Life Advocacy Briefing

Question of the Week

WILL ANYONE IN CONGRESS confront the University of Pittsburgh on its unconscionable use of aborted baby body parts in taxpayer-funded so-called research?

A Bill Worth Supporting

RESTING IN THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE is HR-722, the Life at Conception Act, filed in January by Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), and co-sponsored, as of April 14, by 72 House colleagues. The proposal seeks to apply the Equal Protection clause of the 14^th Amendment to each born and pre-born human person – something the Supreme Court failed to acknowledge in its Dobbs ruling which claims protecting the lives of preborn children falls outside the jurisdiction of the federal government while acknowledging that the 50 states do have that power, should they choose to pursue it. Readers may wish to call their own Member of Congress via the Capitol switchboard at 202/225-3121 and ask those not yet listed to add their names to the co-sponsor list and to thank those who have listed their names in support.

Members of the House Judiciary Committee can also be reached by that number. They are: Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman, and GOP Representatives Barry Moore (AL); Andy Biggs (AZ); Darrell Issa, Kevin Kiley & Tom McClintock (CA); Laurel Lee (FL); Derek Schmidt (KS); Thomas Massie (KY); Bob Onder (MO); Jeff VanDrew (NJ); Mark Harris & Brad Knott (NC); Russell Fry (SC); Brandon Gill, Lance Gooden, Wesley Hunt, Troy Nehls & Chip Roy (TX); Ben Cline (VA); Michael Baumgartner (WA); Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman & Tom Tiffany (WI) and Harriet Hageman (WY).

And on the Minority side: Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), ranking Member, and Democratic Representatives Lou Correa, Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Ted Lieu, Zoe Lofgren & Eric Swalwell (CA); Joe Neguse (CO); Jared Moskowitz (FL); Henry Johnson & Lucy McBath (GA); Jesus Garcia (IL); Dan Goldman & Jerrold Nadler (NY); Deborah Ross (NC); Mary Gay Scanlon (PA); Steve Cohen (TN); Jasmine Crockett (TX); Bruce Balint (VT) and Pramila Jayapal (WA).

Co-sponsors of HR-722 with Rep. Burlison are GOP Representatives Aderholt, Moore, Palmer, Rogers & Strong (AL); Biggs & Crane (AZ); Crawford (AR); Issa (CA); Crank (CO); Bilirakis, Mast, Rutherford & Webster (FL); Allen, Clyde, Collins, Greene, Loudermilk, McCormick & D.Scott (GA); Fulcher (ID); Bost & Miller (IL); Baird & Messmer (IN); Feenstra (IA); Estes (KS); Higgins (LA); Harris (MD); Moolenaar (MI); Fischbach (MN); Ezell, Guest & Kelly (MS); Graves (MO); Smith (NE); Tenney (NY); Foxx, Harris, Hudson (NC); Davidson & Taylor (OH); Brecheen (OK); Kelly & Thompson (PA); Biggs (SC); Green, Harshbarger, Kustoff, Ogles & Rose (TN); Arrington, Babin, Carter, Cloud, Elzey, Fallon, Gonzales, Jackson, Moran, Self, Sessions, VanDuyne, Weber & Williams (TX); Owens (UT); Cline & McGuire (VA); Miller & Moore (WV); Fitzgerald (WI); and Hageman (WY).

Funding Restored

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS ANNOUNCED RESTORATION of Title X (Ten) family planning funds, reports Antonino Cambria for LifeSiteNews, “to two staunchly pro-life states after the Biden Administration had cut off their funds.”

The White House is “set to restore millions” in Title X funds “to Tennessee and Oklahoma, according to a Hill report,” writes Mr. Cambria. “The Biden Administration had frozen both states’ funding after they refused to require their healthcare facilities to provide referrals for abortions. …

“In April 2023, Tennessee became the first state to lose its Title X funding,” Mr. Cambria adds. The Biden Regime’s Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS) “cited the state’s failure to require counseling on ‘infant care, foster care, adoption or pregnancy termination, which are all required to be provided upon request’ as the reasons for stripping the funding and gave the $7 million in funds [directly] to Planned Parenthood of Tennessee & North Mississippi instead. …

The Oklahoma State Dept. of Health announced in May 2023,” writes Mr. Cambria, “that Biden’s HHS similarly deemed the state’s Title X program ‘out of compliance’ due to the state’s refusal to provide abortion referrals and suspended the $4.5 million in federal dollars the state had been receiving.” Said Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) in an X post quoted by Mr. Cambria, “‘The Biden Admin tried to punish Oklahoma for our pro-life laws. It was pure politics with taxpayer dollars. … Thanks to Pres. Trump, those funds are restored.’”

Another Shop Shut

RESIDENTS OF ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS, HAVE PREVAILED in their legal battle to shut down an abortuary operated by a Wisconsin-based abortionist under the name “Rockford Family Planning Center.” The shop was the first to infest the northern Illinois city in more than a decade, according to Sarah Holliday in The Washington Stand. Though surgical abortions were not committed there, staff dispensed misoprostol, whose sole purpose is to starve a developing human baby in utero.

“Some local residents,” writes Ms. Holliday, “opposed the business’s presence. They argued it disrupted the neighborhood’s tranquility and brought in hostility.” Four local residents filed suit in 2020, claiming “the facility ‘was not properly zoned for the practice.’” It was being allowed to operate under a “home business” permit, according to the report. The case, notes Ms. Holliday, “was dismissed in 2022 for lack of standing, which allowed the business to open. However, on April 10, 2025, the Illinois 4^th District Appellate Court reversed this ruling. …

“The Thomas More Society, which helped bring forth the lawsuit, noted,” writes Ms. Holliday, “that the court found the facility’s operation as a ‘home business’ violated Rockford’s zoning ordinance. The ruling highlighted that [abortionist Dennis] Christensen, a non-resident of Illinois, and his non-resident staff did not meet the criteria for a home business, and the tenant-employee arrangement breached local laws.”

Four More Down in Michigan

THREE PLANNED PARENTHOOD SHOPS ARE CLOSING in Michigan, reports Matt Lamb for LifeSiteNews, and another two will merge. The announcement came in the wake of a Trump Administration freeze, Mr. Lamb notes, of some “$27.5 million in Title X [Ten] ‘family planning’ funds going to Planned Parenthood.”

Michigan Planned Parenthood “blamed the political climate,” writes Mr. Lamb, “such as future restrictions on abortion funding, for its decision to close the centers.” And the outfit claimed its decision “followed ‘months’ of planning.”

Tyranny Lifted in Nevada

NEVADA’s PARENTAL NOTICE OF ABORTION LAW WILL TAKE EFFECT April 30, 2025 – that’s right, this year – after a federal court in Nevada “lifted its previous order,” reports long-time pro-life attorney James Bopp, “issued in 1991, which barred enforcement of Nevada’s requirement that parents be notified when their minor children seek an abortion.”

That parental notice law was enacted in 1985 but enjoined in federal court on the basis that its order “was based on the abortion ‘right’ announced in Roe v. Wade. District Attorneys Rye and Pruyt argued,” writes Mr. Bopp, “that because the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overruled Roe, no basis remains to block the law. The district court agreed with that argument, finding that because the basis for the order blocking the parental notice law was gone, the injunction against the law had to be lifted.”

For our part, we at Life Advocacy are stunned to learn that Nevada residents have so long been denied the right to be notified if their grandchild is threatened by abortion. Even under Roe v. Wade, parental notice laws were generally upheld when challenged in various courts. We applaud the two county district attorneys for pressing the case in recent times and the federal district court for finally acting to restore justice and common sense, but we are appalled to learn that it took this many years.

Taking It Back?

A PROPOSAL HAS EMERGED FROM COMMITTEE in the Missouri House of Representatives to put a proposition on the ballot to roll back the voter-approved constitutional amendment legalizing abortion. That 2024 amendment was adopted by a vote of 51.6 to 48.5%. “The [ratified] amendment effectively invalidated the state’s near-total abortion ban,” reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews.

“Now the Columbia Missourian reported,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “that the Missouri House Children & Families Committee voted [April 9] to advance another proposed constitutional amendment, which would ban abortion except for rape and incest in the first trimester and medical emergencies throughout pregnancy. It would also ban taxpayer funding for abortion or youth gender ‘transitions’ – the latter of which, critics say, may run afoul of the legal requirement that amendments confine themselves to a single subject.

“‘If the voters had known that Amendment 3 would prevent parents from even knowing, let alone giving consent to their daughters,’ Campaign Life Missouri director Samuel Lee testified in support of the effort,” reports Mr. Freiburger, “‘I think the voters deserve a chance to vote on this again.’”

Major Shift at UN

April 17, 2025, analysis by Stefano Gennarini JD for Center for Family & Human Rights (C-Fam)

             The Trump Administration upended decades of UN social policy diplomacy last week at the UN Commission on Population & Development. A UN agreement on population policies that should have been adopted without a glitch was rejected by US officials because of concerns about gender, global government and abortion.

             The US sent a strong message that it was not willing to adopt language about sexual and reproductive health, gender and UN development goals. All these elements are included in dozens of UN resolutions every year. They have been part of the grand bargain on social issues at the UN for the last three decades and are typically adopted without a snag.

             The long-standing UN compromise on social issues can be summarized in simple terms. Liberal Western countries promote gender ideology and abortion in UN policy under the rubric of sexual and reproductive health, gender equality and international development. Traditional countries let them do this so long as they do not impose any new international legal obligations.

             The US government sent a strong message that it is no longer satisfied with this compromise.

             During two weeks of negotiations, the US government objected to language on sexual and reproductive health, gender and the 2030 Agenda, a 15-year General Assembly agreement that has been widely criticized as inching toward global government. The position was considered so outrageous that hardly any delegations took the US threat seriously. When delegates from Tunisia and Colombia presented the UN population commission with a final draft of the agreement, the draft included the elements the US government had objected to throughout the negotiations. So, US officials blocked the agreement.

             The failure of the commission to reach an agreement is not something new. It gets bogged down each year in debates about abortion, gender ideology and extreme notions of sex education programs. Seven of the last 10 sessions of the commission have ended in deadlock. But this year’s collapse in the negotiations was entirely different than in past years.

             In past years, negotiations failed because Europeans insisted that the commission’s annual resolution endorse extreme notions of sex education programs or because traditional countries insisted that the commission had to acknowledge the sovereign prerogative of countries on sensitive social policies. This year these were non-issues. The draft agreement had all the right compromises that would have secured adoption in the past. It was widely seen as “balanced.” It had language about “sexual and reproductive health” that Western countries wanted. It also had limiting language calling for respect for sovereignty that traditional countries wanted. It even left out issues like poverty eradication, climate, the right to development, Israeli occupation and sanctions known to be a red line for the US delegation. Adoption of this kind of resolution was par for the course.

             The only explanation for why the commission failed is that the Trump Administration refused to preserve the status quo, one that allows UN agencies to promote gender ideology and abortion under the guise of providing “sexual and reproductive health” and protecting gender equality.

             This creates an unprecedented opportunity to re-negotiate new terms for UN social policy, terms that will respect sovereignty and be favorable to the family, mothers and their unborn children. The new state of play of the UN social policy debate will affect the negotiations of dozens of resolutions and strategic plans expected to be finalized this year and direct the work of UN agencies for years to come.

Alarming Advance for Abetted Suicide

April 17, 2025, commentary by Family Research Council’s Mary Szoch in The Washington Stand

             In Illinois, SB-9, legalizing assisted suicide, has passed out of committee and could be voted on at any point before May 31, when the legislative session ends. This bill allows doctors to prescribe suicide drugs to people with terminal illnesses who have six months left to live, but, like every assisted suicide bill introduced in the US, SB-9 is incredibly flawed.

             For starters, doctors, who are meant to promote a patient’s health and well-being, are notoriously bad at predicting when a person will die. And unfortunately the definition of “terminal illness” is not as limiting as it sounds. Last year in Oregon, eight people with diabetes were prescribed the suicide drugs, so the likelihood of people who aren’t actually “terminal” killing themselves is high, and the transformation of a doctor from a healer to a killer is definite.

             Additionally, there is no mental health evaluation requirement in the legislation. Despite 25-77% of people with terminal illnesses also suffering from major depression, the Illinois policy, if passed, would allow a person with a terminal illness to request drugs to kill themselves without receiving a mental health evaluation. While proponents of the legislation argue that there is a mental health evaluation requirement if a physician thinks the patient is not mentally competent, the latest data out of Oregon, where assisted suicide has been legal since 1998, demonstrates that fewer than 2% of patients were referred for mental health evaluations. Think about that – a person requests drugs to commit suicide, and no one is required to take the extra step of checking to see if perhaps that person, who wants to kill [him- or] herself, is simply overwhelmed by emotions that may improve.

             Furthermore, SB-9 offers no safeguards against coercion for the patient. There is a requirement ensuring that one witness to the request for assisted suicide drugs not be an heir to a person’s estate; however, there is no safeguard preventing a person from being coerced by numerous other individuals in their life. According to the latest data from Oregon, fear of being a burden to friends and family is the fifth most common reason people choose assisted suicide. Coercion can be subtle. It can be the long sighs or the grumpy interactions that cause a person to feel like their existence is no longer wanted, or coercion can be overt – an heir to the estate who pressures or even forces the patient to take the suicide drugs. Since there is no requirement for an independent witness to be present at the time the drugs are taken, and there’s no requirement for a mental health evaluation, if SB-9 passes, either is possible.

             Perhaps just as troubling is that the bill authorizes the suicide drugs to be sent through the mail, which significantly increases the probability that these drugs end up in the possession of a person they were not intended for – a depressed teen or a curious toddler. These drugs are intended to kill. The risk they pose is too high to allow them to be sent through the mail.

             And finally, passing SB-9 will allow insurance companies to choose to cover the cheapest option – lethal drugs – instead of actual health care that sustains life. In both Oregon and California, two states where assisted suicide has been legal for over five years, patients who would not have been terminal had they received medical care have been refused treatment and instead offered assisted suicide drugs. If Illinois passes SB-9, the same will be true there.

             While the many issues with SB-9 should raise red flags in everyone’s mind, they don’t touch the heart of the issue: passing assisted suicide legislation pushes America further towards orienting society around individualism and selfishness rather than family and self-sacrifice.

             According to the most recent data from Oregon, the top five reasons people choose assisted suicide are consistently: loss of autonomy, inability to engage in activities that make life enjoyable, loss of dignity, loss of control of bodily functions and feeling like a burden on family, friends [or] caregivers.

             Our independent, individualistic society creates the illusion that a life that is not self-reliant is a life without meaning. Many facing terminal illnesses have been overwhelmed by the weight of this lie. But in families, we learn the opposite is true. From the newborn baby whose every sneeze is treasured, to the sister with disabilities whose smile lights up the room, to the grandmother who teaches her grandchildren how to live well and how to suffer well – in families, we learn vulnerability expands our hearts, and self-sacrifice brings the greatest reward. We learn that every person has value, and that the contributions that are seemingly the most insignificant are actually the most important. Assisted suicide is antithetical to familial love and self-sacrifice for both patients and caregivers.

Wisdom from the Great Communicator

EXCERPT #1 from Abortion & the Conscience of the Nation, 1983 treatise by then-President Ronald Reagan, first published in Human Life Review and then as a hardcover book from Thomas Nelson Publishers

             The tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade is a good time for us to pause and reflect. Our nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy was neither voted for by our people nor enacted by our legislators – not a single state had such unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it to be national policy in 1973. But the consequences of this judicial decision are now obvious: since 1973, more than 15 million unborn children have had their lives snuffed out by legalized abortions. That is over ten times the number of Americans lost in all our nation’s wars.