Life Advocacy Briefing

Question of the Week

IS 11% OF U.S. RU-486 TAKERS SUFFERING SERIOUS COMPLICATIONS enough to push the Food & Drug Administration to withdraw the Clinton Regime’s marketing approval of baby-killing, mom-injuring mifepristone?

Alarming!

THE ETHICS & PUBLIC POLICY CENTER (E.P.P.C.) LAST WEEK RELEASED a major study focused on adverse physical effects on aborting mothers who take abortion pills. LifeSiteNews writer Emily Mangiaracina calls the study “the largest known study of the abortion pill” and reports its finding that “almost 11% of women in the US suffer serious adverse events following a chemical abortion, a rate 22 times higher than what is reported on the drug label.”

Said the report, quoted by LSN, “‘10.93% of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging or another serious or life-threatening adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion, far greater than the summary figure of “less than 0.5%” in clinical trials reported on the drug label. …

“‘Simply stated, mifepristone, as used in real-world conditions, is not “safe and effective”’ for women, the researchers concluded,” writes Ms. Mangiaracina, “without noting the fact that the abortion pill kills innocent unborn human beings. …

“As the EPPC pointed out,” she writes, “the women of their study ‘broadly’ represent women who obtain chemical abortions in the US, as opposed to being a ‘prescreened group of generally healthy women’ who are typically used in trials. …

“Under the Obama FDA in 2016,” notes Ms. Mangiaracina, “requirements to report all abortion pill complications were removed. Going forward, only deaths were to be reported, significantly hampering safety data. In 2020, a new ‘no-test’ deregulation removed requirements for labs, testing and blood work used to accurately date a pregnancy and rule out deadly ectopic pregnancies before dispensing abortion pills. By December 2021, the Biden FDA axed the requirement that the abortion pill be dispensed in person and allowed them to be permanently shipped by mail.”

Clearly, the FDA, under management of Trump-appointed Dr. Marty Makary, needs to put a priority on the crisis that has been generated by the laissez-faire approach the agency has been taking on the marketing of mifepristone (a/k/a RU-486). If the driving up of the rate of abortions in America has not been enough to put reconsideration of chemical abortion onto the fast-track agenda of the Makary FDA, the alarms raised by the EPPC study ought to elevate the issue to top priority for the sake of American women.

Trifecta in Colorado

COLORADO GOV. JARED POLIS (D) HAS SIGNED legislation which will codify abortion-till-birth legalization, spend “a minimum of $1.5 million in taxpayer funds per year toward abortions,” reports LifeSiteNews writer Matt Lamb, and “require state employee health insurance to cover abortion costs.”

Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera (D), notes Mr. Lamb, “brought her daughter to the [bill-signing] ceremony to celebrate that she will find it easier to kill the politician’s great-grandchild. ‘I want her to have the same rights that I did growing up,’” she said.

The measure was backed by the state House Speaker Julie McCluskie, who said to the House committee which heard the bill, reports Mr. Lamb, “‘A birth is more expensive than an abortion.’” And she claimed, “‘Ultimately, we do achieve a cost savings because of the averted births that will not take place.’”

Blot on Virginia

THE INCIDENCE OF ABORTION IS UP IN VIRGINIA, reports Emily Mangiaracina for LifeSiteNews, increasing “by 5,500 from 2023 to 2024, driven mostly by out-of-state women. According to the Guttmacher Institute,” she explains, “Virginia’s number of abortions inflicted on the babies of out-of-state women increased by about 4,300 that year, likely due to many travelers from Florida. … ‘Virginia is the second-closest state for Florida residents to seek an abortion after six weeks’ gestation (and the closest without a mandated waiting period),’ noted the report” from Guttmacher.

North Carolina law requires a 72-hour waiting period, reports LifeSiteNews. But in Virginia, “abortion is legal until the third trimester,” writes Ms. Mangiaracina. “In 2020,” she explains, “Gov. Ralph Northam [D] signed legislation repealing abortion regulations such as mandatory ultrasounds and counseling 24 hours before the lethal practice.”

Though Virginia elected pro-life GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin nearly four years ago, the legislature has been dominated by pro-abortion Democrats during his entire tenure. Elections are scheduled for this November.

Facing Reality

First-person comments by Planned Parenthood victim at March 27, 2025, Capitol Hill news conference, transcript furnished by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) to LifeSiteNews

             Good afternoon! My name is Toni McFadden, and I’m here to share my personal story – one that reveals exactly why Planned Parenthood must be fully defunded.

             I was a senior in high school when I walked through the doors of Planned Parenthood’s death facility. They had given me a false hope that if I aborted my baby, my parents would never have to find out, my already unstable relationship would have a fighting chance, and my life would go back to normal.

             After receiving an ultrasound and asking the nurse multiple times if I could see the screen that was strategically faced against the wall, she reluctantly showed me but quickly stated that my seven-week-old baby – and I quote – “was nothing, just the size of a pea.”

             It would have been too honest of her to tell me that my baby already had a beating heart or that, at the moment of conception, their DNA was unique to them and would never ever be created again.

             Instead of the truth, I was given the poisonous chemical abortion pills. The first set was taken with the abortionist, and the second set was given to me to take in the comfort of my home. I was told it would only be like a heavy period.

             I had complications, like many women who think this is a simple thing to do. My pills didn’t work correctly, and when I called the abortion facility, they simply said: “This is why we gave you two sets of the pills. Just take the second set, and you will be fine.” I wasn’t fine. It would be the last I would hear from them.

             I was so uneducated and had the goal of no one finding out. I ended up experiencing severe hemorrhaging that began while I was in school about a month later. I remember when I got home, keeping this secret from my parents. I went to the bathroom, to my bed, for hours just bleeding.

             If I could go back, knowing what I know now – I would give my baby life without hesitation.

             Planned Parenthood didn’t care about me. They didn’t care about my baby. And they don’t care about women, especially minority women.

             They exploit women for their own financial gain. This is why they must be defunded.

             Abortion doesn’t solve our problems – it adds to them. Abortion doesn’t bring healing – it leaves deep wounds and lifelong regret.

             No woman should have to walk through what I walked through – Believing lies and left to suffer alone.

             Abortion only reaps one thing: death.

             So today, I stand not just for myself – but for every woman who’s been deceived. For every child who was never given a chance.

             We must stop funding the lies. We must stop funding the pain. We must stop funding death.

             From the first heartbeat to the final breath, every life holds value. Every soul deserves a chance. Life is a gift worth defending.

IVF Is Not the Answer

April 7, 2025, Live Action report by Nancy Flanders presenting a speech on IVF

             Board-certified OB/Gyn Dr. Lauren Rubal joined Live Action at its 2025 Young Leaders Summit on March 22 to discuss the timely and sensitive topic of in vitro fertilization before an audience of 1,500.

             Rubal discussed the issues surrounding the declining fertility rate, including the societal expectation to delay having children. Delaying childbearing means women have a “lower pool” of eggs when they are “ready” to have children, making it more difficult to get pregnant. Combined with a 50% drop in sperm count in men from Western countries over the last 40 years, it is becoming more difficult for couples to get pregnant. Rubal explained that five years ago, she told patients that one in eight couples would experience infertility – but now that number is one in six, and it’s pushing more people toward IVF.

             “So, what’s the issue, right?” she asked. “Isn’t IVF pro-life, as people argue, because it helps create more life?” She continued:

             “Is this the answer … to our population decline and in the face of impending doom? Absolutely not. Not scientifically, not medically, not morally and not ethically.

             “How can I tell you this? Well, I’m objectively an expert in it. I did a three-year reproductive endocrinology and infertility fellowship; after my four years of Ob/Gyn training, I practiced as an IVF doctor. I was involved with some of the very procedures that I’m about to discuss with you: I sat in front of patients, and I grieved with them, and I counseled them, and I talked to them about infertility and about IVF, and, like the vast majority of my colleagues, truly thought I was doing a good thing, because wanting to have children is a good and ordered desire.

             “But I was absolutely wrong on how to do it. I didn’t realize it at the time.”

             Rubal explained that doctors are trained that IVF is the best way to treat infertility, but she eventually realized that reproductive issues are symptoms of other health issues that need to be healed first.

             “I also realized that I was playing God,” she said. “I was literally involved in life and death for at least thousands of embryos. These are unique, irreplaceable human beings who, I knew from my scientific training, were created at the moment of fertilization – the moment that egg is fertilized by sperm … .”

             Despite the pain of infertility, she said, “Children are not a right owed to people.”

             In addition, Rubal said that “medically, IVF actually isn’t all that it’s presumed to be. I saw with my own eyes that nothing in infertility is 100%. The average live-birth chance in the US from a woman who undergoes an egg retrieval procedure is 37%.”

             Over 30 years, she explained, there have been about 333,000 live births from IVF – but because seven to 11 embryos are made in each cycle, 6.5 million embryos have been created. This means, she explained, that just five percent of embryos created through IVF over three decades made it to birth. Ninety-five percent are destroyed, die during the process or have been left frozen. Many will be biopsied and screened for health conditions and then intentionally destroyed when they fail to make the cut.

             However, restorative reproductive medicine takes a different approach, explained Rubal. “If there’s a fertility problem, there has to be an underlying reason. Identifying and hopefully correcting those underlying reasons will then resolve and restore reproductive health,” she said. “Put another way, restorative reproductive medicine is a scientific approach to cooperate and restore normal physiology and anatomy, as opposed to methods that are going to circumvent or destroy or suppress it.”

             Rubal encouraged the young people in attendance by offering practical steps to help with their own fertility. In addition to ditching hormonal birth control, Rubal encouraged students to limit processed foods, eat organic, and make sure your gut is working well. She advised men not to use steroids or take testosterone, and advised them to learn about their own reproductive cycles.

A Step Beyond

April 25, 2025, LifeSiteNews report by Doug Mainwaring

             Washington State Democratic legislators have sent to Gov. Bob Ferguson [D] a bill that, if enacted, will make it more difficult for law enforcement to investigate infanticide and sex trafficking. Deceptively titled “An Act relating to dignity in pregnancy loss,” SSB-5093 “repeals the crime of concealing a birth and guts the authority of coroners to investigate suspicious infant deaths unless there’s an obvious, provable crime attached,” according to conservative talk show host Jason Rantz.

             “Democrats are disguising it as a measure about ‘dignity in pregnancy loss,’” noted Rantz. “It’s not. It amounts to a state-sanctioned shield for traffickers, abusers and anyone else looking to cover up a dead infant. … Unless a baby is clearly murdered with intent and there’s a smoking gun, no one’s allowed to ask questions. That’s not compassion. That’s enabling murder,” said Rantz.

             Republican State Rep. Brian Burnett, a former sheriff, had urged his colleagues during a floor discussion to amend the bill to hold traffickers accountable, according to a report by The Center Square. Burnett shared the harrowing story of his own adopted daughter’s experience with human trafficking. “She was impregnated many times at a very young age,” recounted Burnett, “from miscarriage to forced abortion to delivering some of those premature babies not knowing what happened to them and even later bringing back a different baby and telling her, ‘You will care for it now until we say different.’”

             Unmoved, Speaker Pro Tempore Rep. Chris Stearns, a Democrat, shut Burnett down, accusing him of impugning the arguments of others.

             “These are often very young girls who end up pregnant because they are being used as sex objects, and the pimps and traffickers abuse them and often beat them up because they got pregnant and cause a miscarriage,” Rep. Jim Walsh, a Republican, told The Center Square. “Sometimes a baby is born and neglected and dies; I mean, it’s horrible stuff,” said Walsh. “The reason the law should stay on the books is it gives prosecutors and cops a tool for investigating these situations where a baby is born and dies and make sure there is no criminality involved.”

             “By decriminalizing the concealment of the remains of a child who was born alive and then died, it legalizes infanticide,” declared the American Center for Law & Justice in a letter to the governor imploring him not to sign the legislation into law. “This bill removes a major pillar in the protection of pre-born and infant life by repealing Washington Rev. Code Sec. 9.02.050 (“Concealing Birth”). That statute makes it a misdemeanor for anyone to conceal the birth of a child by ‘any disposition of its dead body; whether the child died before or after its birth.’ This law accords with other laws that require the proper disposition of a human body after death,” the letter states.

             The ACLJ further explained: “At the heart of our concern is the bill’s repeal of Washington statute 9.02.050, which criminalizes the concealment of a child’s birth. This law plays a vital role in protecting both mothers and infants from abuse, violence and exploitation. Its removal opens the door for infanticide to be carried out without fear of legal consequence, very relevant in cases involving trafficking, coercion or domestic abuse. Further, instead of bolstering investigations into suspicious infant deaths, SB-5093 removes the coroner’s jurisdiction to investigate the death of an infant after a botched abortion. Specifically, the bill strikes a key phrase from current law, removing the ability of the coroner to investigate ‘where death results from a known or suspected abortion.’ This dangerous bill effectively legalizes infanticide.”

             “SB-5093 doesn’t bring dignity to pregnancy loss,” Jason Rantz said. “It brings darkness, secrecy and the disturbing reality that in Washington State, babies can be born, die and be swept under the rug without anyone daring to ask why. But they call this progress.”

Life Advocacy Briefing editor’s note: It is not our custom to publish an entire news report which is not classified as a commentary. We chose to do so with this item because it is complicated and unprecedented, and our readers need to know all the reported details. We do so also out of admiration for Rep. Burnett and his unusual courage in his appeal to his colleagues from the personal experience of his own family. Having served in a state legislature for 16 years, your editor recognizes exceptional political courage on the rare occasion when she sees it.

Wisdom from the Great Communicator

EXCERPT #3 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

             As an act of “raw judicial power” (to use Justice White’s biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority in Roe v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court’s decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.