Life Advocacy Briefing

Question of the Week

HOW DOES LURING PREGNANT WOMEN into killing their babies add to the mental health crisis so many believe is facing America?

Finish the Job!

KUDOS TO STUDENT FOR LIFE ACTION and the SFLA president Kristan Hawkins for calling out the Trump Administration’s announced plan to disqualify Planned Parenthood from some $20 million in Title X (Ten) funds. 

“Fewer taxpayer dollars for Planned Parenthood is always a good thing,” declared Mrs. Hawkins in an electronic mail appeal to supporters. “But I can also tell you that abortion lobby executives will be high-fiving each other all the way to the bank if this is ALL they lose; after all, $20 million is a far cry from the nearly $700 million Planned Parenthood receives from the federal government each year!”

We join Mrs. Hawkins in declaring: “You and I need to make sure Congress understands we expect them to fully defund Planned Parenthood of every red cent of taxpayer funds they receive. …

“After all,” she adds, “it’s Planned Parenthood’s money that’s the root of their political power. It’s their money that keeps politicians on both sides of the aisle cowering in fear. It’s their money that keeps pro-life bills bottled up at the federal and state level. And it’s their money that enables them to keep installing radical pro-abortion politicians … in Congress. So,” she declares, “the moment you and I defund Planned Parenthood, they become a political tiger.” And, she adds, “This is our key to saving lives.” Amen.

Seconding that Motion

MORE THAN 300 CITIZENS from all 50 states, reports Victor Nieves for Life Issues Institute (LI), gathered on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 27 to “urge Congress to defund big abortion.”

“Each year Planned Parenthood alone receives $700 million in taxpayer money through federal funding,” states Mr. Nieves in an LI news release. “In 2023 the abortion giant took the lives of nearly 400,000 unborn children.” And, he adds, “In the last election cycle, they injected approximately $70 million into radical pro-abortion legislation and candidates.

“This must end. Congress has a unique opportunity through budget reconciliation,” notes Mr. Nieves, “to defund the abortion industry.”

Adds LI president Brad Mattes: “The opportunity has never been more promising to defund this kingpin of the abortion industry, and we need the help of each and every pro-life Member of Congress. The time to act is now.”

And we would add: There is no reason or excuse to wait for word from the White House. The word must come from the American people. US Representatives may be contacted via the House switchboard at 202/225-3121, and Senators through the Senate switchboard at 202/224-3121.

Progress

WEST VIRGINIA’s SENATE HAS VOTED 28 to 5 to ban the sale or distribution of abortifacients without prescription, reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews, “in an attempt to crack down on out-of-state abortionists mailing pills to circumvent the state’s pro-life laws.”

It would be more effective for the federal FDA to withdraw marketing approval for misoprostol, whose abortifacient use is undermining the future of our country and the mental health of countless deceived women. It is also leading to unnecessary maternal deaths.

The LifeSiteNews report cites “a 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-US FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn not[ing] that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the ‘abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA,’” notes the letter quoted by Mr. Freiburger, “and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.’

“‘A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research & Managerial Epidemiology,’ writes Catholic University of America research associate Michael New,” quoted by Mr. Freiburger. “‘They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency room visits increased over 500% from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”

“SB-85 states that any attempt at ‘placing abortifacients in the stream of commerce’ without a ‘lawfully valid prescription,’” writes Mr. Freiburger, “is a felony punishable by three to 10 years in jail for non-physicians and punishable by loss of medical license for violating physicians.”

The Senate-passed bill has been referred to the House Committee on Health & Human Resources.

Until federal regulators overturn the politically motivated rushed approval of the deadly drug, the West Virginia Senate’s action is a good start.

Do They Know What They Do?

April 3, 2025, LifeSiteNews blog by Jonathon VanMaren

             Pro-life activist Lila Rose recently posted a heartbreaking screenshot to X. It was the experience of an American woman who took the abortion pill, posted to an online messaging board. It had a stark title, posed as a question: “passed the embryo, and it had a heartbeat?”

             “I was 7 weeks, 3 days yesterday and took my second dose of pills (4 misoprostol dissolved in my cheek) around 4:30 p.m.,” the woman wrote. “By 9 [p.m.] I had passed everything fairly painlessly, however, last night during the peak of the cramps at 6:30, I went down to the restroom and before I could even sit down, a fair amount of liquid poured out along with a small sac probably about the size of a small blueberry.

             “It was mostly clear/white with a dark red spot in the middle that was very, very clearly contracting like a heartbeat,” she continued. “It beat for probably 30-45 seconds then nothing and that literally shattered me. I have never felt this way and I feel so much regret. I don’t even know how what I saw is possible and I can’t find anyone talking about this happening. I’m so confused and feel unbelievably guilty.”

             She saw her tiny baby’s heart beating and then stop – and was rightly horrified.

             Like so many other women, she had been lied to about her baby. This is how the Endowment for Human Development describes a baby at 7 to 8 weeks: “From 7 to 7-1/2 weeks, tendons attach leg muscles to bones, and knee joints appear. Also by 7-1/2 weeks, the hands can be brought together, as can the feet. The embryo also kicks, and will jump if startled. Also by 7 to 7-1/2 weeks, nephrons, the basic filtration units in the kidneys, begin to form.”

             This, by contrast, is how Planned Parenthood describes the abortion pill procedure on their website: “You can expect the cramping and bleeding to start 1-4 hours after taking the misoprostol. It’s normal to see large blood clots (up to the size of a lemon) or clumps of tissue during the abortion. But the pregnancy itself is very small – at 8 weeks, an embryo is about ¼ to ½ inch long. You may not see it when it comes out, especially if you’re less than 8 weeks pregnant.”

             Abortion clinic staff are careful to ensure that mothers do not see aborted babies; as an increasing number use pills to abort at home, that is changing. A 2020 study has already noted that 83% of women who used “medication abortion” reported that it had “changed them.” One woman recalled: “I felt her come out.” Another: “[N]othing could’ve prepared me for seeing her body. It was the color of my own skin and was actually starting to look like a person.”

             One posted about her medication abortion online: “I’m so sorry, little bean. Bean was moving its legs, and heart was still beating when they come out in one push.”

             An increasing number of women are posting photos of their babies online after aborting them using abortion pills. The photos make it clear, like no other evidence could, that abortion activists are lying to women. One pro-life activist from Newfoundland has been posting them to Instagram.

             Those are children. Women are being lied to. But now, some are seeing their children face to face. Some, on the messaging boards, are attempting to laugh it off. Others are expressing utter horror at what they have done. …

             It is the task of the pro-life movement to tell women the hard truth: the abortion pill kills babies with beating hearts, and organizations like Planned Parenthood are turning bathrooms into back alleys and toilets into watery graves.

[Life Advocacy Briefing editor’s note: It is also the task of public officials – particularly those who control the budget of outfits like the FDA – to demand that the powerful federal bureaucracy withdraws the politically motivated, dastardly release of the baby poison drug from the market. Now.]

Tactical Debate

March 28, 2025, LifeSiteNews report by Calvin Freiburger

             In a push to strengthen recognition of preborn babies as full persons with the same basic rights as any other American, 10 states have introduced legislation so far in 2025 to treat abortion as homicide within existing murder statutes, although they have met internal resistance from Republicans and pro-lifers who fear the legal and political fallout.

             The Hill reported that, since the beginning of the year, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas have all seen bills introduced to treat abortion as homicide rather than a distinct offense with different penalties, and some of those measures extend to every form of destruction of an embryonic human (such as in vitro fertilization).

             “Three of the bills – in Indiana, Oklahoma and North Dakota – have failed to pass this year,” the report noted. “And Georgia’s HB-441, which would modify state law to allow women to be charged with homicide for receiving an abortion, appears poised to fail as well.”

             Thirteen states currently ban all or most abortions. But the abortion lobby is working feverishly to cancel out those deterrents via deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, and enshrining abortion “rights” in state constitutions.

             The bills highlighted in the report represent a divide between pro-life activists who advocate “incrementalism,” chipping away to whatever abortions public opinion is amenable to stopping at the moment, and abortion “abolitionism,” which finds the incremental approach too tolerant of unjust outcomes and advocates more uncompromising action.

             Incrementalists, who dominate the pro-life wing of mainstream GOP politics and most major pro-life groups, point to the general public’s lack of support for a full, no-exceptions abortion ban and the volatile question of punishing the women who seek abortions, which some abolitionist proposals would do.

             “Maybe instead of wasting our time on a circular firing squad and debating who can hand out the most prison sentences to prove that they are the most anti-abortion one out there, maybe get to work and elect 100% pro-life champions … who will stand with us to pass substantial legislation” says Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America. SFLA says accountability for abortion should focus on the “predatory” abortion industry, not women deceived or pressured into aborting.

             “Abolitionism has historically been wed to the doctrine of immediatism. The history of the pro-life movement has been one of gradualistic means and measures, incremental legislation, ameliorative programs and the inclusion of exceptions to abortion along the way to its eventual total abolition,” says the group Abolish Human Abortion. “Abolitionists reject the idea that you can effectively fight evil by allowing it in some cases or do away with it by planned out incremental steps which preserve it along the way. Abolitionists reject the notion that you can ever commit evil in order that good may come. Abolitionists cry no compromise! Pro-lifers cry ‘get the best that you can get when you can get it,’ and consistently support the ‘lesser of two evils.’”

             But while those philosophical and strategic debates continue, many pro-lifers believe a more immediate concern is whether the fight over abortion’s legality will be relegated to individual states for the foreseeable future.

             President Donald Trump has taken a number of pro-life actions since returning to office, including pardoning peaceful pro-life activists and closing multiple avenues for federal funding of the abortion industry. But he opposes further federal restrictions on abortion in favor of leaving the issue at the state level and even rewrote the Republican Party platform to reflect that preference.

             The variance of laws from state to state allows residents of a pro-life state to travel to a pro-abortion one to have their child killed, and abortion pills can easily be mailed across state lines and taken in private, which cannot easily be prevented once the package has been sent.

             Last year, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute published research finding that 63% of abortions in 2023 were committed via pills, continuing a steady rise from 0% since 2000, when the US Food & Drug Administration first approved mifepristone.

             Pro-life advocates continue to call for a complete nationwide ban on abortion, and in February, Republican Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) reintroduced the Life at Conception Act, which would expressly recognize pre-born children as persons qualifying for equal protection under the 14^th Amendment. How such measures will fare in the current GOP remains to be seen.

Where DOGE Committee Should Focus Next

March 25, 2025, commentary by Tony Perkins, Family Research Council president

             A House DOGE subcommittee put a magnifying glass to NPR and PBS, funded in part with federal tax dollars through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The most recent budget shows that the two left-leaning media outlets rake in just shy of $550 million a year from taxpayers.

             DOGE’s triad is waste, fraud and abuse. An obvious issue lawmakers are debating in this age of multi-media – and our unprecedented $36 trillion of national debt – is whether the government’s funding of these broadcasts is a waste of taxpayer dollars. That’s a legitimate question. … Yet, the starkest example of waste, fraud and abuse may be found in the abortion industry – particularly at Planned Parenthood, which surpasses NPR and PBS in the scope of public funding and controversy.

             Let’s talk about waste: After the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Planned Parenthood reportedly raised nearly $500 million. Instead of using that money for healthcare services at their clinics, which the group claims is their priority, much of it went toward the organization’s political and legal interests. Meanwhile, $699 million in taxpayer funds supported their clinics, where patient numbers have been steadily declining even as abortion procedures have risen.

             According to the New York Times, Planned Parenthood has spent millions on CEO salaries, such as their national president, Alexis Johnson, whose annual salary in 2023 was $904,000. At the same time, very little funding was allocated to staff training – leading to incidents such as botched IUD placements and abortions.

             I’m not alone in insisting that taxpayer shouldn’t be bankrolling the million-dollar salary of the CEO who heads the nation’s largest baby-killing operation. Even after the abortion lobby spent hundreds of millions of dollars after Roe fell, 60% of Americans still oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.

             Let’s talk fraud: Planned Parenthood has repeatedly faced allegations of trafficking fetal tissue – “baby body parts” – for profit. There are also multiple reports suggesting Planned Parenthood has covered up criminal behavior and sexual abuse involving the very women it claims to serve.

             Abuse? The organization is increasingly pivoting toward so-called “gender-affirming” hormone therapy, including for minors – something many states are trying to prevent for their young residents.

             Ultimately, it’s an abuse of taxpayer dollars to subsidize an entity involved in taking the lives of 400,000 unborn Americans.

             Here is the bottom line: Our leaders should foster true neutrality in public funding and respect the will of citizens who object to financing controversial practices. It’s time to end all government funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood that are killing America’s opportunity to be great again.