide than the other.’”

Resisting the Trojan Horse

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TOOK ACTION at the United Nations last week to reject an attempted UN agreement on humanitarian assistance in emergencies, which would have promoted abortion, according to the Center for Family & Human Rights (C-Fam), under the guise of aiding countries responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“‘The United States cannot accept the terms “sexual and reproductive healthcare services” and “sexual and reproductive health”’” in the proposed UN agreement, reports Lisa Correnti for C-Fam.

C-Fam president Austin Ruse, a veteran pro-life advocate at the UN, applauded the US statement in the C-Fam news release: “This is a great victory for pro-lifers around the world, who are justifiably concerned that Covid funding would be used to promote abortion in humanitarian assistance. We thank the Trump Administration for taking this strong stance in favor of true humanitarian assistance and in favor of the unborn child.”

Shake-up in Iowa

NINE-TERM G.O.P. CONGRESSMAN STEVE KING LOST his party’s primary in Iowa’s 4^th District last Tuesday after some 18 months of party ostracism stemming from extremist comments which he failed adequately to disavow. His narrow win in 2018 marks his district as highly competitive for the new GOP nominee, State Senator Randy Feenstra.

Sen. Feenstra was backed by the National Right to Life Committee and claims a strong pro-life record. Here is how his campaign website defines him: “Born and raised in a strong Christian family, faith is at the center of Randy’s family, his work and his public service. Randy is a true Christian conservative and has been a leading voice defending life, including fighting to defund Planned Parenthood, sponsoring a bill that defined life at conception, and is a strong supporter of amending the Iowa Constitution to not grant the right to an abortion. … In Congress,” reads the website pledge, “he’ll fight to defund Planned Parenthood, pass the Heartbeat Bill and be a champion for the Christian conservative values that make our families and communities strong.”

His November opponent, J.D. Scholten, was the Democratic nominee in 2018 opposing Rep. King. Here is what his website says about his stand on Life issues: “As a Catholic, I have my own personal views on abortion. However, just as Prohibition failed to cure alcoholism by banning liquor, I believe a blanket ban on abortion that criminalizes women’s healthcare decisions and throws doctors into jail does not solve the problem of too many unplanned pregnancies. While the highly personal decision to terminate a pregnancy should be left to women in consultation with their doctor and spiritual advisors, we know what can actually work to reduce abortions and I believe much common ground exists on this divisive issue. In Congress, I plan on fighting for solutions that include: ensuring women have access to contraception and health care, teaching age-appropriate sex education in schools, and insisting on paid family leave, expanding adoption and foster care and better child care policies to make it easier for new parents to care for newborns. The United States also has some of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world and only in the U.S. are more American women dying of pregnancy-related complications. We should also focus on the lives of these vulnerable women and babies.”

Northwest Iowa voters will indeed have a choice in November.

U.S. Cuts Off W.H.O.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS ANNOUNCED America will no longer fund or participate in the World Health Organization. The decision appears to stem from untoward influence of WHO by the Communist Chinese government.

President Trump clearly and loudly objects to WHO’s apparent complicity with the Beijing regime in promoting worldwide spread of a deadly virus which clearly originated in Wuhan, China, while striving to limit exposure to Covid-19 within the massive Chinese mainland.

Though the WHO’s mishandling of the pandemic was the last straw, the United Nations health arm has long wallowed in controversy stemming from its complicity with the international abortion cartel. “It heavily promotes abortion and contraception throughout the world,” notes Maike Hickson for LifeSiteNews.com. “During the coronacrisis,” she writes, “the WHO declared abortion to be ‘essential,’” abetting radical governors and other abortion fellow travelers in authority over public health policy in US states and other countries.

Since the White House has said it will “divert” the some $450 million the US annually contributes to WHO, the next concern is for the Trump Administration to choose a destination for the funding which will not simply shift the subsidy to some non-Communist-connected abortion advocacy outfit, such as the celebrated Gates Foundation, which devotes much of its multi-billion-dollar international “healthcare” philanthropy to the promotion of abortion.

Score One!

THE PRO-LIFE CENTER FOR FAMILY & HUMAN RIGHTS (C-Fam) has scored a hit, it seems, in advocating for Life at the United Nations and in various international forums.

“A major alert was just issued,” reports C-Fam president Austin Ruse, “by two major pro-abortion groups that cites C-Fam as having influenced the Trump Administration in withholding funds from the World Health Organization [WHO].

“The alert was issued,” he explains, “by the International Women’s Health Coalition and a group called IPAS. Both are global radical feminist, pro-contraception, pro-abortion, anti-family, anti-Christian groups. These two groups are at the very center of the global campaign to impose abortion-on-demand on the whole world.”

Cited in the “alert” was a 2010 C-Fam report called “The World Health Organization’s Abortion Agenda” and a recent C-Fam report titled “The World Health Organization’s Abortion Overreach.”

Mr. Ruse cites the alarm raised by the two major abortion promoters as “demonstrat[ing] abundantly the effectiveness of our scholarship and our influence.” Kudos to C-Fam – and thanks!

Back from the Brink

THE TENNESSEE HOUSE VOTED last Monday to advance a bill requiring that abortion customers seeking chemical abortions be furnished information about reversing the abortion once it has begun.

The so-called “Abortion Pill Reversal” technique, notes Calvin Freiburger in a LifeSiteNews.com report, “consists of administering extra progesterone to counteract mifepristone’s effects, ideally within 24 hours of taking the abortion pill.” Mifepristone is the formal name of RU-486, the notorious French abortion pill.

The bill, which has yet to be considered by the state senate, requires “anyone dispensing abortion pills,” reports Mr. Freiburger, to “inform women of the possibility of reversal in person or by phone (depending on how the drugs are being dispensed), as well as post the information in the waiting areas of any facility that commits more than 50 abortions per year. Failure to comply,” he notes, “could result in a $10,000 civil penalty as well as a felony charge.”

The reversal technique’s “pioneers,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “credit it with helping more than 400 women save their babies since 2007.”

Such legislation becomes increasingly important as chemical abortions become more common in the face of growing pro-life legislative and judicial challenges to surgical abortion.

Reckless Substituted Judgment

THOUGH MUCH OF SOCIETY SEEMS TO REGARD the federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA) as having a regulatory function with respect to the administration of drugs, Planned Parenthood appears to be setting its own rules with respect to pushing the abortion pill, RU-486.

During the closing days of the Clinton Regime, the FDA rushed approval of the French abortion drug for marketing in the US, but in doing so, it limited dispensing the baby poison to the first ten weeks (70 days) of a baby’s development. When it comes to the drug’s “safety” for aborting mothers, Planned Parenthood seems to be pushing pills over safety.

The abortion behemoth, reports Live Action’s Carole Novielli, “has begun publicly promoting the use of the abortion pill regimen past this [allotted] time frame, up to the 11^th week of pregnancy (77 days).

“This is significant,” notes Ms. Novielli. “At 11 weeks of pregnancy, Planned Parenthood itself admits that the abortion pill fails 13% of the time – nearly double the failure rate for the abortion pill given just two weeks earlier.”

The Live Action writer goes on to explain implications of abortion pill failure: “It can either mean that the baby is still alive, or it could mean that the baby’s remains are still in the woman’s uterus and could cause an infection. In the latter case,” notes Ms. Novielli, “more pills or a follow-up surgical abortion may be required to prevent infection.

“Planned Parenthood’s flouting of FDA rules in adding an unapproved extra week for the abortion pill demonstrates a clear lack of concern for abortion clients.”

Apparently, the time frame is not the only stretch of the FDA’s RU regimen being undertaken by Planned Parenthood. Notes Ms. Novielli, “Planned Parenthood has also signaled plans to eliminate in-facility testing, such as lab work and ultrasounds, to confirm the date of a woman’s pregnancy. As Live Action News previously documented,” she writes, “the abortion industry has begun rolling out a ‘no-test’ abortion pill protocol, which was in the works for years before it was initiated under the guise of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The protocol suggests,” she warns, “that abortion providers rely only on a patient’s self-confirmation to determine pregnancy and estimated gestation age. … This shift away from accurate pregnancy dating to a system of ‘believing the woman’s best guess’ could easily result in the gestational age being inaccurate by several weeks. This … will likely lead to even higher abortion pill failure rates.”

Stretching RU Even More – Or Not!

NOT CONTENT MERELY TO STRETCH THE F.D.A.’s REGULATIONS on administration of the abortion drug, the abortion industry has sent its favorite jouster into the fray with a new lawsuit, taken into court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

It’s part of the abortion cartel’s push to use fear of the Covid pandemic to lift restrictions on use of the RU-486 killer pill.

But while the ACLU is in court trying to break down the FDA’s already insufficient limits on the administration of the drug, Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH), reports Dave Andrusko in National Right to Life News Today (NRL-NT), is leading 38 Senators and 121 Members of Congress in a letter to the FDA, which reads in part, writes Mr. Andrusko: “‘Despite claims that medication abortion is safe and easy, research proves that as many as five to seven percent of women who take abortion drugs will require follow-up surgery, and three percent could end up in the emergency room. Self-managed abortions from home are especially dangerous,’” the letter continues. “‘In fact, half of abortion providers do not consider them safe, according to a 2019 survey published in the journal Contraception. Further, medication abortion becomes even more dangerous in situations where women cannot access emergency medical care. This is especially concerning during the Covid-19 pandemic, as emergency rooms are currently being overwhelmed.’”

Mr. Andrusko further notes that National Right to Life and more than four dozen pro-life and pro-family groups have joined “in a letter sent to the US Food & Drug Administration asking the FDA to take action against the illegal sale of abortion-inducing drugs.

“‘Internet sales of mifepristone have the potential to multiply the inherent dangers of the drug combination,’” said NRL president Carol Tobias in the NRL-NT report. “‘Mifepristone [RU-486] puts at risk perfectly healthy mothers who are pregnant with perfectly healthy babies,’ said [Ms.] Tobias. ‘No woman’s life should be placed at risk because abortion activists are trying to score political points.’”

As tied down as the FDA appears to be these days, someone at the massive federal regulatory agency – or at the White House, perhaps – needs to pay attention to the corners being cut by those profiting from the poisoning of preborn boys and girls.

Appealing to the F.D.A.

Signers of Congressional RU-486 Letter to F.D.A.

            Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), organizers, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

            Co-signers: GOP Senators John Boozman & Tom Cotton/AR, Marco Rubio & Rick Scott/FL, Kelly Loeffler/GA, Mike Crapo & James Risch/ID, Mike Braun & Todd Young/IN, Joni Ernst & Charles Grassley/IA, Jerry Moran & Pat Roberts/KS, Bill Cassidy & John Kennedy/LA, Roger Wicker/MS, Roy Blunt & Josh Hawley/MO, Steve Daines/MT, Deb Fischer & Ben Sasse/NE, Thom Tillis/NC, Kevin Cramer & John Hoeven/ND, Rob Portman/OH, James Inhofe & James Lankford/OK, Lindsey Graham & Tim Scott/SC, Mike Rounds & John Thune/SD, Marsha Blackburn/TN, John Cornyn & Ted Cruz/TX, Mike Lee/UT, John Barrasso/WY.

            And GOP House Members Gary Palmer & Martha Roby/AL; Andy Biggs & Debbie Lesko/AZ; Rick Crawford & Bruce Westerman/AR; Doug LaMalfa/CA; Ken Buck & Doug Lamborn/CO; Gus Bilirakis, Neal Dunn, Matt Gaetz, Bill Posey, Ross Spano, Gregory Steube, Michael Waltz & Ted Yoho/FL; Rick Allen, Earl Carter, Doug Collins, Jody Hice, Barry Loudermilk & Austin Scott/GA; Mike Bost, Rodney Davis, Darin LaHood & John Shimkus/IL; Jim Banks, Larry Bucshon, Trey Hollingsworth, Greg Pence & Jackie Walorski/IN; Steve King/IA; Ron Estes, Roger Marshall & Steve Watkins/KS; Andy Barr, James Comer & Brett Guthrie/KY; Ralph Abraham, Garrett Graves & Mike Johnson/LA; Andy Harris/MD; Jack Bergman, Bill Huizenga & Tim Walberg/MI; Tom Emmer, Jim Hagedorn & Pete Stauber/MN; Michael Guest, Trent Kelly & Steven Palazzo/MS; Vicky Hartzler, Billy Long, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jason Smith & Ann Wagner/MO.

            Also GOP Representatives Greg Gianforte/MT; Jeff Fortenberry & Adrian Smith/NE; Chris Smith/NJ; Elise Stefanik/NY; Dan Bishop, Ted Budd, Virginia Foxx, Gregory Murphy & David Rouzer/NC; Kelly Armstrong/ND; Troy Balderson, Steve Chabot, Warren Davidson, Anthony Gonzalez, Bill Johnson, Jim Jordan, John Joyce & Brad Wenstrup/OH; Kevin Hern/OK; Fred Keller, Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler & G.T. Thompson/PA; Jeff Duncan, Ralph Norman, William Timmons & Joe Wilson/SC; Dusty Johnson/SD; Tim Burchett, David Kustoff, Phil Roe & John Rose/TN; Brian Babin, Kevin Brady, Michael Burgess, Michael Cloud, Michael Conaway, Dan Crenshaw, Bill Flores, Louis Gohmert, Kenny Marchant, Pete Olson, Chip Roy, Randy Weber & Roger Williams/TX; Rob Bishop & John Curtis/UT; Ben Cline & Morgan Griffith/VA; Jaime Herrera Beutler & Cathy McMorris Rodgers/WA; Carol Miller & Alex Mooney/WV; Mike Gallagher, Glenn Grothman & Bryan Steil/WI;  

            And Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson (MN).