Life Advocacy Briefing

Question of the Week

HOW CAN ABORTION BE CONSIDERED “HEALTH CARE” when one human being is killed and another damaged?

Pressure Mounts on RU-486

THREE G.O.P. SENATORS SENT A LETTER last week to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her, reports Zachary Mettler for the Daily Citizen, “to investigate whether drug manufacturers have misrepresented the abortion pill’s safety and efficacy, harming thousands of women” and killing their babies. The letter was signed by Senators Steve Daines (MT), Jim Banks (IN) and Marsha Blackburn (TN) and cited recent study conducted by the Ethics & Public Policy Center, which “found nearly 11% of women who abort their child with the abortion pill suffer from a serious adverse event, including sepsis, infection or hemorrhaging, within 45 days of taking mifepristone. The study found that women are 22 times more likely to be harmed from the abortion pill than the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) previously acknowledged.” And just about all their babies died, with the exception of those saved by abortion pill reversal therapy.

What is worse: the study examined statistics from the seven years before January 2017 – “well before the FDA relaxed safety guidance on the abortion pill in 2021,” writes Mr. Mettler.

The senators’ letter, notes the Daily Citizen, “chronicles how former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden relaxed key safety guidelines regulating the use of the abortion pill. Particularly, the Biden FDA ended the ‘in-person dispensing requirement’ for mifepristone in 2021, allowing women to access the abortion pill through the mail without seeing a physician in person, and allowed retail pharmacies to being selling mifepristone rather than requiring licensed physicians to administer the drug.

“The senators write,” reports Mr. Mettler: “‘It is unclear what processes, if any, the FDA … followed when loosening – and then waiving – the safety regulations originally put in place to protect women. It is also unclear if the FDA worked with the manufacturer of Mifeprex (the brand name of mifepristone), Danco Laboratories, in considering new data, new clinical trials or real-world market analysis that justified doing away with safety standards.

“‘Given the breadth of the data and the implications for public health, we respectfully urge swift action to determine whether federal law was violated that compromised the safety of American women,’ they appealed,” quoted by the Daily Citizen.

Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has, reports Mr. Mettler, “seen the EPPC’s data and described it as ‘alarming.’” After the study was released, the Secretary “directed FDA Commissioner Marty Makary to conduct a ‘complete review’ of mifepristone and its side effects.” (Its intended effect is reason enough to withdraw FDA marketing clearance.)

Great Pick!

FLORIDA GOV. RON DeSANTIS (R) HAS APPOINTED “a pro-life legislator and adoptee,” notes Matt Lamb for LifeSiteNews, “to serve as his new lieutenant governor” after Jeannette Nunez resigned to assume the presidency of Florida International University, based in Miami.

Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (R) “began serving in the Florida state senate in 2023,” writes Mr. Lamb. “He also served in the US Army for more than two decades.”

Florida Right to Life, in a news release, called the new Lt. Governor “‘solidly pro-life,’” reports Mr. Lamb, and noted he had “‘voted in favor of our Heartbeat bill.’”

At a September, 2024, GOP event, in commenting on the then-pending Amendment 4, which would have undone the critical Heartbeat measure and undermined all protections in Florida law, writes Mr. Lamb, then-Sen. Collins said, “‘I am – since day one – I am pro-God, I am pro-gun and I am pro-life. Ultimately, I’m adopted. I have fought to protect children from day one.’” And he went on to call the later-defeated pro-abortion amendment “‘unfettered, unregulated, unequivocally wrong.’” And in The Floridian Press, also quoted by Mr. Lamb, then-Sen. Collins declared, “‘We have to stand up for what we believe in. We have to fight for what is right. If we don’t do it, nobody will.’” The amendment was defeated after vigorous opposition from Gov. DeSantis and his administration.

Lt. Gov. Collins “also explained how being adopted shaped his worldview,” writes Mr. Lamb. “‘Ultimately, I’m blessed to have been adopted,’” he said. “‘I’m blessed to be able to fight for the rights of people who, frankly, can’t fight for themselves … .’” Amen.

Major Retailer Rejects RU-486

THE MAJOR MEMBERS-ONLY WHOLESALE CHAIN COSTCO “confirmed” last week, reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews, that “it will not stock the abortion drug mifepristone in its pharmacies for the foreseeable future.”

The company cited “‘lack of demand,’” writes Mr. Freiburger, “while pro-lifers maintain that a successful pressure campaign is the true reason.” It is probably a little of both, but in any case, the news offers our readers a reason for thankful prayer.

The LSN reporter quotes a memo from Alliance Defending Freedom in “a lobbying campaign to retailers: ‘The “growing market opportunity” of abortion drugs is legally and politically fraught,’” ADF wrote, “‘raises significant reputational issues, and reduces the company’s customer base, both literally and because it would drive away many existing customers.’”

ADF attorney Michael Ross responded to the company’s announcement, quoted by LSN, “‘We applaud Costco for doing the right thing by its shareholders and resisting activist calls to sell abortion drugs. Retailers like Costco keep their doors open by selling a lifetime of purchases to families, both large and small. They have nothing to gain and much to lose by becoming abortion dispensaries. Retail pharmacies exist to serve the health and wellness of their customers, but abortion drugs like mifepristone undermine that mission by putting women’s health at risk.’”

Rolling Back Progress

AN OBAMA-APPOINTED FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT JUDGE RULED on Aug. 13 against a regulation offering employers an opt-out from including abortion and contraception coverage in sponsoring employee healthcare insurance, reports Zachary Stieber for The Epoch Times (ET).

“Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said the rule, and a similar rule relating to moral objections,” writes Mr. Stieber, “were arbitrary and capricious and in violation of federal law.”

The enjoined rules “were put into place in 2018 during the first Trump Administration,” notes Mr. Stieber. Judge Beetlestone called them “‘arbitrary and capricious’” and, the ET reports, were challenged in federal court by the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, apparently fronting for the abortion cartel.

The ET report quotes Mark Rienzi, president of Becket, a nonprofit, public interest legal institute, which represented the Little Sisters of the Poor as a defendant-intervenor in the case: “‘The district court blessed an out-of-control effort by Pennsylvania and New Jersey to attack the Little Sisters and religious liberty. … It’s bad enough that the district court issued a nationwide ruling invalidating federal religious conscience rules. But even worse,’” he said, reports Epoch Times, “‘is that the district court simply ducked the glaring constitutional issues in this case, after waiting five years and not even holding a hearing. It is absurd to think the Little Sisters might need yet another trip to the Supreme Court to end what has now been more than a dozen years of litigation over the same issue. We will fight as far as we need to fight to protect the Little Sisters’ right to care for the elderly in peace.’”

The case has already been litigated to the Supreme Court level. In 2020, the high court ruled, notes Mr. Stieber, that agencies enforcing ObamaCare provisions could “create exemptions. ‘The plain language of the statute,’” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas as writer for the majority, “‘clearly allows the departments to create the preventive care standards as well as the religious and moral exemptions.’” The high court majority “also wrote,” reports the ET, “that the departments [implementing ObamaCare] could consider the Religious Freedom Restoration Act when issuing rules.” And Justice Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion, expressly said “the departments did not act in arbitrarily or capriciously” in the same question being relitigated just now before Judge Beetlestone. The Supreme Court, notes Mr. Stieber, had “sent the cases back to the lower courts,” no doubt expecting lower-court judges to take the Supreme Court’s own opinion into account.

Watch Out!

PRO-LIFE ADVOCATES IN SOUTH CAROLINA FACE A CHALLENGE in the gubernatorial candidacy of US Rep. Nancy Mace (R). Despite her solid pro-life voting record on bills which have come before Congress, the Trump-backing Congresswoman appeared to pivot in last fall’s election.

Writing for LifeSiteNews on Oct. 14, 2024, Jonathon VanMaren reported, Rep. Mace posted a video stating: “‘I’m talking to all women across South Carolina. I want you to know that nobody’s going to work or fight harder for you. The reason that South Carolina has exceptions for rape and incest in its state law is because in 2019, I told my story about being raped as a teenager on the state House floor. I’ve worked very hard. I was the first Member of Congress after the crazy Alabama IVF ruling in either party to file a bill to protect women and their access to IVF. I was the first Republican to speak out after the crazy 1864 ruling [?]. I’ve spoken out about the unconstitutionality of court cases in Texas regarding mifepristone and trisomy 18. I’m the most vocal woman on women’s rights and women’s issues in the Republican Party.’

“To sum up,” wrote Mr. VanMaren last October, “that is a Republican Congresswoman running on a platform of support for the abortion pill, support for permitting women to abort babies with disabilities, calling a court ruling that affirmed the humanity of embryos ‘crazy,’ and calling a state pro-life law ‘crazy,’ for good measure. All of this, [Rep.] Mace makes clear, is about ‘women’s rights.’ The difference between Mace’s talking points and Kamala Harris’s,” wrote Mr. VanMaren, “is one of degree, not kind. She accepts all of the pro-abortion premises. She’s campaigning on them.”

It is not yet clear how she will position herself in campaigning for governor in a solidly pro-life state, seeking to succeed a solidly pro-life retiring governor. But Mr. VanMaren, last October, added that, “The same day,” her campaign posted a video positioning her “as fighting for ‘exceptions.’ She followed that up with another post,” Mr. VanMaren wrote at the time: “‘Republicans can’t afford to stay quiet on women’s issues and abortions.’ Republicans, of course,” he wrote, “have not been quiet on abortion. What [Ms.] Mace is saying is that the GOP cannot afford to oppose abortion, at least in most circumstances. … Mace,” he wrote, “is using Planned Parenthood/Democrat talking points.”

Sobering Stats, Penetrating Truths

Aug. 8, 2025, LifeSiteNews commentary by Emily Mangiaracina

             About 28% of Generation Z in the US has been aborted, according to statistics from the Guttmacher Institute that went viral this week. According to Guttmacher estimates for the number of abortions performed each year in the US from 1997 to 2011, the birth years of Gen Z, about 19.5 million conceived human beings of that generation have been killed by abortion. There are currently an estimated 69.3 million Gen Z members in the US.

             The most recent World Health Organization (WHO) data indicate the rate of abortion of Gen Z babies in the US nearly matches the estimated percentage of preborn babies killed worldwide by abortion: 29%, or three out of every 10 pregnancies. Statistics from England and Wales show very similar abortion rates. “The percentage of conceptions leading to abortion was 29.7%; this is a rise from 26.5% in 2021 and the highest proportion on record,” an Office of National Statistics report from 2022 data found.

             “I think that some things deserve to be said over and over and over again, and in fact cannot be said often enough,” Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek remarked in response to the vital statistic. “Especially when it comes to abortion, which to me is such an unequivocal evil. We have to repeat these facts all the time.”

             Vlaardingerbroek explained that the reason she always opposed abortion, even before converting to Catholicism and becoming a mother, is that “scientifically, intellectually and morally speaking, the only valid, good faith and consistent argument that one can make is that life begins at conception. That means a separate human being has been formed in the womb. The stage in which that life finds itself, or whether it’s dependent on the mother – or any other person, for that matter – is not decisive for whether or not it has the right to life.” This means abortion kills “the most innocent being on the planet of the earth,” Vlaardingerbroek continued. “You kill something so fragile, so worthy of love and life. And I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t even want to admit to.”

             While sharing the statistic indicating that almost one in three Gen Z babies are killed by abortion, investigative journalist Lara Logan shared a clip from an interview she conducted in May with Angela Stanton-King, a conservative author and speaker. Stanton-King addressed the left’s push for abortion “rights” in the country, explaining, “The Democrats don’t want to solve your problems. They want to abort your problems.”

             Stanton-King recalled the abortion bus that was brought to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago when Kamala Harris was running for President. “They are performing abortions on site. Human sacrifice on site. … And when you go back and look at that video, every woman getting on and off that bus was black. They are celebrating terminating black life while saying black lives matter. It is the most diabolical thing I have ever seen in my life.” …

Chilling

Aug. 21, 2025, BreakPoint commentary by John Stonestreet and Timothy Padgett

             In a recent guest essay in the New York Times, three medical doctors proposed a solution for the lack of suitable organs available for transplant in the US. Because an estimated 15 people die every day waiting for a transplant, they said, “We need to broaden the definition of death.”

             Their basic argument is that because the existing medical definition of death is too narrow, good organs are left on the table. Most organs donated for transplant can only be taken from someone who is clinically dead, meaning that the person’s heart has stopped or there is no brain activity even if the heart continues. The crisis, according to the authors, is because too many viable organs are damaged by a lack of blood flow or not enough people are dying with an active heart but a dead brain. Thus, they argue: “The solution, we believe, is to broaden the definition of brain death to include irreversibly comatose patients on life support. Using this definition, these patients would be legally dead regardless of whether a machine restored the beating of their heart.” In other words, people in “irreversible” comas should be considered dead, so that, as long as a person had consented to organ donation, “removal would proceed without delay.”

             Not only are the authors asking all of us to ignore the countless accounts of miraculous cases in which people emerged from comas thought to be “irreversible,” but also many cases in which patients were rushed to death in order to secure their organs. They’re also asking us to ignore the movies. Back in 1978, Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, directed a TV movie called Coma … . In it, a young medical student discovers that otherwise healthy young people are slipping into comas. The cause is a group of doctors hoping to harvest organs, using many of the same arguments offered in the NYT piece.

             As a whistleblower from the UK warned on X in a post that featured an interview with Dr. Paul Byrne: “You cannot take organs from a cadaver. The best organ donors have a beating heart, a circulation, under 30 years old and ideally on a ventilator. Basically, someone is being murdered to give someone else organs. The entire brain-dead scenario is a lie.”

             Ethical scenarios like this were unthinkable until quite recently in human history. Until a few decades ago, a broken or diseased organ was a death sentence. There wasn’t much doctors could do. In 1967 doctors pulled off the first heart transplant. Since, thousands of lives have been saved through organ transplants. And yet, somehow, this groundbreaking and remarkable life-saving medical innovation became a crisis. The ability to transplant organs has become a shortage of organs. Because there are more people that can be saved, we are told there are more people who should die.

             This kind of moral reductionism of human beings is both degrading and dangerous. As Wesley J. Smith said at National Review in response to the Times piece: “We must not yield to the utilitarian temptation in health care. Pretending that a patient is dead does not make him deceased. This proposal – and others like it – have the awful potential to seriously corrode trust in the ethics of transplant medicine among an already wary public.” …

Wisdom from the Great Communicator

EXCERPT #16 from Abortion & the Conscience of the Nation, 1983 treatise by then-President Ronald Reagan, published in Human Life Review, then as a hardcover book from Thomas Nelson Publishers

             As a nation, we must choose between the sanctity of life ethic and the “equality of life” ethic. I have no trouble identifying the answer our nation has always given to this basic question, and the answer that I hope and pray it will give in the future. America was founded by men and women who shared a vision of the value of each and every individual. They stated this vision clearly from the very start in the Declaration of Independence, using words that every schoolboy and schoolgirl can recite*: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

*Life Advocacy Briefing editor’s note: If you have children or grandchildren of school age, ask them whether they can recite the preamble to America’s Declaration of Independence. If they cannot (above the age of, say, eight), begin now to pray about how you and your friends or even acquaintances can approach the school authorities to restore this truth of America’s history and our foundation of liberty to the knowledge and awareness of our coming generations. Sadly, we should not, in these post-Reagan days, take the passing down of the foundations of America for granted. Each of us could take care of this duty within our own families, but our country needs us to restore it also to those institutions to which we have conferred power to shape the future.