Life Advocacy Briefing

Ready

SOME 13 STATES HAD PREPARED for the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ruling by enacting “trigger” laws, worded to take effect upon the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Such legislation has become popular during the past two years, as the appointment by then-Pres. Trump of three constitutionalists to the high court had forecast the end of legalized-abortion-by-fiat in America.

The trigger laws vary, notes David McLoone for LifeSiteNews, “either completely banning or severely limiting access to abortion within 30 days of the fall of Roe.” Some of them are immediate.

The 13 states, reports Mr. McLoone, are Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. (We find it interesting that Mississippi, whose 15-week abortion ban was the basis for the Dobbs litigation, went ahead and enacted a trigger law while its own appeal of a lesser compromise was pending.)

“Missouri would be the first state to protect life in the womb by banning abortion,” notes Mr. McLoone, “just minutes after the Court’s decision on Dobbs had been handed down.” Missouri’s law would take effect – provided the Supreme Court overturned Roe – as soon as the state’s attorney general certified the reform. Atty. Gen. Eric Schmitt put his pen to the declaration, reports Mr. McLoone, “just minutes after the Court’s decision on Dobbs had been handed down.”

Nor did it take long for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) to release a statement, reports LifeSiteNews, “announcing that ‘as of today [June 24], all abortions are illegal in South Dakota. … Every abortion always had two victims: the unborn child and the mother,’” she said. “‘Today’s decision will save unborn lives in South Dakota, but there is more work to do,’ [Gov.] Noem said. ‘We must do what we can to help mothers in crisis know that there are options and resources available for them. Together,’” she said, “‘we will ensure that abortion is not only illegal in South Dakota – it is unthinkable.’”

The attorney general of Arkansas, Leslie Rutledge, triggered her state’s abortion ban on Friday afternoon, reports LifeSiteNews, “stating that ‘the only time that an abortion is legal in Arkansas is to save the life of the mother. … Roe was wrong on that day [in 1973], and it has been wrong every day since,’ she added.”

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron issued an advisory opinion on June 24, noting, reports Mr. McLoone, “that the 2019 Kentucky Human Life Protection Act ‘prohibits abortion in most circumstances. Generally speaking,’” he wrote, “‘it states that no person may knowingly cause or aid in “the termination of the life of an unborn human being. … The prohibition on performing abortions in [Kentucky law] became effective,’” he wrote, quoted by LifeSiteNews, “‘on June 24, 2022, the date on which the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs.’”

Moving Ahead in Ohio

OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL DAVE YOST (R) “filed for dismissal of a three-year injunction,” reports LifeSiteNews, which “blocked enactment” of Ohio’s Heartbeat Law, “banning abortions after detection of fetal cardiac activity, typically after six-weeks’ gestation.”

Ohio’s Governor, Mike DeWine (R), “confirmed Friday” that the law was now in effect and signed an executive order “directing the Ohio Dept. of Health to adopt emergency rules implementing the state’s newly enacted anti-abortion legislatio­­­n.”

Planned Parenthood, of course, rushed into court, demanding that the state supreme court take their case to block the law’s enforcement.

Long-Dormant Bans Arising?

THOUGH THEY HAD NOT SET UP TRIGGER LAWS to take effect upon the overturning of Roe v. Wade, five states have long-dormant laws on the books which have the same effect.

Alabama, Arizona, Michigan, West Virginia and Wisconsin, reports David McLoone for LifeSiteNews, though not having trigger laws in place, “are able to outlaw abortion immediately due to historic bans on the barbaric practice, previously superseded by Roe, now coming back into force.”

Illinois long had such a law but repealed it in 2019, when the radicals in charge of the state government began their own twisted march toward the Dobbs ruling.

A majority of public officials in Alabama, Arizona and West Virginia appear to be content with their reinstated authority to execute their own laws, but the governors of Michigan and Wisconsin – both radical Democrats – are loudly resisting.

Wisconsin’s Governor, Tony Evers, responded to the potential of the Dobbs ruling by declaring he would “‘do everything’ in his power,” writes Mr. McLoone, “to overturn Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban, which has [now] come into effect following the toppling of Roe.”

In mid-June, according to Cassy Fiano-Chesser, reporting for Live Action, “all three Planned Parenthood facilities in Wisconsin … temporarily stopped scheduling abortions in anticipation of” the Dobbs decision. Their last scheduled abortions were to be on June 25, which turned out to be one day after the illegality of abortion was restored in Wisconsin via the Dobbs ruling. 

“Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan announced,” reports LifeSiteNews, “that she would ‘fight like hell’ to stop the state’s 1931 abortion ban from being re-enacted, as it is currently under temporary injunction.” The law is still on the books and does not need to be re-enacted if the order by a court of claims judge – who has a history of involvement with plaintiff Planned Parenthood but refused to recuse herself – is overturned by a higher court. The GOP-dominated state legislature last week secured the right to act in defense of the law in subsequent litigation. The state’s attorney general is a radical who has said she will do nothing to defend it.

The States & the Law, Leading Up to Dobbs

• LOUISIANA John Bel Edwards (D) signed two new pro-life laws just days before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling triggered their effect. One adds criminal penalties to the state’s previously adopted “if-Roe-is-overturned” trigger law, and the other makes sending abortion pills through the mail illegal. The amendment to the trigger law clarified Louisiana’s position that the new little life begins at implantation rather than at fertilization, creating a loophole for “emergency contraception.”

• IOWA’s supreme court, just in time for the Dobbs ruling, reversed its own four-year-old finding on June 17 that there is “no fundamental right to abortion in the state constitution,” reports Cassy Fiano-Chesser for Live Action. “The Iowa decision,” reports the Associated Press via CBS News, “came after the state appealed a lower court ruling in 2020,” which struck down the state’s 24-hour waiting period, “cit[ing] the state high court’s 2018 decision ruling that the choice to have an abortion was a constitutional right in Iowa. … The state supreme court [in June] returned the waiting-period case to district court.”

• PENNSYLVANIA lawmakers are considering a state constitutional amendment – which would be subject to voter approval – to establish “no right to taxpayer funding of abortion,” reports Maria Gallagher for Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, “or so-called right to abortion under the Pennsylvania constitution. The amendment must pass both the Pennsylvania Senate and the Pennsylvania House in two consecutive sessions before it can be placed on the statewide ballot … .” Taking the constitutional amendment route bypasses the governor, currently a fierce abortion advocate, Tom Wolf, and submits the decision to the will of the voters. It also secures the reform in a more sustained format than is afforded by statutory law.

• VIRGINIA Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has “add[ed] the Hyde Amendment preventing taxpayer funding of abortions beyond those required under the federal law to this year’s state budget,” reports National Right to Life News. (The Hyde Amendment in its current form permits charging taxpayers for the pre-birth killing of babies conceived during a sex crime. That exception was not in the original “Hyde” but was added in FY 1978 as a compromise to preserve its basic protection. Since it has always served as an appropriations bill rider and has never been codified into statutory law, it is subject to such compromises and, in the current regime, is continually at risk. Should Congress refuse to maintain “Hyde” in the Medicaid appropriation, the Virginia protection would fall as well. For now, the Youngkin action is a blessing for Virginians.)

States Ask Atty. General to Investigate Threats to Pro-Life Groups

OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL DAVID YOST (R) HAS LED 18 of his fellow attorneys general in sending a letter to the Dept. of Justice calling on the Biden Regime to pay attention “to the ‘recent spate of terroristic threats and acts directed at pro-life organizations around the country,’” reports Ashley Sadler for LifeSiteNews.

The letter was addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and was sent “just days ahead of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.”

The letter “noted,” writes Ms. Sadler, “that pro-abortion violence targeting pro-life centers and churches have amped up after the leak of a draft opinion” authored by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito early in May. “The letter observed,” reports LifeSiteNews, “that [there] have been at least 20 attacks on pro-life centers or offices since the draft opinion was leaked.” And it “highlighted [the] militant pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge as one of the prior perpetrators of pro-abortion violence. The group has taken credit,” writes Ms. Sadler, “for pro-abortion vandalism and firebombings across the country and recently declared ‘open season’ on pro-life organizations.”

The letter urged that “‘Jane’s Revenge offers an obvious starting point,’” and urged further investigations of “more pro-abortion extremists,” notes Ms. Sadler.

AG Garland does not appear yet to have replied to the plea of the states’ chief law enforcement officers but has released his own letter, following the Dobbs ruling, “decr[ying] the Court’s elimination of what he termed ‘an essential component of women’s liberty.’ [Mr.] Garland,” reports Ms. Sadler, “said the ‘Dept. of Justice will use every tool at our disposal to protect reproductive freedom.’” Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has “add[ed] the Hyde Amendment preventing taxpayer funding of abortions beyond those required under the federal law to this year’s state budget,” reports National Right to Life News. (The Hyde Amendment in its current form permits charging taxpayers for the pre-birth killing of babies conceived during a sex crime. That exception was not in the original “Hyde” but was added in FY 1978 as a compromise to preserve its basic protection. Since it has always served as an appropriations bill rider and has never been codified into statutory law, it is subject to such compromises and, in the current regime, is continually at risk. Should Congress refuse to maintain “Hyde” in the Medicaid appropriation, the Virginia protection would fall as well. For now, the Youngkin action is a blessing for Virginians.)

Don’t Think It’s Over!

JUST BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT CLOSED THE BOOK on Roe v. Wade, the American Medical Assn. announced, reports Cassy Fiano-Chesser for Live Action, “it will do all it can to protect abortion, labeling protections for preborn human beings a ‘violation of human rights.’” Actually, abortion itself is a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, to which medical doctors are expected to subscribe. And abortion is emphatically not health care!

The AMA declared that “pro-life protections implemented by state governments,” writes Mrs. Chesser, are “‘a violation of human rights.’”

That drivel needs to be confronted by pro-life communicators. Abortion is not health care, and protecting developing babies is an obligation – and should be a blessing – of the medical profession.

But, notes Live Action, “the AMA has long advocated for legal abortion, even to extreme lengths. It has attacked pro-life pregnancy centers and the Trump-era Protect Life Rule, which required Title X [Ten] recipients to fiscally and physically separate their abortion business from their family planning services. They also sued North Dakota for requiring abortionists to simply state the reality of what abortion does: ‘The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.’” That truth, to be communicated to vulnerable, abortion-seeking mothers in North Dakota, was too much for the bottom feeders within the medical “profession.”

“‘The AMA has launched into pro-abortion advocacy, abandoning all scientific reason,’” said Donna Harrison, CEO of the American Assn. of Pro-life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, quoted by Live Action. “Biology has for the last 200 years clearly stated that a new mammalian life begins at sperm-egg union. Humans are mammals, and a complete, separate, unique human being is present in the womb of women who are pregnant. That is scientific fact,’ [Ms.] Harrison said” in the Live Action report, “adding, ‘By denying scientific reality, the AMA has launched into the realm of lying in order to promote abortion. The AMA has shamed its membership by such blind advocacy.’”

Remembering our Roots

In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.

             When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. —

             We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —

             That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —

             That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —

             Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. …

             We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. —

             And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Reactions from the US Senate

June 24, 2022, LifeSiteNews report by Matt Lamb

             Republican Senators cheered the Supreme Court of the United States ruling today that reversed Roe v. Wade.

             Missouri’s Josh Hawley, whose wife assisted on the case as an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, called it a “momentous day.” “This is a momentous day in America, when efforts of generations of modern-day abolitionists comes to fruition,” [Sen.] Hawley tweeted. “One of the most unjust decisions in American history has been overturned. One of those modern-day abolitionists is my wife, Erin, who served as counsel to Mississippi on this case and helped write the briefs that prevailed at the Supreme Court,” he tweeted. “She is an amazing woman, and this is an amazing victory for life.”

             “The Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case, reversing Roe v. Wade, is nothing short of a massive victory for Life, and it will save the lives of millions of innocent babies,” Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted. The Texas Republican called Roe “one of the most egregious departures from the Constitution and legal precedent the United States has ever seen, and one that has resulted in the deaths of 63 million American children.”

             “Having worked alongside Tennesseans to protect the innocent lives of unborn children for years, I applaud today’s Supreme Court ruling,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee tweeted.

             Arkansas’s Tom Cotton called Roe a “tragic mistake” and thanked pro-life activists for their work to reverse it. “The Supreme Court has finally corrected this mistake and I highly commend the millions of Americans who toiled for years to achieve this great victory for unborn life and self-government.”

             Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida praised the ruling and released his plans for what he wants to happen next to support families. “Today the Supreme Court correctly returned the power to regulate abortion to the states,” he tweeted. “I will soon introduce a proposal to support mothers and their babies so that every child has a real opportunity to pursue the promise of America.”

             Moderate South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham called Roe “one of the largest power grabs in the history of the Supreme Court” and tweeted he is glad the issue of abortion will now be returned to the states.

             Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said SCOTUS “corrected a terrible legal and moral error. … Millions of Americans have spent half a century praying, marching and working toward today’s historic victories for the rule of law and for innocent life,” the Kentucky Republican stated. “I have been proud to stand with them throughout our long journey, and I share their joy today.”