Life Advocacy Briefing

Question of the Week

ARE MEDICAL STUDENTS STILL EXPECTED to take the Hippocratic Oath – to “do no harm” – upon graduation?

Pardon Them, Please!

THE THOMAS MORE SOCIETY, the prominent Chicago-based pro-life pro-bono law firm, has submitted a formal request to the incoming Trump Administration seeking Presidential pardons for 21 pro-life advocates who, the TMS news release states, “have been unjustly prosecuted, convicted and in several cases, imprisoned, by the Biden Dept. of Justice. In their letter submitted to Pres. Donald J. Trump, TMS attorneys ‘urge that these pro-life Americans are deserving of full and unconditional pardons.’”

The request came in the form of 21 individual pardon requests “outlining the specific facts of each case,” reads the release, “their upstanding personal and moral character, and the reasons why Pres. Trump should grant a Presidential pardon.” Also included is a “cover letter outlining the legal rationale for the requested pardons,” as well as an explanation of “how the Biden DOJ routinely and unconstitutionally weaponized the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and ‘Conspiracy Against Rights’ statute against peaceful pro-life advocates.”

Here are the names of the prisoners of conscience for whom the Thomas More attorneys are seeking pardons: Joan Bell, Coleman Boyd, Joel Curry, Jonathan Darnel, Eva Edl, Chester Gallagher, William Goodman, Dennis Green, Lauren Handy, Paulette Harlow, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, Jean Marshall, Fr. Fidelis Moscinski, Justin Phillips, Paul Place, Paul Vaughn, Beverly Beatty Williams, Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow and James Zastrow.

“On at least three occasions,” reads the TMS release, “Pres. Trump has publicly signaled his intent to pardon the pro-life advocates wrongly prosecuted during the Biden Administration. In September 2023, on the heels of the FACE Act convictions in Washington, DC, Pres. Trump stated he would review the ‘cases of every political prisoner who’s been unjustly persecuted by the Biden Administration.’ In February 2024, in a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump referenced the ‘pro-life activists … convicted on outrageous charges’ in the Nashville FACE Act trial and pledged to review those convictions following his return to office. In June 2024, in a speech for the Faith & Freedom Coalition, Trump reiterated his earlier statements and specifically referenced 76-year-old Paulette Harlow in his remarks.” As noted above, Ms. Harlow is among the 21 for whom pardon requests have now been officially filed.

The #1 Priority

Jan. 13, 2025, commentary by US Sen. Josh Hawley for World magazine

             Inauguration Day is at hand. A new political era awaits. And on Day One, Pres. Donald Trump can set the moral tone for his second term with the stroke of a pen. He can restore the full suite of pro-life policies that his own Dept. of Health & Human Services [HHS] developed during his first term. No priority should be – could be – higher than protecting America’s unborn children.

             Most everyone recognizes Pres. Trump’s marquee pro-life accomplishment: the Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs decision in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade with the votes of the justices Trump appointed and returned the abortion question to the people. But that wasn’t his only pro-life achievement – far from it. The first Trump Administration advanced a series of life-protecting rules and regulations through federal agencies that saved untold lives.

             Many Americans don’t realize just how consequential agency actions truly are. These rules set the direction of policy for the whole of the government – and federal agencies influence policy in the states, too, through extensive grant programs and other means. Because Congress regularly delegates massive authority to federal agencies, the rules and regulations they promulgate carry the force of law. For those reasons, directing the federal bureaucracy is one of the President’s greatest powers. President Trump should use that power to protect life, just as he did in his first term. In the first Trump Administration, HHS advanced a broad slate of pro-life measures critical to defending the unborn.

             First, it correctly determined that federal funding for family planning through the Title X [Ten] grant program shouldn’t mean federal funding for abortion providers. That’s because abortion doesn’t build families – it destroys them.

             Second, HHS made pregnancy resource centers eligible to receive federal funding through grants designed for the support of needy families. That’s because these centers – which provide ultrasounds, diapers, counseling and a host of other resources to expectant mothers, often at no cost – serve as critical lifelines for struggling families across the nation.

             Third, Pres. Trump implemented the Mexico City Policy that blocked federal funding to international aid groups that promote abortions. That’s because American foreign aid should be aimed at nurturing life, not ending it. American taxpayers should never be forced to subsidize abortions in other countries.

             … And all that is just the tip of the iceberg. The list of Pres. Trump’s pro-life accomplishments at HHS goes on and on – from restricting the use of human fetal tissue obtained from abortions to defending the value of unborn human life on the international stage.

             Predictably, these achievements came under immediate attack once Joe Biden arrived in the Oval Office. Pro-abortion activists in the Biden Administration spent years trying to dismantle Pres. Trump’s work at HHS. In the hands of Pres. Biden, HHS tried to force federal grant recipients to make referrals for abortions, cut off funding for pregnancy resource centers and use American tax dollars to help pay for abortions overseas.

             After the Dobbs ruling, the Biden Administration’s abortion extremism went into overdrive. Biden’s FBI and Dept. of Justice carried out raids on the homes of pro-life Americans and jailed peaceful protesters at abortion facilities. And when pregnancy resource centers were vandalized and firebombed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Justice Dept. mostly stood idly by. Not content with persecuting pro-life Americans, the Biden Administration attempted to undermine Dobbs. The Supreme Court’s decision committed the question of abortion policy to the voters and their elected representatives, just as the Constitution requires. But the Biden Administration promptly enacted new federal rules permitting chemical abortion drugs to be mailed into pro-life states, effectively rendering state restrictions on abortion – adopted by voters and elected legislatures – worthless.

             Members of Team Biden knew exactly what they were doing. More than 70% of abortions in the United States are chemical abortions performed by taking medication. By making those drugs available through the mail regardless of state law, the Biden Administration imposed its abortion-on-demand agenda on every voter and state, putting women’s health at risk to do it. Before Biden, the Food & Drug Administration had long required abortion drugs to be dispensed only in person and under medical supervision. The Biden Administration gutted those rules.

             Thankfully, it’s a new day. And President Trump has the power to start protecting life again – immediately. He should use that power boldly to protect those who most need it: the innocent.

The Biden Legacy

AN ANALYSIS OF BIDEN-REGIME SPENDING, reported by Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews, shows the outgoing Administration “gave more than $1.23 billion of American taxpayers’ money to pro-abortion groups over the course of his one-term presidency.” The analysis was published by Restoration of America, a non-profit founded by 2014 US Senate candidate Doug Truax and based in Downers Grove, Illinois.

That total is actually an underestimate, since it does not include, notes Mr. Freiburger, “the hundreds of millions [Planned Parenthood] receives yearly in the form of federal and state reimbursements for its so-called ‘health services.’” Restoration of America does show Biden Regime taxpayer expenditures to Planned Parenthood totaling $46 million over and above those “hundreds of millions.”

“Of particular note,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “is the $563 million the Administration gave to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which supports liberalizing abortion laws and has even defended the ‘right’ to sex-selection abortion and supported China’s draconian one-child policy.” Long-time readers of Life Advocacy Briefing will recall the controversial UNFPA and the intense battles to defund that death-dealing outfit, reversed during the Obama and Biden regimes which reopened the spigot for US taxpayers to subsidize one of the UN’s principal abortion-pushing organs.

Restoration’s Hayden Ludwig is quoted in the LifeSiteNews report: “‘The new Republican Congress and Pres. Trump must recognize that overturning Roe v. Wade was not and will never be enough. … Simply returning control of abortion policy to the states doesn’t make the federal government neutral on abortion – not when the US pours hundreds of millions of dollars out each year to groups that demand an immediate, unlimited right to butcher the unborn in this and every country on earth. Until that money spigot is cut off, the Left is still in the driver’s seat for the entire country – and we’re all culpable for that terrible sin.’”

While the “Dept. on Government Efficiency” – the Trump-directed team of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and whatever staff those billionaires gather to the effort – is examining major reorganizations in the bureaucracy of government, the report from Restoration of America might offer an early starting off point for significant government reform.

If President Trump wishes to make the federal government abortion-neutral (ugh!), the least he can do is get our federal tax money out of the hands of the abortion enterprise both here and abroad.

Some other subsidies the Administration can quickly end – saving taxpayer dollars and cleansing the federal government of pro-abortion activism – include, cited by Restoration in the LifeSiteNews report, $88 million an outfit called Essential Access Health, which, notes Mr. Freiburger, “openly opposes pro-life laws and has sponsored legislation in California ostensibly to ‘address inequities in over-the-counter birth control access.’”

Or how about Population Services International at $91 million, Family Health International at $97 million and Engenderhealth, which, notes Mr. Freiburger, “began in 1937 as the Sterilization League of New Jersey,” fattened by federal taxpayers to the tune of $79 million.

“The largest single private recipient,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “was the Massachusetts-based Pathfinder International at $145 million, according to the [Restoration] report. Pathfinder,” reports LifeSiteNews, “ostensibly promotes ‘family planning’ while ‘transforming’ what it calls ‘harmful gender norms’ and has lobbied against federal rules such as the Hyde Amendment that prevent it from more directly spending taxpayer funds on abortion.”

Taking the Stage at the March for Life

THE SPEAKER LINE-UP HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED for this year’s March for Life in Washington, DC, on Friday, Jan. 24. The annual march draws tens of thousands of Americans to the streets of the nation’s capital and kicks off with a rally at the National Mall, this year keynoted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who helped lead defeat of a referendum to add abortion to the state’s constitution as a right. This year’s March will be the 52^nd annual pro-life demonstration in Washington.

In addition to Gov. DeSantis, the rally will feature Live Action president Lila Rose, obstetrician Dr. Catherine Wheeler, abortion survivor Josiah Presley, shark attack survivor Bethany Hamilton, and Congressional Pro-Life Caucus chairman Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ). Also taking the stage will be Jeanne Mancini, the outgoing president of March for Life, Inc., and her successor, Jennie Bradley Lichter, who will assume the helm at the organization on Feb. 1.

Taking the Helm at March for Life, Inc.

THE MARCH FOR LIFE ORGANIZATION HAS CHOSEN as its next president a veteran of the DC scene. According to a write-up on the March for Life website, Jennie Bradley Lichter was chosen to lead the March for Life Education & Defense Fund in September, to take over as president on Feb. 1. She is cited by the group as “a long-time Marcher who began attending the National March as a college student in 2001.” But that is not her only credential.

“Jennie has wide-ranging legal and policy experience in the public, private and non-profit sectors,” reads the news release, “including at the highest levels of the federal government.

“During the [first] Trump Administration,” notes the March release, “Jennie served in the White House as a Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, where she supervised rulemaking and policy efforts [involving] a number of federal agencies and led policy initiatives across the federal government to defend the dignity of life.”

And that is not all. Before her days in the White House, the release states, “Jennie worked on policy issues and federal judicial (including Supreme Court) confirmation efforts in the Office of Legal Policy at the US Dept. of Justice. She previously served as in-house counsel for the [Roman Catholic] Archdiocese of Washington.”

But there is more. She has also, the release states, “clerked for two federal appeals court judges and was an associate in the international law firm Jones Day. And she “formerly served as the Deputy General Counsel at the Catholic University of America,” where she is a “fellow at the Center for Religious Liberty in the university’s Columbus School of Law. Jennie also,” the release notes, “founded and directs The Guadalupe Project, the university’s campus-wide initiative to support and lift up pregnant and parenting students, staff and faculty.” 

And she and her husband Brian have three young children. Welcome Jennie Lichter!

Indiana Lawmaker Going After Chemical Abortion

AN INDIANA STATE SENATOR IS BEGINNING HIS NEW SESSION with introduction of a pair of pro-life measures and specific authorization for the state’s attorney general to enforce them.

Veteran lawmaker R. Michael Young has filed a bill, reports Matt Lamb for LifeSiteNews, to “make it a punishable offense to possess abortion drugs and to send the deadly pills into the state.” The legislation also, adds Mr. Lamb, “prohibits a nonprofit organization in Indiana from providing or offering to provide financial assistance to pay for, offset the cost of or reimburse the cost of an abortion inducing drug.”

And that’s not all. “Sen. Young has a separate bill,” reports Mr. Lamb, “to prohibit political entities from assisting women in killing their baby. An initial offense would be a misdemeanor, but subsequent offenses would be punishable as a Level 6 felony. These felonies carry a prison term of up to 30 months. … Insurance providers also would be prohibited from covering abortion drugs in their plans.”

The package does, however, permit aborting mothers to obtain abortion drugs to kill innocent babies whose conception resulted from a sex crime simply by signing an affidavit. Life Advocacy Briefing asks our readers – and the policymakers who make such mistakes in their proposals – to consider who most benefits from the securing of an abortion drug to do away with the DNA of a developing baby at the behest of a rapist or incestor. “Pro-lifers … affirm,” writes Mr. Lamb, “that the circumstances of conception do not determine the value of a human life and its worthiness of protection.” But current Indiana law does exempt babies conceived in rape or incest from legal protection and also babies whose development could undermine the mother’s “health.” That health loophole does have express language stating it “specifically excludes the broad ‘psychological or emotional’ carveout,” writes Mr. Lamb. And, he adds, “medical experts have attested … [that] direct abortion is never medically necessary.”

Stockpiling Deadly Drugs?

ANTICIPATING A SHIFT in federal policy on abortion drugs, at least three states – California, Massachusetts and New Jersey – are beginning to stockpile mifepristone in order to ensure that their residents continue to be able to kill their developing offspring.

The latest to announce the deadly policy is New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy (D), reports Jonathon VanMaren, blogger for LifeSiteNews. He “announced in his ‘state of the state’ address on Jan. 14,” writes Mr. VanMaren, “that while he will seek opportunities to work with the incoming President, he is also taking steps to ensure that abortion will remain easily and readily available in New Jersey, come what may. To accomplish this, New Jersey will begin hoarding abortion pills ‘so every woman can access this crucial form of reproductive care.’ …

“It is worth noting,” writes Mr. VanMaren, “that Murphy is an abortion fanatic. In January 2022, he signed the ‘Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act’ into law that explicitly grants the ‘right’ to abortion to all New Jersey residents throughout all nine months of pregnancy for any reason or for no reason at all. As Planned Parenthood put it, this means that ‘no matter what the Supreme Court ultimately decides, this means you can get an abortion in New Jersey’ up until the moment of birth.”