Life Advocacy Briefing

Question of the Week

POSED TO VICE PRESIDENT J.D. VANCE, who said at the Jan. 24, 2025, March for Life: “So let me say very simply: I want more babies in the United States of America.”

Mr. Vice President, If you want more babies, would not a federal abortion ban be one of the means to achieve that?

Permanent ‘Hyde’ Filed in House & Senate

LEGISLATION HAS BEEN FILED in the US House and Senate to make permanent the annually renewed Hyde Amendment barring tax funds being allocated for abortion, with unfortunate exceptions for the prenatal killing of babies conceived in a sex crime.

HR-7 and S-186 are titled the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion & Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2025,” stating, reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews, “‘No funds authorized or appropriated by federal law, and none of the funds in any trust fund to which funds are authorized or appropriated by federal law, shall be expended for any abortion’ or for ‘health benefits coverage that includes coverage of abortion’ except in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency. The bill also clarifies,” notes Mr. Freiburger, “that it does not apply to medical treatment needed after abortion complications.

“The bill would effectively exclude abortion from federal health facilities, federal insurance plans and federal tax deductions,” explains Mr. Freiburger, “and codify in federal law the Hyde Amendment, which is traditionally included in federal budgets on an annual basis and has been estimated to have saved more than two million lives since its adoption decades ago.”

Chief sponsor in the House is Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), long-time chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus. Leading the bill in the Senate is Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), long a champion of pro-life legislation. They are joined by 69 co-sponsors in the House and 46 in the Senate. We list their names near the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing and request that readers contact their home-state Senators and home-district Representatives to thank them for co-sponsoring this long overdue legislation or to ask them to add their names. (House switchboard: 202/225-3121; Senate: 202/224-3121)

Useful Information for a Change

THE INTERNET WEBSITE OF THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL (CDC) no longer returns search results for the word “abortion” but diverts those seeking information on abortion to search instead for the word “adoption,” suggesting that abortion is no longer a topic for inquiry at the government health agency, reports Doug Mainwaring for LifeSiteNews.

“One pro-life advocate called the change in the CDC’s website a ‘HUGE WIN,’ writes Mr. Mainwaring, adding, “Conservative talk show host Christoper Calvin Reid proclaimed on X [formerly Twitter], ‘GREAT NEWS! The Trump Administration is scrubbing [so-called] reproductive healthcare information from the CDC website. … Oh, and by the way, the site also suggests “adoption” when people search for “abortion”!!!’ he added,” quoted by the LSN reporter, who added this X entry from Christian musician Sean Feucht: “‘I saw this today, and tears came down my face. … I know it seems … simple, but this is the moment we’ve prayed for.’” One of them, anyway!

Stateside

• THE ARKANSAS HOUSE HAS PASSED legislation – by the stunning vote of 70 to 18 – to require students beginning at fifth grade, reports Cassy Fiano-Chesser for Live Action, “to receive education in prenatal human growth and development. If passed [by the state senate and signed by the governor], Arkansas will join Tennessee and North Dakota in giving students accurate information” about human life before birth. … As part of this curriculum, the bill as introduced requires students to view: (A) a high-definition ultrasound video that is at least three minutes in duration, which shows the brain, heart, sex organs and other vital organs in early fetal development; and (B) the Meet Baby Olivia video developed by Live Action, which depicts the process of fertilization and every stage of human development inside the uterus and notes significant markers in cell growth and organ development for every significant marker of pregnancy until birth. The latter of the two videos would appear without branding.”

• OFFICIALS FROM 19 STATES HAVE FILED AN AMICUS BRIEF with the Georgia Supreme Court in support of the state’s Heartbeat Law. Led by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, who has since become a US Senator in place of now Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “representatives from 17 other states voiced their support of the peach State’s Heartbeat Law protecting unborn babies from abortion after a heartbeat is detected,” writes Clare Marie Merkowsky for LifeSiteNews. The “amicus” states, in addition to Florida and Indiana, are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. The case is in Georgia’s high court because of a ruling last September by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, reports Ms. Merkowsky, who “declared the LIFE Act ‘unconstitutional’ because ‘the liberty of privacy means that [pregnant women] alone should choose whether they serve as human incubator for the five months leading up to viability.’” The state’s supreme court, notes Ms. Merkowsky, has left the law “in place while the appeal … makes its way through the courts.”

• KENTUCKY’s LAST ABORTUARY IS ON THE [LITERAL] CHOPPING BLOCK. EMW Women’s Surgical Women’s Center in Louisville, reports Matt Lamb for LifeSiteNews, is slated for demolition. The property’s owner plans to turn the land into a 66-space parking lot while the space undergoes planned development as a 27-story tower, which will include a 300-room hotel near Kentucky International Convention Center. The LifeSiteNews reporter cites as source a story in Louisville’s Courier Journal, which, Mr. Lamb writes, “painted a rosy picture of the abortion facility, which regularly killed innocent preborn babies,” with the local newspaper calling the demolition “the ‘true end of an era after devoting years to fighting for abortion access.’” Bye!

• THE VIRGINIA SENATE HAS PASSED a bill to block extradition of abortionists, writes Nancy Flanders for Live Action, “who face criminal charges for committing abortions on women from pro-life states.” The abortionist sanctuary would not apply in cases where the abortionist is acting in violation of Virginia’s own law, but it abets abortion tourism. “The Senate debated the bill, which also extends to cross-gender treatments, for 40 minutes, with Republicans expressing concern that minors will be sent the abortion pill without being seen by a doctor and without the knowledge of their parents via telemed abortion,” she notes. But, she explains, “abortion ‘shield laws’ are meant to do exactly that – to allow doctors from pro-abortion states to break the laws of pro-life states by providing abortions (typically by means of sending abortion pills) to women living in those states. Passage of the bill in the Virginia Senate comes at nearly the same time,” writes Ms. Flanders, “as a new law was signed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul allowing abortionists to anonymously prescribe the abortion pill to women and minors out of state.”

IVF Advocates Take Note!

“A HORRIFYING STORY OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING HAS EMERGED from formerly Soviet Georgia,” reports Doug Mainwaring for LifeSiteNews, “where at least [a] hundred women are reported to have been kept against their will as slaves treated no better than as animals at a human-egg farm.

“The operation, which exists solely for the purpose of human egg harvesting,” writes Mr. Mainwaring, “is reportedly run by Chinese gangsters who lured women to the eastern European country with the promise of lucrative salaries for serving as IVF surrogates. … The women were held against their wills, pumped full of hormones to stimulate their ovaries and anesthetized once a month in order to facilitate the removal of their eggs.

“They soon realized that they had been lied to,” reports LifeSiteNews. “There were no loving couples seeking to have children via surrogacy; rather, their eggs were to be harvested by the illegal trafficking ring and sold on the black market.”

The report goes on to quote Katy Faust, founder and president, writes Mr. Mainwaring, “of Them Before Us, a global non-profit defending children’s right to their mother and father, [who] summed up the story in one word: ‘horrifying,’ adding, ‘and entirely predictable.’”

So Worth the Effort

IN AN INTERVIEW with LifeSiteNews editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen, the director of youth outreach for Priests for Life, Bryan Kemper, shared a testimony of the impact of pro-life activism, “recalling meeting a woman in front of a church who recognized him from a previous protest.

“‘She points to me, and she goes,’” Mr. Kemper tells Mr. Westen, quoting the woman: “‘“You don’t know this, but about a year or eight months ago … You were standing here with that sign, and I came in to get an abortion.” She said, “I never talked to you. I never said anything, but I had to leave.” And then,’” he said in the Westen interview, “‘she handed me her child,’ [Mr.] Kemper recalled. “‘She said, “This child is alive because you were willing to stand there, and I just want to say thank you.”’”

Senate ‘Hyde’ Co-Sponsors

S-186 IS SPONSORED BY SEN. ROGER WICKER (R-MS), TOGETHER WITH GOP Senators Katie Britt & Tommy Tuberville (AL), Dan Sullivan (AK), John Boozman & Tom Cotton (AR), Rick Scott (FL), Mike Crapo & Jim Risch (ID), Jim Banks & Todd Young (IN), Joni Ernst & Chuck Grassley (IA), Jerry Moran & Roger Marshall (KS), Mitch McConnell (KY), Bill Cassidy & John Kennedy (LA), Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS), Josh Hawley & Eric Schmitt (MO), Steve Daines & Tim Sheehy (MT), Deb Fischer & Pete Ricketts (NE), Ted Budd & Thom Tillis (NC), Kevin Cramer & John Hoeven (ND), Bernie Moreno (OH), James Lankford & Markwayne Mullin (OK), Lindsey Graham & Tim Scott (SC), Mike Rounds (SD), Marsha Blackburn & Bill Hagerty (TN), John Cornyn & Ted Cruz (TX), John Curtis & Mike Lee (UT), Ron Johnson (WI), Shelly Capito & Jim Justice (WV), John Barrasso & Cynthia Lummis (WY). And Senate Majority Leader John Thune (SD).

House Co-sponsors of Making Hyde Great Again

HR-7 IS SPONSORED BY REP. CHRIS SMITH (R-NJ), TOGETHER WITH GOP Representatives Robert Aderholt & Dale Strong (AL); Juan Ciscomani (AZ); French Hill & Steve Womack (AR); Vince Fong & Doug LaMalfa (CA); Aaron Bean, Gus Bilirakis, Mario Diaz-Balart, Scott Franklin, Mike Haridopolos, Laurel Lee, John Rutherford & Daniel Webster (FL); Andrew Clyde, Barry Loudermilk & Rich McCormick (GA); Russ Fulcher & Mike Simpson (ID); Mike Bost, Darin LaHood & Mary Miller (IL); Jefferson Shreve (IN); Randy Feenstra & Ashley Hinson (IA); Tracey Mann (KS); Brett Guthrie (KY); Clay Higgins (LA); Andy Harris (MD); Jack Bergman, John Moolenaar & Tim Walberg (MI); Michelle Fischbach (MN); Mike Ezell, Michael Guest & Trent Kelly (MS); Mike Flood (NE); Virginia Foxx, Richard Hudson & David Rouzer (NC); Dusty Johnson (ND); Troy Balderson, Bob Latta, David Taylor & Mike Turner (OH); Josh Brecheen (OK); Mike Kelly, Lloyd Smucker & G.T. Thompson (PA); Russell Fry, William Timmons & Joe Wilson (SC); Mark Green, Diana Harshbarger & Andy Ogles (TN); John Carter, Michael Cloud, Dan Crenshaw, Jake Ellzey, Pat Fallon, Ronny Jackson, Nathaniel Moran, Beth VanDuyne & Randy Weber (TX); Morgan Griffith (VA); and Scott Fitzgerald & Glenn Grothman (WI).

Gov. DeSantis at March for Life

Jan. 24, 2025, address by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, transcribed by Life Advocacy Briefing

             Thank you for marching for Life. I kind of feel like we have a lot of momentum.

             So, there’s this issue that the President has introduced, which I’m supportive of, to say the Constitution doesn’t give birthright citizenship to people that are here illegally. I think that’s the right decision under the Constitution. But it’s interesting: Not everyone likes that. And so, the New York Times had a hit piece going against this, and here was their headline: “Undocumented women ask, will my unborn child be a citizen?” So, the New York Times is admitting it’s not just a clump of cells? Let’s welcome the New York Times to the pro-life movement! Wow!

             Here is what you should be asking your elected officials to do on the issue of the sanctity of life: Show courage in defense of the unborn. That’s what we need from the people that we elect to the office. The sanctity of life does not depend on poll results; it doesn’t depend on which way the wind is blowing – it’s an enduring truth, and it represents the foundation of our society which in our original founding document which we will celebrate next year, the Declaration of Independence, declared, that we hold these truths to be “self-evident: that all men are created equal, and we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights” beginning with the right to life itself.

             And I remember when Dobbs came down, it was a big victory for the pro-life movement. But a lot of people didn’t necessarily know what were you going to do? What was the Left going to do? There were all these things going. And what the Left did is, they poured hundreds of millions of dollars into these ballot initiatives. And in 2022 they swept the country; I think they won every single ballot initiative in favor of, many times, abortion-on-demand until birth.

             So, we then in the 2024 cycle, we were facing in Florida one of these initiatives in our state, and it was very deceptively worded. But when they polled it, 75% of Floridians were in favor of it. Even though the language was misleading, they got it on the ballot. They put $120 million into enacting this as part of our constitution. The media was behind them 100%. Now this would have been the most radical amendment in the nation. It would have led to 40,000 abortions in Florida every single year and would have made Florida the epicenter for abortion tourism, because we’re in the southeast, which is the most pro-life part of the country. So, the stakes were very high here.

             Now most elected officials, they’ll say: Look, what’s on the ballot is not, is not their issue, like people can decide, and they wash their hands of it, and they walk away. But you know, I remember a great man once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” So, we were not just gonna sit around in Florida and do nothing. We had the responsibility to lead the charge and to do something that most people said was impossible: defeat a pro-abortion ballot measure in a state who quite frankly does not necessarily have overwhelming pro-life sentiment.

             And so, this was very difficult, because what the pro-abortion side does, they don’t tell the truth; they rely on a blizzard of lies to try to be able to enact these things. So, if you turned on TV in Florida last fall, you were told that Florida’s Heartbeat Bill somehow didn’t allow pregnant women to get health care when they had a miscarriage or all these other things which were bold-faced lies. They never made the case as to why you should have elective abortions-on-demand up until nine months; they never made that case. They were focusing on running commercials that were lying about what we were doing in Florida.

             So, this was difficult, because you know, people see it on TV and they think it’s true. So, this was all hands on deck. So, we decided we had no choice but to dig in and lead, that we had all these lives that depended on this. So, we raised millions of dollars. We mobilized activists, not just in the state of Florida but around the country, to come in to help Florida – many of you were a part of that – we pressured our elected officials to get involved; we barnstormed the state. I had Physicians Against Amendment 4. We had survivors of abortion talking against Amendment 4. You name it, we did it. We even mobilized our state agencies, and we ran public service announcements dispelling the lies that were being told about Florida’s Heartbeat Bill.

             But we were doing this quite frankly against the tide of public opinion. The wind was in our face; the wind was not at our backs. But you know it’s easy to lead when the wind’s at your back. Anybody can do that. The question is, when those things are, when you have all the odds stacked against you, are you gonna dig in and are you gonna do what’s right?

             And I’m proud to say that we defeated this radical pro-abortion amendment, and we were the first state in the United States to ever defeat one.

             But here’s one of the lessons: We were told since Dobbs by people – political consultants, pundits, many people that are more establishment Republicans – that standing for the right to life was somehow terrible politics; you wouldn’t get elected, all this other stuff. Well, I can tell you, I’m proof that that’s not true. Because when Dobbs was overturned [sic], I ran on a pro-life platform on the Heartbeat Protection Act, and I won the largest victory that any Republican has ever won in the history of the state of Florida.

             And I can report to you now, years later, not one single member of the Florida legislature has been defeated for voting for Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act. Not one has been defeated as a result of that.

             And even more so, to show you the politics isn’t what they say, since I signed Florida’s Heartbeat Bill a couple years ago, we have gained 800,000 registered Republicans on the Democrats since we signed the legislation. So don’t let the naysayers say that you gotta toss away these important convictions and that you shouldn’t stand for the right to life. We showed how it can be done in the state of Florida.

             You know we’re proud that in the last six years since I’ve been governor, on issue after issue we have defeated the political left, getting rid of DEI, beating them on illegal immigration, doing all these different things to the point where Florida is now known as the state where Woke goes to die. But let me tell you, since we were able to beat Amendment 4, Florida is not only the place where Woke goes to die, it’s the place where babies go to live.

             Thank you. God bless you. Keep up the great work.