Life Advocacy Briefing

You Need to Know This

WE APOLOGIZE FOR HAVING MISSED IT AT THE TIME … but this news is just as important as when we first saw it (or more so).

Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF) announced in July its intention to spend $2 million, reports Calvin Freiburger of LifeSiteNews, “to target nine Republican incumbents in the US House of Representatives it deems politically vulnerable in hopes of flipping the chamber to Democrat control.”

Now here’s the key – Planned Parenthood’s target list. (Readers may wish to clip this item and consider coming to the aid of the nine.) Representatives Juan Ciscomani and Dave Scheikert (Arizona), Gabe Evans (Colorado), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), Bill Huizenga and Tom Barrett (Michigan), Mike Lawler (New York) and, in Pennsylvania, Brian Fitzpatrick and Ryan Mackenzie. 

Planned Parenthood’s fellow traveler, the former National Abortion Rights Action League (now calling itself Reproductive Freedom for All – RFFA), announced, reports Mr. Freiburger, “a $23.5 million ‘My Body My Ballot’ campaign it says will ‘focus on persuading and mobilizing voters – including independents, soft Republicans and split-ticket voters – whose support for abortion access puts them at odds with Trump and his endorsed candidates’ through digital advertising, traditional and social media and on-the-ground activist mobilization, with ‘priority investments’ in Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada.”

Welcome Back, Senator

SEN. MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY) RETURNED TO THE SENATE LAST MONDAY after several months of treatment and recuperation. Among the first votes he cast was his “yes” vote to bring forward the nomination of pro-life attorney Matthew Byrne as US District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio; that motion met a vote of 47 to 46. Senator McConnell, we thank God you returned in time for this vote and pray you will be able to finish your term, ending in January, in strength and health. And we thank God for the appointment and confirmation of a federal judge with an active pro-life history. (The Senate voting records on the Byrne cloture motion and confirmation are published near the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing.)

Good News

THE SENATE ON TUESDAY DID CONFIRM Matthew Byrne to be a federal district judge in Ohio – by a (relatively) robust vote of 52 to 45. Among the President’s nominees in this term, Judge Byrne appears to us to be the most openly pro-life appointee. We celebrate his confirmation and publish the cloture vote and the confirmation vote near the close of this Life Advocacy Briefing.

Respect Life Month – Coming Up

OCTOBER IS ‘RESPECT LIFE’ MONTH, starting with Oct. 4 as National Life Chain Sunday. Visit the website www.lifechain.org for details.

Students for Life of America is hosting a Respect Life Month Virtual Training to stimulate and coordinate life-affirming public education in October. The training session will be on Wednesday, Sept. 23, at 8 p.m. Eastern time, via the internet website https://studentsforlife.org/RespectLifeWebinar.

It’s Fundamental

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO) HAS LED THE PROMULGATION of a new “Declaration for Life” as part of the observance of America’s 250^th birthday. He unveiled the document on Sept. 16, reports Mark Tapscott for The Washington Stand (TWS), “during the first annual Missouri Prayer Breakfast,” which Sen. Hawley hosted. The four-page declaration is being circulated by pro-life groups including Family Research Council and is being circulated nationwide and offered for endorsement by Americans; already, notes Mr. Tapscott, “more than 50,000 Americans from across the country” have subscribed to it.

Quoting the document as presented by TWS: “‘The Declaration of Independence gives us three examples of “inalienable rights;” life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Life is the first of those rights, because it is the condition of the others. It is thus the most foundational of rights. … We believe we have an obligation as Christians and spiritual leaders to remind our countrymen of what Scripture and conscience together proclaim: That every human being, from the moment of our knitting together in our mothers’ wombs, was fearfully and wonderfully made. The divine image each human being bears was not earned. It cannot be forfeited. And it is the first duty of the Church to defend human dignity where it is denied,’ the document states. …

“[Sen.] Hawley told reporters,” writes Mr. Tapscott, “he believes ‘the time has come to ban mifepristone abortions, and I want to emphasize this is something only Congress can do. … Only Congress can act to take mifepristone off of the FDA’s [approved drug] schedule; only Congress can say it will not be available for abortions. That’s something that Congress should do. Congress should stop passing the buck to other people. Congress should stand up and act.’”

Bills to block future sales of mifepristone – whose sole purpose is the killing of a developing human being – have been filed in the House and Senate under the title “Safeguarding Women from Chemical Abortion Act.” Senator Hawley’s bill is numbered S-4066 and has been resting since March in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions. Co-sponsors are GOP Senators Tommy Tuberville (AL), Ted Budd (NC), Bernie Moreno (OH), James Lankford (OK), Mike Rounds (SD), Marsha Blackburn (TN) and John Cornyn (TX). The identical bill has been filed in the House by GOP Rep. Diana Harshbarger (TN), along with GOP Representatives Neal Dunn & Greg Steube (FL), Andrew Clyde (GA), Mary Miller (IL), Tracey Mann (KS), Mark Alford (MO), Chris Smith (NJ), Sheri Biggs & Ralph Norman (SC), John Rose (TN) and Roger Williams (TX). It, too, has been sitting in committee – the Energy & Commerce Committee and the Judiciary Committee – since last March.

Nuggets

• ORAL ARGUMENTS WERE HEARD in the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 9, reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews, “in Louisiana’s lawsuit to force the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to restore safety restrictions on abortion pills that were eliminated by the Biden Administration and have yet to be restored by the Trump Administration.” Louisiana’s lawsuit seeks to restore the in-person doctor consultation before the baby-killing drug can be prescribed, certainly a half-way measure but one which would aid the state’s enforcement of its abortion ban. Currently, the pill pushers’ use of the internet and the US mail to prescribe and deliver mifepristone render the state laws virtually unenforceable, despite Pres. Trump’s insistence that the Dobbs decision should be acknowledged only at the state level and despite a 19^th century still-standing law – the Comstock Act – which bans the use of the mail to ship abortion chemicals.

• A U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE IN CHICAGO – Judge Franklin Vaderrama – has issued a temporary restraining order, sought by the Thomas More Society on behalf of the Catholic Cardinal Blase Cupich, blocking the state of Illinois, reports LifeSiteNews, “from forcing nuns to participate in assisted suicide. … As covered last November by LSN, stand-alone euthanasia 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. … Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bill the next month,” notes LSN, “defying a direct appeal from Pope Leo XIV.”

• TEXAS CONTINUES TO ENFORCE ITS ABORTION BAN, this time rescinding the license, reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews, “of a physician found to have prescribed an abortion-inducing drug in violation of the state’s comprehensive pro-life laws. Texas currently has a near-total abortion ban dating to 1925, a trigger law signed in 2021 and a heartbeat-based abortion ban that was allowed,” notes Mr. Freiburger, “to take effect by the Texas and US Supreme Courts – thanks to its unconventional enforcement mechanism (citizen lawsuits rather than government prosecution) – several months before the nation’s highest court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. It is also,” reports LSN, “one of the multiple states suing the Trump Administration to force a reversal of FDA rules allowing abortion pills to be dispensed by mail, which makes state bans much harder to enforce.”

• “THE 5^th CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HAS REJECTED Planned Parenthood’s appeal of a fraud ruling,” reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews, “that could lead to the abortion giant having to pay back nearly $2 billion in Medicaid payments. The case stems from Louisiana and Texas (among other states) excluding Planned Parenthood from their state Medicaid programs after the 2015 exposure of the organization’s harvesting and sale of aborted baby organs and tissues. Planned Parenthood sued in 2016, but the 5^th Circuit sided with the states in 2020. However, the current suit, filed a year later, is based on whistleblower complaints that PP continued to file Medicaid claims in Louisiana or Texas from 2016 to 2020 while its eligibility was in dispute. The … suit seeks to recover money from [PP] that would total $1.8 billion.”

Hey, EPA, Clamp Down on This!

Aug. 3, 2026, Daily Citizen commentary by Emily Washburn

             The drinking water in two American cities contains mifepristone, the active ingredient in chemical abortions, a bombshell new study shows.

             Mifepristone is the first in the two-step chemical abortion regimen. It kills preborn babies by preventing them from absorbing progesterone, an essential hormone for fetal development.

             The peer-reviewed report, which the Journal of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (JAHM) published on July 20, revealed the amount of mifepristone in water samples from Austin, Texas; Carbondale, Illinois; and Blacksburg, Virginia.

             In each city, researchers collected and tested four water samples from upstream of a water treatment plant, four from downstream of a water treatment plant and four from the tap. Researchers found statistically significant amounts of mifepristone in the upstream and downstream water samples from every city and in the tap water samples from Austin and Carbondale. …

             “Quite frankly, I didn’t expect it to be at the tap,” Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life, who commissioned the collection of the water samples, told the Daily Citizen. “I don’t know, maybe I just had great faith in our wastewater treatment plants.”

             The report itself concluded: “Conventional water treatment was not effective for removing this endocrine-disrupting compound [mifepristone] from water in all cities we tested.”

             The findings are incredibly concerning. Progesterone, the hormone mifepristone prohibits, helps support biological systems in babies, women and men. Though progesterone is more commonly known for the role it plays in women’s health, the report emphasizes, “Low progesterone levels in men have been associated with multiple medical problems including alopecia, bone loss, erectile dysfunction, fatigue and obesity.”

             “This is an everybody problem,” Hawkins emphasizes. “This is something that every American – regardless of how they view abortion – should be very concerned about. You don’t have to be pro-life to want clean drinking water.”

             The true amount of mifepristone-related chemicals in drinking water may be even higher than scientists measured. The report measured unmetabolized mifepristone in the water, or mifepristone which hasn’t been metabolized by the body. The average woman absorbs only about 70% of a mifepristone dose; the remaining 30% enters the water system unmetabolized.

             Researchers believe most of the unmetabolized mifepristone in public water systems enters through the waste of women who ingest chemical abortion pills, because mifepristone is almost exclusively used to end the lives of preborn babies. Chemical abortions now account for more than 60% of American abortions.

             But researchers also did not test the water samples for mifepristone metabolites – the chemical products of a person metabolizing mifepristone. Though chemically different, mifepristone metabolites still suppress progesterone, just like their parent chemical. It is still dangerous for them to build up in our water. Mifepristone metabolites enter public waterways through human waste, too. Tragically, they also enter through the physical remains of chemically aborted babies. Whereas hospitals might have protocols to dispose of human remains, chemical abortions enable mothers to dispose of their babies into the public waste system.

             When Hawkins and SFL were commissioning the report’s research beginning in 2020, they gave a lot of thought to the ethical and medical implications of mifepristone metabolites in the remains of babies. “I got contacted by a supporter of ours who was on our Students for Life email list,” she recalled of the beginning of their work. “She said, ‘I have a friend who works at a wastewater treatment plant here in California, and he’s seen these babies [in wastewater].”

             They collect [the babies] at the wastewater treatment plant. They get caught in the nets. …

             “The FDA needs to go back and do an environmental assessment,” she says. “The drug should be pulled from the market while they’re doing this environmental assessment.” She also recommends the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) add mifepristone to the contaminants of concern listed in the Safe Drinking Water Act. …

             “This issue has our highest mind-change rate on college campuses. When we began touring with toilet bowls and toilet seats saying, ‘Hey, we don’t want toilet-bowl abortions,’ even students who would identify, I think, as largely pro-choice were very concerned. They just didn’t like the thought of babies going in toilet bowls.”

Senate Voting Record

Cloture on nomination of Matthew R. Byrne as US District Judge for the Southern Dist. of Ohio – Adopted 47-46 – Sept. 14, 2026 (Democrats in italics; “Independents” marked “I”; new Senator in ALL CAPS)

Voting “yes”/pro-Life: Britt & Tuberville/AL, Sullivan/AK, Boozman & Cotton/AR, Moody & Scott/FL, Crapo/ID, Banks & Young/IN, Ernst & Grassley/IA, Moran/KS, McConnell & Paul/KY, Cassidy & Kennedy/LA, Collins/ME, Hyde-Smith & Wicker/MS, Hawley/MO, Daines & Sheehy/MT, Fischer & Ricketts/NE, Budd/NC, Hoeven/ND, Husted & Moreno/OH, Armstrong & Lankford/OK, McCormick/PA, GRAHAM* & Scott/SC, Rounds & Thune/SD, Blackburn & Hagerty/TN, Cornyn & Cruz/TX, Curtis & Lee/UT, Capito & Justice/WV,  Johnson/WI, Barrasso & Lummis/WY.

Voting “no”/anti-Life: Gallego & Kelly/AZ, Schiff/CA, Bennet & Hickenlooper/CO, Blumenthal & Murphy/CT, Blunt-Rochester/DE, Ossoff & Warner/GA, Hirono & Schatz/HI, Duckworth & Durbin/IL, King(I)/ME, Alsobrooks & VanHollen/MD, Markey & Warren/MA, Peters & Slotkin/MI, Klobuchar & Smith/MN, Cortez-Masto & Rosen/NV, Hassan & Shaheen/NH, Booker & Kim/NJ, Heinrich & Lujan/NM, Gillibrand & Schumer/NY, Merkley & Wyden/OR, Fetterman/PA, Reed & Whitehouse/RI, Sanders(I) & Welch/VT, Kaine & Warner/VA, Cantwell & Murray/WA, Baldwin/WI.

Not voting: Murkowski/AK, Coons/DE, Risch/ID, Padilla/CA, Marshall/KS, Schmitt/MO, Tillis/NC, Cramer/ND.

*Sen. Darline Graham, elected in August to succeed her late brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham

Confirmation of Matthew R. Byrne as US District Judge for the Southern Dist. of Ohio – Adopted 52-45 – Sept. 15, 2026 (Democrats in italics; “Independents” marked “I”)

Voting “yes”/pro-Life: Britt & Tuberville/AL, Murkowski & Sullivan/AK, Boozman & Cotton/AR, Moody & Scott/FL, Crapo & Risch/ID, Banks & Young/IN, Ernst & Grassley/IA, Marshall & Moran/KS, Paul/KY, Cassidy & Kennedy/LA, Collins/ME, Hyde-Smith & Wicker/MS, Hawley & Schmitt/MO, Daines & Sheehy/MT, Fischer & Ricketts/NE, Budd & Tillis/NC, Cramer & Hoeven/ND, Husted & Moreno/OH, Armstrong & Lankford/OK, McCormick/PA, Graham & Scott/SC, Rounds & Thune/SD, Blackburn & Hagerty/TN, Cornyn & Cruz/TX, Curtis & Lee/UT, Capito & Justice/WV,  Johnson/WI, Barrasso & Lummis/WY.

Voting “no”/anti-Life: Gallego & Kelly/AZ, Padilla & Schiff/CA, Bennet & Hickenlooper/CO, Blumenthal & Murphy/CT, Blunt-Rochester/DE, Ossoff & Warner/GA, Hirono & Schatz/HI, Duckworth & Durbin/IL, King(I)/ME, Alsobrooks & VanHollen/MD, Markey & Warren/MA, Peters & Slotkin/MI, Klobuchar & Smith/MN, Cortez-Masto & Rosen/NV, Hassan & Shaheen/NH, Booker & Kim/NJ, Heinrich & Lujan/NM, Gillibrand & Schumer/NY, Merkley & Wyden/OR, Fetterman/PA, Reed & Whitehouse/RI, Welch/VT, Kaine & Warner/VA, Cantwell & Murray/WA, Baldwin/WI.

Not voting: Coons/DE, McConnell/KY and Sanders(I)/VT.

Wisdom from America’s Pro-Life President

WE CONTINUE a morsel each week from a message written by Pres. Ronald Reagan and published in National Right to Life News on Oct. 11, 1984: The Unborn’s Transcendent Right to Life: A Personal Letter to the Pro-Life Movement from Pres. Ronald Reagan 

             Recently, much of America agonized through reports of the Baby Doe case in Bloomington, Indiana. Baby Doe, handicapped by Down’s Syndrome, needed a routine surgical procedure to unblock his esophagus and allow him to eat. But a doctor testified, and a judge concurred, that even with the physical problem corrected, Baby Doe would have a “non-existent” possibility for a “minimally adequate life.” The judge let Baby Doe starve and die, and the Indiana Supreme Court sanctioned his decision. The death of that baby infant touched our consciences, cutting through all the political rhetoric and claims of compassion, and focused a nation’s attention on one infant.