Life Advocacy Briefing

Let Us Pray

WE OPEN THIS WEEK’s LIFE ADVOCACY BRIEFING with an invitation to our readers: Please join us in praying “for the peace of Jerusalem” and for the Lord’s intervention in protecting our own country from the forces of evil here.

Go, Texas!

THE FIGURES ARE NOW IN. The Texas abortion rate has dropped to near zero in the wake of serious legislation aimed at stemming the tide.

During January-May, 2023, just 22 abortions were reported as having been committed in the state of Texas, the second most populous state in America.

The state’s version of the Heartbeat Act, introduced in 2021 as Senate Bill 8, bans abortion after detection of a heartbeat in a developing baby, basically after about six weeks of gestation. It was enacted before the overturn of Roe v. Wade and uses a unique approach; instead of imposing criminal penalties, the law authorizes civil lawsuits against abortionists by private individuals – for a minimum of $10,000 in statutory damages per abortion, according to the Wikipedia report, plus court costs and attorneys’ fees.

We invite our readers to pause and contemplate the consequences for so-called doctors who must explain to malpractice insurance carriers why their liability exposure has suddenly exploded. No wonder abortuaries all over Texas folded in 2021. No wonder the incidence of abortions in the state has fallen so precipitously.

Of the 22 reported for the first five months of this year, according to Matt Lamb of LifeSiteNews, “one was a ‘suction curettage,’ 19 were so-called ‘medical abortions’ – the term favored by the abortion industry for chemical abortion drugs – and two were ‘dilation and evacuation’ abortions, also known as ‘dismemberment’ abortions.”

Time for Ohio Pro-Life Citizens to Engage

EARLY VOTING HAS BEGUN in the run-up to the Nov. 7 statewide referendum in Ohio, where abortion advocates are seeking to add a confusing, contorted amendment to their state constitution to guarantee a “right” to procure the abortion killing of developing human babies.

According to a legal analysis released by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R), the proposed amendment, reports Calvin Freiburger in LifeSiteNews, would “enshrin[e] a ‘right’ to effectively unlimited abortion [and] would go far beyond the Roe v. Wade status quo and block prohibitions on partial-birth and dismemberment abortions, allow abortionists to target disabled babies and end parental consent requirements.”

The entire analysis can be obtained via the Internet at https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/SpecialPages/FINAL-ISSUE-1-ANALYSIS.aspx.

“The analysis provides a list of current Ohio laws that the amendment could jeopardize,” notes Mr. Freiburger, “including its heartbeat-based six-week abortion ban, ban on abortions sought specifically to exterminate a child diagnosed with Down syndrome, ban on second-trimester dilation & evacuation (‘dismemberment’) abortion methods, 20-week ban based on fetal pain, mandatory 24-hour waiting period and informed-consent standards, parental consent laws, ban on post-viability abortions, parental consent requirement, abortion pill safety regulations, restrictions on taxpayer funding of abortion, contraception and fertility procedures; and parental involvement requirements for minors’ contraception, sterilization and gender ‘transition’ decisions.”

The abortion cartel is pouring millions of dollars into advertising throughout Ohio to mislead voters about the purposes and implications of Proposal 1. It is critical that pro-life citizens raise the subject with neighbors and other contacts, armed with the information from the Yost memorandum to prevent friends from being deceived about the consequences of a vote cementing the abortion cartel’s deadly enterprise into the state constitution. And with early voting having begun, there is no time to waste.

“‘So many Ohioans think that if Issue 1 successfully passes that it will return Ohio to where the abortion and pro-life limitations were prior to Roe being overturned,” said national March for Life president Jeanne Mancini,” quoted by Mr. Freiburger. “‘That’s not true. This will go so much farther than Roe. In fact, overnight, Ohio, which has been a traditionally a very pro-life state, will become one of the most pro-abortion states in the country, if not the most pro-abortion state.’”

Competing Amendments in Florida?

EFFORTS ARE UNDERWAY IN FLORIDA to gather signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to secure legalization of abortion, on the one hand, and to establish the right to life of developing babies, on the other.

Statutory law in Florida currently bans “most abortions after six weeks’ gestation,” notes Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews. Enforcement of the “heartbeat” law “is contingent,” he writes, “on the Florida Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of the state’s earlier-established 15-week ban,” currently being litigated.

It was enactment of the 15-week ban, observes Mr. Freiburger, which prompted “a coalition of left-wing and pro-abortion groups called Floridians Protecting Freedom,” to come together to shelter the abortion cartel with a proposed constitutional amendment being circulated now for posting on the ballot in November, 2024.

That same ballot is target for a group calling itself “Protect Human Life Florida,” reports Mr. Freiburger, which is circulating a petition to put before voters “another state constitutional amendment that would establish the ‘right to life of the preborn individual’ may ‘not be infringed at any stage of development.’”

The state’s pro-life attorney general, Ashley Moody, has filed a petition with the state supreme court to block the abortion-endorsing amendment proposal from the ballot, “arguing its language,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “deceives voters as to what they would actually be establishing.” The state’s highest court oversees proposed constitutional amendments before they appear on the ballot.

Though the amendment language authorizes abortion “before viability,” it does not, explains the attorney general in the LifeSiteNews report, define viability.  Atty. Gen. Moody is quoted calling the ballot proposition “‘one of the worst I have seen.’ The attorney general explains,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “that the amendment does not define its legal standard of viability, which can mean ‘whether a pregnancy is expected to continue developing normally through delivery,’ which doctors can determine ‘usually around about 12 weeks’ or mean ‘whether a baby can survive outside of the uterus, which currently is around 21 to 25 weeks of pregnancy. The two time periods, depending on your definition of viability,’” said Atty. Gen. Moody, quoted by LifeSiteNews, “‘are starkly different, and the procedures performed to abort a baby’s life at either time period are dissimilar.’

“‘When it comes to viability, even the pro-choice-aligned American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists,’” Miss Moody points out, “‘notes the two medical definitions and urges that “the concept of viability of [an unborn baby] is frequently misrepresented or misinterpreted based on ideological principles.”’” In other words, according to the interests of the abortionist defining the term.

The attorney general asserts, reports Mr. Freiburger, “‘This initiative’s sponsor chose to utilize that frequently misrepresented and misinterpreted term. That choice was not a mistake.’”

Marching for Life

A STATE-FOCUSED MARCH FOR LIFE will occupy the streets of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital today, Oct. 16, with an 11 a.m. rally.

The march is one of a series being promoted by the March for Life organization via its Internet website, www.marchforlife.org. Next up after Pennsylvania is a march on Lansing, the state capital of Michigan, on Nov. 8.

Marches for Life were held on Oct. 6 in Bismarck, capital of North Dakota, and in Columbus, Ohio.

The march in North Dakota was first organized in January, 2021, by the University of Mary in Bismarck, “when their students,” writes Elliana Doll for LifeSiteNews, “were unable to attend the national March in Washington, DC, due to Covid restrictions. It has grown extensively since then and is attended by students from the University of Mary and several local Catholic high schools,” she notes, “as well as by members of the community.” It was moved to October this year “so that it does not coincide with the national March and is instead during Respect Life month,” writes Ms. Doll, who, notes LifeSiteNews, “is an 18-year-old from Stillwater, Minnesota, … currently studying English at the University of Mary in Bismarck.”

You Can’t Make This Up

Oct. 9, 2023, LifeSiteNews report by Emily Mangiaracina

             Vice Pres. Kamala Harris said Friday that protecting the lives of babies conceived from rape is “immoral.” Harris used the exceptional case of rape, which precedes only about one percent of abortions, to argue for the legalized killing of the unborn during the fall Democratic National Committee (DNC) meeting in St. Louis.

             Referring to pro-life state laws enacted after Dobbs v. Jackson, Harris said, “On this point about ‘no exception,’ the policy proposal is essentially that after someone has survived a crime of violence to their body, a violation of their body, that they cannot have the authority to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral.” [Life Advocacy Briefing editor:  Note the awkward, unnatural sex-neutral pronoun use.]

             Harris’s euphemistic language describing abortion as a decision about the mother’s “body” ignores the reality of abortion as a lethal act of violence upon the physically, genetically distinct body of her unborn baby.

             Despite the common idea among pro-abortion advocates that abortion is a preferable or even necessary response to rape, post-abortive rape survivors have often testified that their abortions only compounded their trauma, while rape survivors who gave birth to their children have testified that their children brought them healing. The pro-life group Save the 1 gathers the stories of such mothers, as well as those of children conceived by rape, to show that such children are overwhelmingly considered a blessing to rape victims.

             One such mother, Jennifer Christie, shared at a March for Life, “People will tell you that a raped woman who conceives will feel rage and anger and disgust towards her baby, and I’ve spoken to hundreds and hundreds of women, and that is just not true.”

             Harris suggested Friday that the belief that abortion is wrong should not have any bearing on laws protecting the lives of innocent unborn children, in line with abortion advocates’ common arbitrary legal distinction between the personhood of born and unborn human lives.

             The vice president said that Americans “appreciate that on this issue, one does not have to abandon their faith, or deeply held beliefs, to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body.”

             … Harris … has a history of radical pro-abortion support. As a senator, she voted against protecting abortion-surviving babies from infanticide. During her own Presidential run, Harris proposed a plan under which states with a “pattern of violating Roe v. Wade” would not be able to enforce any new duly enacted pro-life measure “until [the Justice Dept.] determines it comports with the standards laid out by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, as applied in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt and the Women’s Health Protection Act.” Those conditions would destroy states’ ability to enact even the mildest of abortion restrictions.

             Harris has bragged about forcing religiously owned companies and pro-life pregnancy centers to violate their consciences, and earlier this year, she conspicuously left out the Declaration of Independence’s listed unalienable right to “life” when quoting the document.

This Round Goes to Goliath

Oct. 7, 2023, report from Thomas Brejcha for the Thomas More Society legal defense firm

             This week, the US Supreme Court unfortunately declined to review our two appeals for David Daleiden’s cases against Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation. Several months ago, we filed two petitions to the high court, asking it to review the financially ruinous, First Amendment-violating civil judgments against David.

             There’s no beating around the bush: We are very disappointed the Supreme Court would not hear these critical appeals and restore justice for David.

             Since David released his stomach-churning videos in 2015, exposing the abortion industry’s illegal and barbaric trafficking of aborted baby body parts, Planned Parenthood and NAF have relentlessly targeted him with every weapon at their disposal.

             This news means that David may face crippling financial penalties, to the tune of more than $20 million – all because he brought to light the sickening truths abut the abortion industry’s harvesting and sale of aborted baby body parts.

             The lower court’s judgment in favor of the National Abortion Federation also placed a “gag order” on David, prohibiting him from publishing more than 500 hours of unreleased undercover footage he gathered during his investigation.

             In the Planned Parenthood case, we have immediately asked the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals to modify its opinion or issue a stay (place a pause on the proceedings) in this civil appeal. This is because we believe a recent watershed ruling – also in the 9^th Circuit – directly affects David’s case.

             You see, in July, the 9^th Circuit issued a landmark decision striking down the state of Oregon’s undercover reporting statute. Project Veritas, also known for its important anti-corruption undercover journalism, challenged Oregon’s state law in federal court. The 9^th Circuit ruled that Oregon’s state law prohibiting certain undercover recordings was unconstitutional. The Court made clear that undercover journalism is protected by the First Amendment.

             That’s where David’s case comes in: California’s undercover reporting law is closely analogous to Oregon’s – and that’s the law he was charged with violating in his state criminal case.

             We believe that this recent ruling – by the same court that ruled against David, nonetheless – also bears on a fundamental issue in David’s defense against Planned Parenthood’s crippling civil lawsuit. If California’s state recording law – very similar to Oregon’s unconstitutional law – is also found to violate the 1^st Amendment, then most of the criminal charges David is facing would be dismissed.

             Although the Supreme Court will not hear his appeals, nobody can change these hard truths: The abortionists never sued David for defamation, and the abortion industry never argued that what David uncovered and published was false. In fact, they even admitted that what was said by the abortion industry executives on David’s videos was true.

             Everything on David’s videos was the cold, hard reality – a true display of the inhumane violence that the abortion industry engages in daily.

             David’s critical undercover investigation sparked criminal prosecution, wide-ranging public debate and Congressional hearings – all of which continue to be in the news and influence the abortion debate to this very day.

             David sacrificed everything to bring the truth to light. He deserves our praise and thanks, not bankruptcy proceedings – let alone imprisonment in San Quentin penitentiary.

             As we await further developments, please keep David in your prayers.