Commentary: House Abortion Bill Would Repeal Existing Laws, Prohibit Future Pro-Life Laws

In response to pro-life policy victories like the Texas Heartbeat Act and an upcoming Supreme Court case asking the justices to provide a constitutional course correction to America’s arbitrary and unworkable abortion jurisprudence, pro-abortion legislators in Congress are advancing a deceptively named piece of legislation called the Women’s Health Protection Act. The radical, far-reaching proposal would entrench unfettered access to abortion in federal law.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her congressional allies—as well as the media —have characterized the Women’s Health Protection Act as simply “codifying Roe v. Wade.”

Read the full story

Telehealth Abortions Are Available to Virginians

Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., (PPMW) is now providing telehealth abortions to people with addresses in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C., according to a September 10 press release. After a phone screening and an online consultation, PPMW mails abortion drugs to the patient. Total cost for the service is $525, including a follow-up consultation and pregnancy test.

Read the full story

Youngkin and McAuliffe Meet for First of Two Debates

One day before early voting begins, GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin and Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe faced off for the first time in a debate at the Appalachian School of Law in southwestern Virginia Thursday. Moderators asked candidates about policies including abortion, Critical Race Theory (CRT), right to work, qualified immunity, vaccine mandates, and Confederate monuments. Youngkin repeatedly tried to link policy issues to McAuliffe’s past record, while McAuliffe repeatedly tried to tie Youngkin to former President Trump. Both candidates also committed to accepting the result of the election if certified by the state.

Moderators asked McAuliffe he would sign laws that legalize third trimester abortions even without currently-required approval of three doctors in Virginia.

“If they came up with a solution, and the woman’s life has to be in danger, it has to be certified, and if you had a legitimate doctor that says, ‘This woman, her life’s in danger,’ of course I would support that,” McAuliffe said.

Read the full story

Commentary: Terry McAuliffe is the Abortion Candidate

While pro-life candidate for governor, Glenn Youngkin continues to talk about rational pro-life measures, like preventing taxpayer funding for abortions and passing a Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, pro-abortion former governor Terry McAuliffe, is sounding one note all over Virginia: he is promising to prevent any new pro-life law and to ultimately help see Roe v. Wade codified in the Virginia Constitution.

Terry McAuliffe is making protecting abortion promoters his top priority as witnessed in his comments and actions at two events in Virginia yesterday. At a small business forum sponsored by the Multicultural Chamber Alliance in Fairfax, VA, McAuliffe’s opening remarks focused on how proud he was to have kept Virginia’s abortion facilities open as governor and stopped any new pro-life laws from being enacted. Unsurprisingly, the small business leaders were not very excited, and the only applause was from his own cheer squad that he travels with.

Later in the afternoon, he returned to Charlottesville where he made a campaign stop at the local abortion facility to promise to “be a brick wall against any anti-choice (pro-life) laws. He said clearly to those present, “I will always fight to protect women’s clinics!” Obviously, the campaign funding he has received from the abortion industry is calling the tune he dances to. Their goal is to get him elected so as to protect the abortion industry in the Commonwealth. They have no interest in protecting women’s health or the lives of the babies they carry.

Read the full story

Commentary: Justice Department Should Defend Unborn Not Abortion

Leave it to Attorney General Merrick Garland, once seemingly destined for the Supreme Court. When choosing between America’s most vulnerable members and most determined political lobby, he picked the abortion industry over millions of babies.

He didn’t put it that way, of course. He explained, “The department will provide support from federal law enforcement when an abortion clinic or reproductive health center is under attack.”

Read the full story

Texas Abortion Law Pushes Pro-Life vs. Abortion Debate into Virginia Campaigns

pregnancy

Voting in Virginia begins in less than two weeks, and abortion law is taking center stage in Virginia’s statewide races. Democratic candidates are highlighting a controversial Texas law as an example of what Republicans would push for, while Republicans point to a late-term abortion bill that Virginia Democrats pushed for in 2019. On Friday, GOP lieutenant governor candidate Winsome Sears said on Newsmax that she would support a heartbeat bill in Virginia.

Sears said, “Here’s the thing: when did it become the wrong thing for us to support the babies in the womb?”

Read the full story

Arizona Expected to Follow Texas’s Abortion Heartbeat Law

With the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to block a Texas law banning abortions at six weeks when fetal heartbeats begin, Arizona’s Republican-dominated legislature is expected to enact a similar law. Until now, federal courts had struck down several laws regulating abortion enacted in Arizona. The unusual nature of the Texas law — allowing citizens to sue in order to enforce it instead of the state — is why a 5-4 majority on SCOTUS allowed the significant intrusion into Roe v. Wade.

Cathi Herrod, president of the conservative Center for Arizona Policy and a key architect of pro-life bills in the Arizona Legislature, said Arizona should copy the successful legislation in order to avoid being struck down. “The Texas heartbeat law is a road map to what other states can do,” she told Capitol Media Services. “The Texas heartbeat law is worthy of serious consideration by the Arizona Legislature.”

Read the full story

Fifth Circuit Upholds Texas Abortion Ban

Woman holding an infant in her arms

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2017 Texas law outlawing a second trimester abortion procedure called D&E (dilation and evacuation), or dismemberment.

In 2017, the Texas legislature passed the Texas Dismemberment Abortion Ban with bipartisan support, making D&Es a felony and banning them from being performed except in the case of an emergency. After the law passed and before it went into effect, Whole Women’s Health, several Planned Parenthood groups, several doctors, and others, sued in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

The district court ruled in their favor, blocking the law from going into effect. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office appealed, and a three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit upheld the lower court’s ruling last October.

Read the full story

GOP Senators Accuse Biden Officials of Working at the ‘Behest of the Abortion Lobby,’ Ignoring the Law

Joe Biden at desk, looking over documents

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra violated federal conscience-protection laws when they told the Department of Justice to drop a lawsuit against a hospital that forced a nurse to assist an elective abortion, Republican senators said in a Wednesday letter.

The Daily Caller News Foundation first obtained the letter to the high ranking Biden administration officials, which demands an explanation as to why Becerra and Garland acted to dismiss the lawsuit filed under former President Donald Trump’s administration in December 2020.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Case for the Unconstitutionality of Abortion

In the April issue of the conservative journal First Things, the esteemed natural law philosopher John Finnis wrote an essay titled “Abortion Is Unconstitutional.” Finnis’ basic argument was that the traditional conservative or originalist stance on abortion and the Supreme Court’s infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade decision—namely, that the Constitution is “silent” on the matter and that it is properly an issue for states to decide among themselves—is both morally insufficient and legally dubious.

According to Finnis, unborn children are properly understood as “persons” under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, and state-level homicide laws, therefore, cannot discriminate by protecting live people but not unborn people. The upshot under this logic is that overturning Roe and its 1992 successor, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, would not merely return abortion regulation to the ambits of the various states, as earlier conservative legal titans such as the late Justice Antonin Scalia long argued. Rather, it would mandate banning the bloody practice nationwide.

Read the full story

Florida Gov. DeSantis Joins Chorus to Overturn Roe v. Wade

U.S. Supreme Court

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) called on the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to overturn the infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade case legalizing abortion in a brief signed on by 10 other Republican governors, in hopes to make abortion a state issue.

The brief provides arguments for why abortion should be left to the states by citing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and how the brief says abortion is not protected by the amendment.

Read the full story

Arizona’s Gov. Doug Ducey and Attorney General Mark Brnovich Join SCOTUS Suit to Overturn Roe v. Wade

Both Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich joined separate amicus curiae briefs with other governors and attorneys general in an abortion case out of Missouri that would gut Roe v. Wade by banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Ducey joined 11 other governors led by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to demand that the Supreme Court uphold the state law and undo Roe v. Wade. Brnovich signed on with 23 other attorneys general led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to ask that the court overrule Roe v. Wade because it is “erroneous, inconsistent, uneven, and unreliable.”

Ducey said in a statement, “The Constitution preserves the rights of the states by specifically enumerating the authority granted to the federal government. Unfortunately, almost 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to ignore the Constitution and created policy which has led to the over-politicization of this issue for decades.” 

Read the full story

Report: Minnesota Abortion Clinic Failed to Report 1,000 Abortions

Whole Woman’s Health in front of Supreme Court

An abortion clinic failed to report 1,000 abortions to the state last year, meaning abortions actually increased in 2020 and again surpassed 10,000.

Pro-life activists initially celebrated the Minnesota Department of Health’s annual report to the Legislature, which showed that abortions dropped to a record-low of 9,108 in 2020. But then Pro-Life Action Ministries’ Brian Gibson noticed that Whole Woman’s Health reported zero abortions for 10 months out of the year — an impossibility, since his activists observed women going in and out of the clinic every day.

So Moses Bratrud with the Minnesota Family Council called up the abortion clinic and was told there was a “reporting error.” In reality, Whole Woman’s Health performed 1,256 abortions in 2020, an increase of 1,119 over the 137 abortions the clinic initially reported, according to Bratrud’s report.

Read the full story

‘Epitome Of Hypocrisy’: Archbishop Rebukes Pelosi for Calling Herself a ‘Devout Catholic’

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone rebuked Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi Thursday for calling herself a “devout Catholic” in her defense of taxpayer funded abortion.

“Let me repeat,” the San Francisco archbishop said in a statement. “No one can claim to be a devout Catholic and condone the killing of innocent human life, let alone have the government pay for it.  The right to life is a fundamental — the most fundamental — human right, and Catholics do not oppose fundamental human rights.”

Read the full story

Criminal Justice Reform Champion Rep. Walt Blackman Jumps into Arizona Congressional Race

Rep. Walt Blackman (R-Snowflake) is running for Congress in Arizona’s first Congressional district. The seat, which encompasses much of the northeast part of the state, is currently held by Tom O’Halleran, a former Republican turned moderate Democrat.

“We need to get back to the rule of law of Arizona to protect its people,” the Arizona legislator said in a video discussing his run on July 18.

Read the full story

Cincinnati Right to Life Group Speaks with The Ohio Star About Biden Town Hall at Catholic College

Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati hosted a protest Wednesday night at Mount St. Joseph University, a Catholic college that hosted a CNN town hall with President Joe Biden. 

The Ohio Star spoke with the pro-life group’s executive director Meg DeBlase Wednesday, who has been leading the group’s response to Biden’s visit. Despite being Catholic, Biden supports abortion. His visit to the university is being viewed by many as tacit support for abortion by Mount St. Joseph. 

Read the full story

Virginia Gov. Candidate McAuliffe Accepts Endorsement from Abortion Group That Supports Defunding Police

Monday, former Virginia governor and current gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, accepted an endorsement from National Abortion and Reproduction Rights Action League Virginia (NARAL). 

“I’m proud to be endorsed by [NARAL Virginia],” he said. “With a right-wing Supreme Court ready to hack away at the right to choose and Glenn Youngkin promising to ban abortion, reproductive freedom is at stake in this race. I’ll always fight to protect the right to choose.”

Read the full story

Ohio Abortion Clinic Threw Dismembered Baby in Dumpster, Pro-Life Group Claims

Ohio Abortion Clinic

A pro-life group has accused an Ohio abortion facility of throwing a dismembered, aborted baby away in a dumpster.

Ohio Right to Life said Wednesday it found the remains of an aborted baby at about 17 weeks gestation discarded in dumpster behind Ohio Women’s Center (NEOWC) abortion clinic. The clinic, which has not responded to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation, denied that it improperly disposed of fetal remains.

“Ohio Right to Life is heartbroken and appalled by the abortion industry’s utter disregard for human life,” Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, said in a statement. “This child suffered doubly at the hands of the abortion industry: first, by being subjected to a brutal death by dismemberment and second by the degradation of his or her broken body being dumped into the trash like garbage.”

Read the full story

Commentary: Don’t Force My Church to Pay for Abortions

Baby hand in adult hand

Imagine, 75 years ago, some British officer lining up a group of young Indian children against a wall in Bombay, handing some bullets to Mahatma Gandhi, and ordering him to load soldiers’ rifles so that they could execute the youngsters.

Would you expect Gandhi to go along with that? Why would an officer even give such an order – except to humiliate Gandhi and mock what he stood for?

Perhaps that gives you some idea of how it feels for the people of my congregation, Cedar Park Church, to be ordered by Washington state officials to provide an insurance plan that covers abortions. Directly paying for abortion coverage is as unimaginable to us as putting bullets in a gun we know would be used to end a child’s life. It is antithetical to everything we preach, teach, and believe. That’s why we had to file a lawsuit through our Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys that is now on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which will hear arguments today.

Read the full story

Former Governor Wilder Criticizes McAuliffe for Running Again; Trump Supports Youngkin; Youngkin and McAuliffe Trade Blows

Governor Douglas Wilder

Former Democratic Governor Douglas Wilder handed Glenn Youngkin a messaging win July 2 when he criticized Terry McAuliffe on The Jeff Katz Show. Wilder attacked McAuliffe for seeking the support of Governor Ralph Northam after previously calling for Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring to resign during Blackface scandals.

Read the full story

Ohio Law Codifies Doctors’ Rights to Refuse Service

A provision Ohio’s latest budget bill, which was recently passed, gives doctors the right to refuse service to potential patients on religious and moral grounds.

“This simply puts in statute what the practice has been anyways,” Gov. Mike DeWine (R) reportedly said. “Let’s say the doctor is against abortion, the doctor is not doing abortion. If there’s other things that maybe a doctor has a conscience problem with, it gets worked out, somebody else does those things.”

Read the full story

Tennessee Law Requiring Burials for Aborted Children Goes into Effect

As of Thursday, Tennessee will now require the remains of certain aborted children to be either buried or cremated. The Unborn Child Dignity Act, passed by the Tennessee legislature in April, applies to those children aborted in ambulatory surgical treatment centers, private offices, or other in-person facilities outlined in Tennessee Code. The new law wouldn’t extend to those children aborted through at-home procedures like abortifacient drugs taken orally. 

Under the law, the mother of the aborted child will have the right to determine how and where the child is buried. If the woman is under 18 years of age, then she must obtain parental consent unless a court says otherwise. The mother may also waive her right to determine the child’s final disposition. Documentation, arrangement, and costs of the burial or cremation will be the responsibility of the abortion facility.

Read the full story

Abortion Clinic Dodges Ohio Law, Suggests Mothers Hide They’re Aborting Unborn Baby Because of Down Syndrome

An abortion clinic is dodging Ohio law by suggesting that pregnant mothers hide that they want to abort their unborn baby because of a Down Syndrome diagnosis.

Preterm Cleveland’s website offers a pop up message telling patients that “it is legal in Ohio to get an abortion for any reason,” but warning that “under a new Ohio law, we cannot provide an abortion if we know that the reason is in whole or in part because of a fetal Down syndrome diagnosis.”

“Preterm is open and seeing patients,” the pop up message reads. “Please call us with any questions or concerns.” 

Read the full story

Record Number of Americans Find Abortion ‘Morally Acceptable,’ Poll Finds

A record number of Americans find abortion “morally acceptable” though American sentiment on the matter is sharply divided, a Gallup poll released Wednesday found.

Forty-seven percent of Americans find abortion acceptable, while 46% think abortion is wrong from a moral perspective, the poll found. The percentage of Americans who find abortion acceptable increased two points, the highest level of support Gallup has found since it began tracking the matter two decades ago.

Read the full story

Commentary: No One Supreme Court Case Can Relieve Us of Our Duty to the Unborn

Infants feet in woman's hand

The Supreme Court’s decision to take up Mississippi’s petition to reinstate their landmark ban on late-term abortions has brought forth an outpouring of both giddiness and trepidation from the pro-life community. Pro-life Americans are by turns hailing the opportunity for the greatest legal victory for the unborn in decades and declaring the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a litmus test on the usefulness of the entire conservative legal movement.

I don’t want to downplay Dobb’s importance. Mississippi’s law, protecting the lives of unborn children after 15 weeks, is both one of the bravest acts on behalf of mothers and children by any American legislature and striking in its common sense and humanity. That every one of America’s 50 states is, by judicial fiat, one of the very few places on earth that allow children to be aborted on-demand this late into pregnancy, is a disgrace whose correction is long overdue.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court merely agreeing to hear Mississippi’s appeal after lower courts struck the law down, represents a victory unto itself. To get to this point, at least four justices had to have agreed that this area of the law is in need of clarification and perhaps correction. Amicus briefs from many of the country’s leading pro-life lawyers will introduce arguments at the highest level of American jurisprudence that may seed future legislation and lawsuits even if Mississippi’s law is not allowed to go into effect.

Read the full story

Ohio Town Becomes ‘Sanctuary City’ for Unborn

The city of Lebanon is Ohio’s first “sanctuary city” for the unborn, after the Lebanon City Council voted to unanimously to ban abortions. 

“The ordinance makes getting or assisting in an abortion a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to $2,500 in fines and up to a year in jail, according to City Attorney Mark Yurick,” Fox19 reported. “It also bans providing money or assistance to anyone seeking an abortion, even if the abortion takes place outside of the city limits.”

Read the full story

Biden’s Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Far Outspends Obama

President Joe Biden has funneled nearly 20 times as much taxpayer money to the abortion industry as Barack Obama had at this point in his presidency, according to an analysis by a leading pro-life organization. 

In office for only four months, Biden has directed almost $500 billion in federal funding to the abortion industry through legislation and executive action, in some cases bypassing longstanding restrictions that prevented taxpayer dollars from directly paying for abortion. 

Read the full story

Left-Wing Groups Sue to Stop ‘Sanctuary for the Unborn’ Ordinance

baby sleeping in crib

Planned Parenthood and the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Lubbock, Texas on Monday after the city declared itself a “sanctuary city for the unborn” ordinance that seeks to outlaw abortions.

The ordinance was passed by local voters earlier this month over the opposition of City Council members who warned it would cause a costly legal fight, the Texas Tribune reported.

The lawsuit seeks to stop the abortion ban which would reportedly take effect on June 1.

Read the full story

‘Reproductive Rights Are in Danger’: Abortion Advocates, Dems Melt Down as Supreme Court Reviews Case Challenging Roe v. Wade

Abortion advocates and Democrats reacted with anger and fear to news that the Supreme Court would review a case directly challenging aspects of Roe v. Wade, warning that “reproductive rights are in danger.”

The court announced Monday that it will hear Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization beginning in October, and a decision on the case will likely come by June 2022, CNBC reported. This will be the first major abortion case in which all three of former President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justice appointees participate, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who gained a seat on the court after a contentious confirmation process in October.

Read the full story

Texas Bill Will Ban Abortions After an Unborn Baby’s Heartbeat Can Be Detected

Close up of baby feet lying in bed

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott indicated Thursday that he will sign a heartbeat abortion bill banning abortions after the unborn baby has reached six weeks gestation.

Texas’ Heartbeat Act passed the state’s Senate Thursday. Abbott highlighted the bill’s passage in a tweet that noted the bill was “on its way to my desk for signing.” The governor also thanked Republican state lawmakers Bryan Hughes and Shelby Slawson for their leadership in introducing the legislation.

Read the full story

Ocasio-Cortez Praises Nation’s Largest Abortion Provider for Saving Babies

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday that she is a “Planned Parenthood baby,” praising the nation’s largest abortion provider for saving babies.

The New York Democrat criticized pro-life Republicans and defended Planned Parenthood during a virtual hearing Thursday where she revealed that her mother received prenatal care from Planned Parenthood.

“If we want to talk about Planned Parenthood, let’s talk about how many lives Planned Parenthood has saved and how many babies have been born because of the prenatal care provided by Planned Parenthood,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Read the full story

Bill Declaring Personhood Begins at Conception Passes Tennessee General Assembly

According to a bill passed Thursday by the Tennessee General Assembly, the unborn are people at the moment of conception. This was accomplished through changes to civil law, by extending wrongful death liability for the unborn all the way to conception. In effect, this legislation confers personhood the moment an egg is fertilized.

The legal change in the civil definition of personhood wasn’t presented in the caption text. It was mentioned once in a single sentence under the bill’s summary. Additionally, the name given to the bill by the sponsors – the “Prenatal Life and Liberty Act” – wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the bill’s language, caption text, or summary. 

Read the full story

Federal Judge Reinstates 48-Hour Waiting Period for Tennessee Abortions While Appeal Underway

pregnancy test

Tennessee’s 48-hour waiting period law for abortions was restored temporarily as the state makes its appeal. The decision was made on Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedman. He vacated his prior opinion while the state makes an appeal.

In response, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery issued a press release explaining that this decision recognized that Tennessee’s law is “likely constitutional,” and therefore could be enforced.

Read the full story

General Assembly Passes ‘Unborn Child Dignity Act’ Requiring Burial or Cremation for Surgically Aborted Children

Following Governor Bill Lee’s approval, the state of Tennessee will require surgically aborted children to be put to rest humanely, through either burial or cremation. The Unborn Child Dignity Act would only extend to “ambulatory surgical treatment centers,” private offices, or other in-person facilities describe in the Tennessee Code. Meaning, the act wouldn’t cover children aborted through at-home procedures like the pill. 

State Senator Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma) introduced the bill first, and it was picked up by State Representative Tim Rudd (R-Murfreesboro) in the House. The Senate passed the bill on Wednesday, 27-6 along party lines.

Read the full story

Pro-Life Student Group Exposes Christian Universities with Ties to Planned Parenthood

Students for Life of America group

Students for Life of America, a pro-life organization that aims to “recruit, train, and mobilize the pro-life generation to abolish abortion,” recently released a list of Christian universities with ties to Planned Parenthood.

The group announced in a press release that they investigated over 700 colleges and universities, 100 of which had ties to Planned Parenthood. According to the release, the 100 schools are related to Planned Parenthood through “advertising Planned Parenthood internships and career postings, referring students to Planned Parenthood as a resource, incorporating Planned Parenthood into medical school rotations, or hosting events for students with the abortion giant.”

“There is an unholy partnership between a number of Christian schools and the abortion industry,” said Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America in the press release, “but Students for Life is mobilizing pro-life advocates nationwide to cut ties with the nation’s number one abortion vendor.”

Read the full story

Wyoming Governor Signs Born Alive Act

Mark Gordon

Republican Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon has signed the Born Alive Act into law, legislation that requires doctors to care for babies born alive in botched abortions.

Senate File 34, which passed the Wyoming House 48-11, requires doctors to use “commonly accepted means of care” for “the treatment of any infant born alive.”

“Any physician performing an abortion shall take medically appropriate and reasonable steps to preserve the life and health of an infant born alive,” the legislation said. It will go into effect in July.

Read the full story

Tennessee House Health Subcommittee Punts Bill Banning Abortion to 2022

After deferring action last week on a bill banning abortion completely, the Tennessee House Health Subcommittee decided to push their decision off until 2022. The “Rule of Law Life Act” was sponsored by State Senator Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma) initially, and taken up in the House by State Representative Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster).

As The Tennessee Star reported in early February, the bill saw movement quickly following its introduction. It declared that the Fourteenth Amendment extends the right to life to the unborn, and that life begins at conception.

Read the full story

Arizona House Passes Bill Banning Abortions Based on Genetic Abnormality

Susan B. Anthony List State Policy Director Sue Liebel

The Arizona House passed a bill Thursday that bans abortions based on diagnosis of genetic abnormality, such as Down syndrome.

S.B. 1457 states that the rights of “an unborn child at every stage of development” must be acknowledged and prohibits abortions based on the sex, race, or genetic abnormality of the child. The bill makes exceptions for medical emergencies.

“A person who knowingly” performs such an abortion “is guilty of a class 3 felony,” according to the legislation.

Read the full story

Ernst Introduces Bill Criminalizing Abortions, Hysterectomies Without Informed Consent

Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst is introducing a bill that would criminalize any sterilization or abortion procedure performed without informed consent from the patient.

The Iowa Republican’s legislation builds off a September 2020 whistleblower complaint that alleged mass hysterectomies were performed on immigrant women by Dr. Mahendra Amin without their consent while they were being held at Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia. Amin, a rural gynecologist, has denied any wrongdoing.

Read the full story

Planned Parenthood Abortion Numbers Hit 15-Year-High, Pro-Life Group Says

Data from Planned Parenthood’s annual report shows that the organization’s abortion numbers hit a 15-year-high, according to the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List.

Between October 1, 2018 and September 30, 2019, Planned Parenthood performed 354,871 abortions among other services, such as STI testing and treatment, contraceptive services, cancer screenings and prevention, and other services, according to the organization’s recently-released annual report.

Read the full story