Life Advocacy Briefing

She Did It

AS WE EXPECTED, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) signed the radical legislation on which we reported last week – all-out abortion legalization through the full nine months of a baby’s gestation. She was surrounded by a gaggle of female abortion cheerleaders, behaving as though they had achieved something. That “something” is, at best, a dark shadow across one of America’s 13 original states, repudiating the Founders’ expressed embrace of the right to Life conferred by our Creator.

“[Gov.] Healey said the law is intended to ensure families facing medical complications late in pregnancy can abort their babies in Massachusetts rather than having to travel out of state,” reports Bonny Chu for FoxNews. “Those complications can include maternal health complications and fatal diagnoses,” but the new law has no limits, so it is not at all focused on “maternal health complications.”

“During the bill signing,” writes Ms. Chu, “[Gov.] Healey pledged to keep abortion safe, legal and accessible in Massachusetts for as long as she remains governor.” Legal and accessible, no doubt, but safe for whom?

The governor’s action is stirring cries for excommunication of the governor from the Catholic church, in which Gov. Healey claims affiliation. The Catholic bishops of Massachusetts, reports Emily Mangiaracina for LifeSiteNews, last month “condemned the bill as ‘radical’ and ‘gravely immoral.’” Whether they will move beyond that to take action with respect to the governor’s affiliation remains to be seen.

A petition embedded within the online story can be found – and subscribed to – at https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/sign-the-petition-governor-must-be-excommunicated-for-approving-abortion-until-birth. It urges the bishops of Massachusetts to formally declare the governor’s excommunication.

Thank You, Sen. Ernst

SEN. JONI ERNST (R-IA) ASKED WHAT MAY HAVE BEEN a startling question of Dr. Anthony Fauci during his recent stonewalling before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. It wasn’t about whether coronavirus emerged from a US-taxpayer-funded grant to a lab in Wuhan, Red China. Nor was it about his inappropriate public health pronouncements during the Covid epidemic.

But it drew the same response as the other 110 questions. The former long-time chief of the National Institute of Allergies & Infectious Diseases invoked his 5^th Amendment privilege to refuse to answer. But the question itself brought a discomforting fact to the attention of the American people.

“Dr. Fauci, yes or no,” Sen. Ernst asked: “Do you think that human aborted parts should be put into mice for coronavirus research?” Because that’s what he has been funding at the University of Pittsburgh. Crickets.

There Go the Fed Med Researchers Again

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (N.I.H.) IS FUNDING a doctoral study, based at the University of Maryland, reports The College Fix writer Brianna Chapman, with the stunning title: “‘Longitudinal Mixed Methods Analysis of Risk and Protective Factors Influencing Psychological Distress in Sexual and Gender Minority Birthing People,’ seek[ing] to ‘elucidate how social support and medical care contribute to the mental health trajectories of SGM birthing people throughout the perinatal period.’”

According to the NIH website, the “study” being undertaken by a student named “Pond Ezra” began in February and is expected to run “though at least 2029,” reports Ms. Chapman. “Ezra uses the honorific ‘MX.’ and ‘they’ pronouns.”

Planned Parenthood Closing Three Shops

DESPITE HAVING ENSHRINED ABORTION into the Michigan state constitution in 2022, Planned Parenthood appears to be struggling in the Wolverine state.

“Three Planned Parenthood facilities will close in Michigan,” reports Matt Lamb for LifeSiteNews, “as the one-year, temporary defunding of abortion vendors took a toll on its profits. Planned Parenthood of Michigan said,” writes Mr. Lamb, “that the closures were driven by ‘$5.6 million in uncompensated and undercompensated care.’” “Care”?

Planned Parenthood cited not just its one-year, now-expired block from federal funding but also, notes Mr. Lamb, “its exclusion from Title X ‘family planning’ funds as a reason for its financial losses.”

Said the outfit’s Michigan CEO, Paula Greear, quoted by Mr. Lamb, “‘We cannot build the future of patient care [sic] on federal funding that can be stripped away whenever political power changes hands.’”

Building your empire on the political winds undergirding taxpayer funding is not such a secure plan after all, even if you can fool enough people into thinking your “services” are “vital.” And certainly, taxpayer funding for the killing of future Americans is not an entitlement.

Could This Be an Ideologically Motivated Judge?

A KANSAS DISTRICT JUDGE HAS BLOCKED “several pro-life rules,” reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews, “aimed at ensuring abortion-minded women are informed of the ramifications of and alternatives to abortion.”

What is this judge afraid of? we ask. How can it be wrong to provide mothers making such a consequential decision time and facts to inform that decision?

But it was the same judge, Krishnan Christopher Jayaram, who in 2023 “temporarily blocked a then-new law that required women to be informed of abortion pill reversal (APR),” notes Mr. Freiburger, “as well as a 1997 law imposing a 24-hour waiting period on abortion. The judge ruled the laws likely violated a state-level ‘fundamental right’ to abortion declared by the Kansas Supreme Court in 2021.”

The judge has now “returned to the matter,” reports Mr. Freiburger, “striking down those laws as well as rules requiring abortion seekers to state a reason they want to abort and that they be informed of abortion risks, the gestational age of their baby and more. …

“‘After waiting more than 10 months to issue a decision, Judge Jayaram waited until just hours before being sworn in to the Kansas Supreme Court to strike down the Woman’s Right to Know Act, eliminating nearly 30 years of commonsense protections that helped ensure women received the information they needed before making a life-altering decision,’ responded Kansans for Life communications director Mackenzie Ayers,” quoted in the LifeSiteNews report. “‘The ruling leaves women even more vulnerable to a predatory abortion industry that consistently puts its own profits ahead of women.’”

Furthermore, the same judge took on abortion pill reversal, calling the remedy an “‘untested and experimental idea with no legitimate grounding in existing, validated, peer-reviewed scientific processes or mainstream medical practice,’” reports Mr. Freiburger.

“However, as pro-life OB/Gyn Dr. William Lile has explained,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “APR is based on principles that are well understood from progesterone’s common FDA-approved use in a variety of other pregnancy-related situations. According to the Abortion Pill Rescue Network (APRN), ‘initial studies of APR have shown it has a 64-68% success rate.’ Heartbeat International,” notes LifeSiteNews, “also publishes first-hand testimonials from women who have benefited from the technique.

“In 2023, the academic journal Scientific Reports published a study,” reports Mr. Freiburger, “by Franciscan University of Steubenville neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Samut that found ‘progesterone, administered shortly after mifepristone, reversed the effects of mifepristone (i.e., reversed the abortion) with living fetuses present at the end of gestation in 81% of cases… .’” The prescription of progesterone is the very definition of abortion pill reversal, and its effectiveness should be welcomed and not thwarted by the likes of Judge Hayaram.

Getting There …

Aug. 4, 2026, The Washington Stand commentary by Quinn Delamater, TWS reporter

             According to podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey, phrases such as “abortion is health care,” “love is love” and “no human being is illegal” are used to emotionally manipulate voters into having misplaced empathy. But the days of toxic empathy may be over. According to a new poll commissioned by Concerned Women for America (CWA), voters are leaning towards common sense – taking a conservative stance on cultural issues as the midterm elections loom.

             “The results here clearly show voters are supportive of a socially conservative agenda. For pro-lifers, in particular, the findings that almost 70% of voters agree with reinstating the FDA’s in-person requirement for dispensing the abortion drug mifepristone, are encouraging,” Matt Carpenter, the director of FRC Action, told The Washington Stand.

             The CWA poll further found that “over 69% believe it is very or somewhat important in deciding who to vote for” in the upcoming midterm election “that candidates oppose forcing female athletes to participate in sports and share locker rooms with biological boys/men identifying as girls/women.” Other topics that are hot-button topics for voters this election season include the abortion drug, LGBT content that targets children and child-mutilating gender-transition surgeries.

             “Candidates running for office this year must recognize that voters are widely supportive of protecting women’s health, the ability to raise children, fairness in women’s sports, protecting children from gender transitions and from TV content with LGBTQ themes,” said Penny Nance, CEO and president of CWA. “We are encouraged by the poll results, especially in this politically divisive time. This poll should serve as a roadmap for conservative candidates.”

             Talk has recently been abuzz about mifepristone, the abortion-inducing drug that many women can easily access through mail order. Attorney General Todd Blanche recently vowed, during his Senate confirmation hearing, to address the issue.

             “We [the Dept. of Justice] are trying to let the FDA do their work so that we can work to protect the lives of the unborn children and, frankly, the states’ laws,” Blanche told Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) earlier this month.

             CWA found that “over 67% definitely or probably believe that the FDA should again require an in-person doctor’s visit before dispensing the abortion drug,” while 53% of voters believe that protecting the unborn and reproductive policy [is] the most important issue to them.

             “This is a policy the FDA can take care of at any time; it just requires the political will to do so. Reinstating these safeguards are a minimum ask for pro-lifers, and as the polling shows, are popular among the electorate,” Carpenter observed. “And political will can be bolstered by polls like this. Republicans would be wise to embrace this socially conservative agenda and take every opportunity now, while they enjoy control of the White House and Congress, to show voters they are aligned with these winning policies.”

             Additionally, a small margin of men and women believe “companies that pay for abortion services in their health policy or travel for an abortion should also help with employee childcare for those women who choose to give birth to their child.” Seventy-nine percent of women surveyed by CWA agreed with this statement, while 77% of men agreed as well. …

Life Advocacy Briefing editor’s note: We believe it is important that pro-life candidates clearly state their commitment to protecting innocent, developing human babies. The incremental reforms covered in this poll are encouraging and can be embraced by pro-life candidates as an “At least we ought to …” concession to appeal to not-quite-there voters, but only as a step toward justice and mercy in our law, not as a sufficient expression of a worthy goal. Pro-life voters should not – we hope will not – see a candidate’s embrace of doctor-supervised ingestion of the abortion drug as a sufficient commitment to the lives of these helpless little ones. The FDA should withdraw marketing approval for this single-use baby poison, not merely require doctor supervision for its prescription.

Underhanded Legislating

Aug. 12, 2026, LifeSiteNews report by Calvin Freiburger

             Bishop Thomas Paprocki, four Catholic doctors and a Lutheran center are suing the state of Illinois over its assisted* suicide law, saying that it will force religious healthcare providers to participate in euthanasia against their consciences.

             … Stand-alone legislation failed to make it through either Democrat-controlled chamber of the state legislature earlier in the year, but activists had greater success smuggling it into an unrelated bill on food sanitary preparation rules. The amendment states that “Medical aid in dying is part of general medical care and complements other end-of-life options, such as comfort care, pain control, palliative care and hospice care.”

             Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bill the next month, defying a direct appeal from Pope Leo XIV.

             The law requires someone who wishes to undergo euthanasia to make the request to end his or her life both verbally and in writing, then repeat it verbally at least five days after the initial request. Multiple Illinois health systems have since declared that they will refuse to participate.

             On Tuesday, the Thomas More Society announced that it was representing Diocese of Springfield’s Bishop Thomas John Paprocki, the Lutheran Care Center and four Catholic physicians in a lawsuit maintaining that the law “threaten[s] the integrity of religious healthcare institutions’ identity and mission by requiring them to allow their own employees to promote assisted suicide on premises, and to assist in patient suicides off-site” without discipline or termination; and that because the law “decrees that its procedures ‘do not constitute suicide [or] assisted suicide,’ a vaguely worded and overtly viewpoint-based ban on ‘misinformation to obstruct access’” would imperil “any healthcare facility that calls assisted suicide what it is and distinguishes it from legitimate health care.”

             “Illinois is forcing faith-based hospitals, nuns and doctors into supporting the state’s assisted suicide regime,” said Thomas More’s Peter Breen. “The law commands Catholic hospitals, religious nursing homes and faithful doctors to promote suicide’s alleged ‘benefits,’ refer patients to suicide drug prescribers and then lie on death certificates to cover it up. This immoral scheme flagrantly violates religious liberty and free speech rights, and we intend to stop it.”

             “At the heart of the Catholic Church’s healthcare ministry is the healing work of Christ – to stand with the suffering, to comfort the dying and to affirm the God-given dignity of every human life,” added Bishop Paprocki. “Illinois’s assisted suicide law undermines that mission by forcing Catholic hospitals and those who serve in them to push death onto their most vulnerable patients. We must be free to serve the sick and the dying according to our faith, not according to the state’s mandate.”

             Physician-assisted suicide is currently legal in 14 states plus the District of Columbia, with legalization measures pending in a dozen more.

             As Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF) executive director Matt Valliere has argued, current euthanasia programs in the US constitute discrimination against patients with life-threatening conditions in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA], as when a state “will pay for every instance of assisted suicide” but not palliative care. “I don’t call that autonomy; I call that eugenics.”

             Live Action’s Bridget Sielicki further notes that “because a paralytic is involved, a person can look peaceful while they actually drown to death in their own bodily secretions. Experimental assisted suicide drugs have led to the ‘burning of patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain.’ Furthermore, a study in the medical journal Anaesthesia found that a third of patients took up to 30 hours to die after ingesting assisted suicide drugs, while four percent took seven days to die.”

*Life Advocacy Briefing editor’s note: We quote here as the author wrote, but we strongly prefer the term “abetted suicide,” as the action being named is actually a criminal act, regardless of what the statutory law provides.

Mr. Hyde Closes His Appeal

This week, we reach the end of our paragraph-by-paragraph reprinting of the Sept. 19, 1996, speech by Rep. Henry J. Hyde to the House of Representatives, in which he called for the House to override Pres. Clinton’s veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, HR-1833. Rep. Hyde has long been seen as one of America’s all-time leading orators and a model communicator in the cause of Life. We hope this extensive reprint has been of interest to our readers and that it may have inspired some to speak up more boldly for Life which, throughout our 250 years as a nation, has been a principal shared value.

             … Let our votes prove Raskolnikov is wrong.* There is something we will never get used to. Make it clear, once again – there is justice for all, even for the tiniest, most defenseless in this our land.

*The reference to Raskolnikov comes from the opening of Rep. Hyde’s speech, in which he quoted from Dostoyevsky’s classic novel Crime and Punishment, whose “murderous protagonist Raskolnikov say[s], ‘Man can get used to anything, the beast!’” Was Rep. Hyde correct? Will we never get used to injustice for “the tiniest, most defenseless in this our land”?