Life Advocacy Briefing

Breaking

LIFE ADVOCACY’s EDITORIAL TEAM will be traveling to a conference over the next week, so we are taking a one-week break from publishing Life Advocacy Briefing. We will cherish your prayers for safe travel. See you around Memorial Day!

Florida Voters: Take Warning

A MAJOR BATTLE IS SHAPING UP for the 2024 elections in Florida. “Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion organizations,” warns Ashley Sadler for LifeSiteNews, “are helping to bankroll a multimillion-dollar ballot initiative campaign aimed at enshrining the ‘right’ to abortion up to fetal ‘viability,’ about 24 weeks’ gestation, into the Florida constitution.”

Seeming to give up abortion after viability is a concession we have not previously seen from the abortion cartel, but Florida voters must not allow themselves to be deceived that this is somehow a compromise or reasonable measure. The Florida constitution currently has no provision “guaranteeing a right” to have one’s developing child executed at any stage. Such a change would be radical and tragic, just as Florida’s laws are being reformed to welcome unborn children.

(We should note: to the degree abortion flourishes in Florida now, it is because a “privacy” clause in the state constitution was construed in a “decades-old state Supreme Court ruling,” notes Ms. Sadler, that “recognizes a ‘right to abortion.’” But that ruling is being challenged in litigation now defending Florida’s current 15-week ban, which was signed just a year ago.) “Florida’s supreme court may now be in a position to overrule its 1989 decision,” writes Ms. Sadler, “due in part to DeSantis’s conservative judicial appointments and the US Supreme Court’s June overthrow of Roe v. Wade … .”

Just weeks ago now, Ms. Sadler notes, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed legislation banning abortions after a baby’s heartbeat can be detected, a measure which national news media are characterizing as a step too far but one which appeals to the common sense of the American people – who are drawn to the detectable heartbeat as a bridge which may not be crossed by the would-be executioners of developing boys and girls.

This new pro-abortion amendment crusade begins with the collection of a requisite 891,523 valid signatures to place the question on the ballot, and Ms. Sadler notes the national campaigns director for Planned Parenthood Action Fund “told Politico … that Planned Parenthood and its partners intend to shell out millions of dollars” toward collecting those signatures. How will that money be spent? Compensating petition passers or even paying for signatures?

The chairman of Protect Human Life Florida told LifeSiteNews, quoted by Ms. Sadler, “‘The legalized killing of preborn children is … a really big business in Florida, so I would expect we’ll see [significant] contributions from corporate entities who … have a vested financial interest in abortion.’”

Florida’s pro-life voters should assume nothing but instead must begin now to prepare to defeat this ballot initiative with effective appeals based on truth.

Stateside

• MONTANA GOV. GREG GIANFORTE (R) HAS SIGNED five pro-life bills, reports Jean Mondoro for LifeSiteNews, “including provisions to restrict abortion funding and protect born-alive infants and the conscience rights of doctors who object to killing the unborn. The Infant Safety & Care Act, HB-625, requires medical professionals to take care of newborn babies who survive abortions with the same standards as those who are not victims of abortion,” notes the LifeSiteNews The second measure, HB-303, “would prevent medical professionals from being forced to participate in any medical service that goes against their conscience,” reports Ms. Mondoro. A third new law updates the state’s Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, changing the threshold from a vague reference to pain capability to a specific 24-week gestation threshold. HB-786 requires “detailed reports,” writes Ms. Mondoro, “of all medication and surgical abortions committed in the state, including records of all adverse reactions.” And HB-862 “bans the use of public funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when abortion is deemed medically ‘necessary’ to protect the life or physical health of the mother. … The slew of bills,” notes Ms. Mondoro, “comes months after a ballot measure designed to ensure medical care for babies born alive after attempted abortions was rejected by voters.” Right on, lawmakers!

• NORTH CAROLINA’s GOVERNOR, Democrat Roy Cooper, “has vowed to veto” a bill passed by the legislature early this month, reports Sarah Neely for Operation Rescue, to “roll back gestational limits to 12 weeks, with exceptions, as well as create better health standards for existing clinics. This would include,” she notes, “commonsense requirements like reporting and informed consent.” The Republican Party controls both houses of the legislature, and a campaign is mounting to override the veto of SB-20, the Care for Women, Children & Families Act.

• VERMONT GOV. PHIL SCOTT (R) ON MAY 17 SIGNED HB-89, which, notes Bridget Sielicki for Live Action, “protects chemical abortion drugs, saying, ‘reproductive healthcare services’ includes medication that was approved by the US Food & Drug Administration for termination of a pregnancy as of Jan. 1, 2023, regardless of the medication’s current FDA approval status.’ Vermont State Sen. Virginia Lyons (D) said that if the FDA is forced to withdraw its approval for mifepristone, manufacturers can no longer market the drug. ‘But production can still take place and they can be purchased for use by pharmacists or providers. So, it’s still available but what this does is, it says with or without FDA approval, this drug is available to folks in the state of Vermont. And that’s a big deal,’ Lyons said.” [Note her use of the term “folks” instead of “women.” Abortion is no longer being promoted as a benefit for women, among advocates of gender distortion. Just ask Leanna Wen, who was fired as head of Planned Parenthood for refusal to change her language from “pregnant women” to “pregnant persons”!]

• WASHINGTON STATE PRECEDED VERMONT with a new law signed April 27 by Gov. Jay Inslee (D) to authorize the State Corrections Dept., reports Bridget Sielicki for Live Action, “to acquire, sell, deliver, distribute and dispense mifepristone,” despite pending litigation challenging US marketing approval of mifepristone (RU-486) by the FDA. Early in May, notes Ms. Sielicki, “the state stockpiled 30,000 doses of mifepristone as an ‘insurance policy’ should the FDA overturn its approval of the drug.” The new law, she reports, “allows the DOC to sell abortion pills to abortion facilities, whether or not the patient [sic] is in its custody.”

Standing Up

May 10, 2023, The Washington Stand report by Ben Johnson

             Family Research Council President Tony Perkins has shared the details about his meeting with former President Donald Trump amid media reports the Republican front-runner had backed away from the pro-life issue ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

             Last month, a Trump campaign spokesman told The Washington Post that Trump believes abortion “should be decided at the state level,” touching off media speculation that the candidate would take no federal action to protect Life during a second term. Perkins met the 45^th President alongside Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser … .

             “The purpose of the meeting was simply to encourage the President to stay strong on the issue of the sanctity of human life. And I can report that the former President, Donald Trump, has not changed his position,” Perkins told listeners of “Washington Watch” on Tuesday.

             “There was some mischaracterizations of some things that he had said,” Perkins added. The four leaders found common ground talking about the Republican Party platform, which Perkins has helped craft for the last four election cycles.

             “We support state and federal efforts against the cruelest forms of abortion,” says the most recent Republican Party platform. The GOP’s guiding document also calls on Congress to pass a plethora of pro-life legislation ending abortions based on a child’s sex or disability diagnosis, as well as dismemberment abortions, and to adopt a Human Life Amendment to the US Constitution “to make clear that the 14^th Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”

             The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision does not preclude abortion-related legislation at the federal level. “It’s a states issue, but it’s also a federal issue,” Perkins explained. “The Court said this is in the hands of elected officials, not judges.”

             “I talked about that with [Mr. Trump]. And I said, ‘Look, that’s the standard. It was there before Roe was overturned. Why should it change?’” said Perkins. “When a baby feels pain and is sucking his thumb in his mother’s womb, that ought to be a place we can draw the line. We’ve got 67% of Americans who agree that abortion across the board should be outlawed after that.”

             “I’m pleased to say that the president understood that,” Perkins told his audience.

             Trump remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination, holding a commanding a 29-point lead over his nearest challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), according to the RealClear Politics average of national polls.

             Perkins also noted that Trump was not the only – or even the first – Presidential hopeful he had briefed on pro-life, pro-family issues. “I’ve sat down with a couple of them already. This will be my third” candidate consultation meeting, Perkins revealed. “I will meet with any Presidential candidate to have a discussion about the issues, and where they should be on these issues to connect with what we call SAGE Cons,” a term coined by pollster George Barna, meaning Spiritually Active Governance-Engaged Conservatives.

             Perkins, a former elected official, made clear [that] meeting with Trump did not constitute an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race. “I will not be endorsing a Presidential candidate in the primary. I will be sitting down, talking with any and all” candidates who “want to talk about the issues that matter,” he said, specifying the sanctity of human life, human sexuality, tax policy that impacts the family and religious freedom – “anything that touches the family.”

             Democrats eked out a better-than-expected midterm election in 2022 in part by flooding the zone with abortion-related messaging portraying Republicans as extreme – largely without GOP pushback. That makes it pivotal for would-be officeholders to grasp the issue thoroughly, said FRC Action Vice President Brent Keilen. “We have to remember that the science hasn’t changed. And so the policies that the Republican Party has stood for over the last decades that were based and are based [on] the science, should not change, either.”

             While some in the GOP have advocated a states-only response to abortion, Democratic leaders have already tried to impose their permissive views on the entire nation. “Republicans are pushing for this to go back to the states,” said Keilen. “That is not at all what the Democrats are pushing for.”

             The House of Representatives, then controlled by Democrats, passed the “Women’s Health Protection Act” by a near party-line vote last July. The bill would strike down most of the 1,381 pro-life protections enacted by state legislatures between 1973 and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, including:

• prohibiting sex-selective abortions;
• barring many abortions after viability;
• preventing abortions on babies 20 weeks or older, who are capable of feeling pain;
• disallowing abortions undertaken without parental consent or notification;
• prohibiting telemedicine abortion drug prescriptions, which involve no in-person medical examination;
• banning unlicensed individuals from carrying out abortions;
• allowing pregnant mothers to receive scientifically accurate information about their babies’ development, or to see an ultrasound or hear the child’s fetal heartbeat; and
• allowing pro-life medical professionals the right to refuse to participate in an abortion.

             The Democratic Party platform calls for taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand without restriction until the moment of birth as a matter of “health, rights and justice.” Adopting that position has forced the US to join a handful of rogue human rights abusers that place no federal limit on abortion, including North Korea and China.  Pres. Trump, who famously campaigned to “Make America Great Again,” “believes such a position is unworthy of a great nation and believes the American people will rebel against such a radical position,” Dannenfelser said.

             “That is the standard position of the Democrat Party that is only supported by about one in five Americans, so you have 80% of the country, according to recent polling, that opposes” Democrat orthodoxy, said Keilen. Only 19% of Americans believe abortion should be permitted “in all cases, with no exceptions,” according to a 2022 Pew Research Center poll. “That doesn’t even get into the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which we have not been able to get passed, which would afford those protections to a baby who survives a failed abortion,” Keilen added. “If you message on this well, the vast majority of Americans are with you on this issue,” said Keilen.

             Eyeing a massive wedge issue, GOP leaders have encouraged Republican candidates to attack Democratic extremism. “We are the pro-life, pro-woman, pro-family party, and we can win on abortion. But that means putting Democrats on the defense,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Ronna McDaniel after the initial Trump brouhaha.

             Days later, Trump attacked “the extreme late-term abortionists in the Democrat Party, who believe in abortion-on-demand in the ninth month of pregnancy, and even executing babies after birth.” That rhetoric echoes Trump’s successful strategy in the 2016 presidential campaign. During the third and final debate on Oct. 19, Trump said under Hillary Clinton’s policy, “you can take the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day, and that’s not acceptable.”

             That off-the-cuff remark became a revelation to pro-life leaders. “At that moment, I said, ‘He’s going to win this. He is going to secure the votes of pro-life voters.’ And he did,” said Perkins. “What’s more than that is: He actually followed through. … His policies were unprecedented when it came to advancing human life.” Trump named three of the six Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade last June, supported the Hyde Amendment and signed numerous measures partially defunding abortion businesses such as Planned Parenthood.

             After the latest media flare-up, Trump signaled his openness to signing the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, introduced by Graham, which protects babies from abortion after 15 weeks. “We’ll get something done” in a second term, Trump promised.

             “Going forward, I think he’s going to be very clear on this. That’s my hope. That’s what I believe to be the case,” Perkins said. “And we will not back up from this issue one bit,” Perkins assured his listeners. Effective promotion of pro-life protections, at any level of government, “will be the benchmark of how we evaluate conservative Bible-based candidates for office.”

[Life Advocacy Briefing editor’s note: We are concerned that federal legislation must be constructed in such a way as to not override or interfere in any way with states’ initiatives, which in many places are stronger. We believe Congress should first focus on clearly federal-jurisdiction questions, putting emphasis on such proposals the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, which protects minors and their families in states where lawmakers have been able to criminalize abortion but where abortion-abettors transport pregnant girls across state lines to abortion havens – without their parents’ knowledge or consent. We believe Congress should focus, too, on reversing efforts of the Biden Regime to force federal taxpayers to subsidize abortion and abortionists, that Congress must restore  pro-life protections for taxpayers under the Hyde Amendment and similar long-standing appropriations riders and slap back such Biden policies as instituting abortion as a “healthcare service” at VA facilities. While the GOP examines its own navel through the Dobbs ruling lens, the Biden Regime is infecting every agency of the federal government with its pro-abortion policy virus.]

Tell the Truth!

May 9, 2023, BreakPoint commentary by John Stonestreet & Jared Eckert

             While some states have advanced significant restrictions on surgical abortions since Roe was reversed last summer, the push to expand chemical abortion is stronger than ever. In the past decade, the number of chemical abortions has skyrocketed by 120%. Estimates are that chemical abortions account for over 50% of all abortions.

             Proponents argue that chemical abortions are safe, but nothing could be further from the truth. When used for an abortion, the drug mifepristone starves a child of nutrients by blocking progesterone, the primary hormone that attaches the embryonic child to the uterine lining, which is the baby’s primary source of nutrition.

             Chemical abortion also harms mothers. One study based on robust data from Finland’s healthcare system found that one in five women had an adverse event after mifepristone. It also found that the rates of complication were four times higher with chemical abortion than surgical abortion.

             If we are to love those in unexpected pregnancies, we must tell the truth about chemical abortions.