Life Advocacy Briefing

Question of the Week

HOW IS IT COMPASSIONATE to set up a woman for the emotional trauma that will result from expelling her own dead baby from her body, alone in the privacy of her home?

Bells for Life Across America

JANUARY 22 IS NO LONGER A DAY FOR CELEBRATION by the abortion cartel, since its treasured Roe v. Wade is now a relic of a bygone age. But it is “a date which will live in infamy,” because of the millions of American children cut off before birth, and the US Coalition for Life (USCL) is calling on America’s pastors, reports LifeSiteNews, “to ring their church bells at noon local time on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025 – the 52^nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade – in loving memory” of those millions of aborted babies.

The USCL asked that citizens “personally contact their parish priests, pastors or ministers to obtain their commitment to the ‘Church Bells for Life’ project.”

“‘Bells for Life should ring out loudest in Washington, DC,’” declared USCL founder Randy Engel, quoted by LSN, “‘so that President Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated just two days earlier, may come to understand that his greatest possible legacy will come from taking the lead in protecting the lives of millions of pre-born American citizens from the barbaric practice of abortion, whether conceived in their mother’s womb or in a laboratory.’”

The USCL leader went on to say, “‘I think that most in the pro-life community believe that God protected Pres. Trump from an assassination attempt so that he might gain a renewed appreciation for the priceless gift of life. As President of the United States, he has a unique opportunity to express his gratitude to God by extending that same protection to countless unborn human beings.’”

Mr. Engel went on to advocate for “a no-exception Constitutional Human Life Amendment” and declared, “Whatever else Pres. Trump might accomplish in his second administration, history will always consider it secondary in importance to his public decision to help end, not regulate, the ongoing mass extermination of our nation’s progeny.’”

Marching in the States

STATE-LEVEL MARCHES FOR LIFE have been scheduled across America, offering pro-life folks an opportunity closer to home to gather for Life. Details about these events can be found by clicking on the US map at https://marchforlife.org/state-marches.

Here we list the dates announced so far, in state-alphabetical order: Arizona, March 15; California, March 31; Colorado, April 11; Connecticut, March 19; Georgia, March 6; Indiana, Jan. 22; Kansas, Jan. 29; Kentucky, Feb. 12; Michigan, Nov. 6; New Jersey, Sept. 25; North Dakota, Oct. 10; Ohio, Oct. 3; Oregon, May 17; Pennsylvania, Sept. 22; Virginia, April 2. Make your plans!

So Far, So Good at Costco

STOCKHOLDERS IN THE RETAIL GIANT COSTCO will meet Jan. 23, and although the meeting will not be without controversy, the constant pressure from the abortion lobby is not expected to arise. Bravo! (Sometimes, no news is good news.)

As a retail giant which carries pharmaceuticals, Costco has been under pressure, reports Calvin Freiburger for LifeSiteNews, by the abortion cartel to peddle abortion drugs. But “so far,” the reporter notes, “it has not given in to pro-abortion demands … .

“Among those pressuring Costco and others” to sell the drugs, reports Mr. Freiburger, was “New York Democratic Comptroller Brad Lander, who claimed that not doing so would ‘risk losing investor confidence.’ …

“In August, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) spearheaded letters to numerous major retailers,” notes Mr. Freiburger, “urging them not to sell chemical abortion drugs through their pharmacies. ‘Maximizing shareholder value requires Costco to avoid politicizing its services and to continue to do what it has always done best, provide excellent grocery and retail goods to families,’ ADF wrote,” as Mr. Freiburger reports. “‘The “growing market opportunity” of abortion drugs is legally and politically fraught, raises significant reputational issues and reduces the company’s customer base, both literally and because it would drive away many existing customers.’

“Costco never [thus far] issued a public statement in either direction,” writes Mr. Freiburger, “but its apparent refusal to stock the pills (at least for the time being) won it the gratitude of pro-life groups such as Live Action, which circulated a video and petition thanking the company and urging pro-lifers to switch their pharmacies to Costco from CVS, Walgreens and RiteAid, which have entered the abortion pill business.”

Re-Examining the Law in Light of Dobbs

THE SUPREME COURT HAS AGREED TO HEAR AN APPEAL from St. Louis-based Coalition Life challenging a Carbondale, Illinois, ordinance which, reports Sarah Holliday for The Washington Stand (TWS), “prohibits ‘approaching women outside clinics to advise of abortion alternatives.’”

The ordinance has been challenged unsuccessfully repeatedly during the decades of Roe v. Wade’s supremacy. But CL cites the Dobbs ruling, noting, reports Ms. Holliday, “since Roe was overturned, ‘laws restricting free speech outside abortion clinics deserve to be reexamined in light of [that].’ They wrote, ‘Dobbs should have made clear beyond [objection] that [the Court’s precedential ruling in 2000] could no longer skew public debate on a divisive issue being returned to the people.’”

The litigation in 2000 was named Hill v. Colorado, in which the Supreme Court upheld laws and ordinances restricting approaches within 100 feet of a “hospital, medical clinic or healthcare facility. …

“In July, Peter Breen, executive vice president and head of litigation at the Thomas More Society, said,” notes TWS, “‘Hill v. Colorado was egregiously wrong on the day it was decided, and it remains a black mark in our law to this day.’ He added, ‘Now that the Supreme Court has returned the abortion debate to the people and their legislators, it is more important than ever to restore the free speech rights of those who advocate for Life in the public square.’

“As the lawsuit emphasize[s],” writes Ms. Holliday, “‘There are few things more central to the 1^st Amendment than the right “to converse with … fellow citizens about an important subject on the public streets and sidewalks.”’ In light of this, ‘the Court should grant certiorari, overrule Hill and vindicate the time-honored principle that speech “on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide open.”’”

The TWS report goes on to quote Mary Szoch, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity: “‘We are grateful that the Supreme Court is examining the Illinois law that prevents pro-lifers from exercising their free speech rights.’ She went on to explain how ‘women choosing abortion are often pressured into doing so. Many feel that they have no support and no other option. Laws like the one in Illinois make a point of silencing anyone who is willing to step up and help these women recognize that there is a much better choice than abortion,’ she added.”

Surprising News from Texas

THE MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF THE TEXAS MEDICAL BOARD announced his “retirement” last Thursday, according to the Houston Chronicle, after being unmasked by two Texas state representatives as the administrator of Planned Parenthood’s South Texas Laboratory, a post he has held since 2011.

Dr. Robert Bredt has “acted as medical director of the Texas Medical Board since 2012,” and two GOP State Representatives, Briscoe Cain and Brian Harrison, on Dec. 31 publicly called on the board to “‘terminate Dr. Robert Bredt’s employment immediately,’” reports Nancy Flanders for Live Action.

Rep. Harrison, who served in the first Trump Administration as chief of staff at the US Dept. of Health & Human Services, wrote a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott (R), notes Ms. Flanders, “urging him to ‘immediately remove this individual’ from the state medical board and to ensure that no other Planned Parenthood employees are ‘employed by any state agency, including in advisory roles.’” He further, reports Live Action, “threatened to file legislation to defund the Texas Medical Board” if Mr. Bredt was not removed, an action which now appears unnecessary, for the time being.

Corporate Complicity

Dec. 20, 2024, analysis by Nicole Hunt for Focus on the Family’s Daily Citizen

             A new report released by the Ethics & Public Policy Center reveals that at least 42 of the Fortune 100 companies have publicly disclosed that their employment policies specifically include covering the costs of out-of-state travel for an abortion.

             The report takes a comprehensive approach to look at publicly available information related to policies impacting the family, including abortion travel benefits, parental leave, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy and adoption.

             Authors of the report, Nathanael Blake and Alexandra DeSanctis, suggest that there are probably even more companies that offer abortion benefits within healthcare plans, but that information is not publicly available.

             Since Roe’s reversal in June of 2022, the abortion industry has lobbied aggressively for companies to support abortion benefits to their workers. Many businesses complied with the demands of abortion activists and now offer abortion coverage as a covered employment benefit.

             The authors note that while many companies were happy to go public with their pro-abortion policies, transparency was lacking for many of them when it came to providing details about family benefits like parental leave and adoption.

             In fact, DeSanctis and Blake suggest that when a company incentivizes abortion without increasing support for parenting, the company is sending the message that they would rather pay for abortions than employ moms and dads.

             Perhaps if employers considered the long game, they might realize that their pro-abortion policies are, at the very least, a short-sighted business model. Without today’s employees embracing parenthood and having families, how will companies hire the next generation of employees?

             Companies would do better to embrace and support motherhood and fatherhood through pro-life employment policies that recognize the sanctity and value of every human life.

Companies that Pay for Abortion as an Employment Benefit:

             Allstate, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, American Airlines, American Express, Apple, Bank of America, Boeing, Cardinal Health, Chevron, Cigna, Citigroup, Comcast, CVS Health, Dell, Disney, Elevance Health, Ford Motor, General Motors, Goldman Sachs Group, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Kroger, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Nationwide, Nike, Nvidia, Oracle, Phillips 66, Procter & Gamble, Target, Tesla, Tyson Foods, United Health Group, Walgreens, Walmart, Wells Fargo.

Somber Truth Worth Telling to All

Jan. 2, 2025, blog by Jonathon VanMaren for LifeSiteNews

             Throughout 2024, the mainstream press woke up to a brutal reality: Despite decades of sinister fearmongering about “over population,” the world is experiencing a critical shortage of babies that will threaten our way of life in every way imaginable.

             From The Guardian: “Birthrates are plummeting worldwide. Can governments turn the tide?” From The Globe & Mail: “Fewer babies are being born around the world, and not only in the places you’d expect.” From Euronews: “Greece confronts disastrously low birthrates in Aegean islands.” From Politico: “The political shockwaves of America’s falling birthrates.”

             The demographic crisis, which Mark Steyn warned about over a decade ago in his prophetic book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, is now recognized as a fact by virtually everyone. Despite this, there has been little introspection on the part of those who have been championing birth control and abortion for decades both at home and as a form of aggressive neo-colonialism in developing countries. And despite the fact that the abortion wars defined the Presidential election in the US, and political debates across the west, the elites studiously avoid making the obvious connection between the dearth of babies and the abortion death rate.

             But as Breitbart reported yesterday, abortion was the leading cause of death globally in 2024, “with a record 45 million unborn babies killed in the womb, according to data provided by Worldometer.” The numbers are excruciating and impossible to fathom: As of 12 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2024, an estimated 45.1 million abortions were perpetrated throughout the year. For context, Canada’s entire population is 40.1 million.

             The abortion death rate – or, more accurately, kill count – dwarfs every other number, including 8.2 million dying from cancer, 5 million from smoking, 1.7 million from HIV/AIDS, 1.46 million from traffic accidents and 1.1 million. As Breitbart pointed out, the total of all non-abortion deaths is 62.5 million, “meaning that abortions accounted for just over 42% of all human deaths in 2024.”

             Based on an overview of the world’s 196 countries, the average population of a country is 40.96 million. This means that every year, the equivalent of an entire country is killed by abortion. To report on the birthrate without acknowledging this fact is simply ludicrous – because the truth is that tens of millions of children are conceived but are never born. Tens of millions of children who physically existed were physically destroyed, yet that fact almost never surfaces in the now almost incessant coverage of the population implosion underway in every Western country and many non-Western countries as well.

             In fact, in some countries this information is being actively suppressed. In France, ARCOM, the French media regulator, recently fined the conservative TV channel CNews a staggering 100,000 euros [$103,000.39 US] after presenter Aymeric Pourbaix observed in February that abortion is the leading cause of death worldwide, according to the WHO’s estimate of 73 million deaths per annum. Why? Because according to the regulator, the channel failed in its “obligation of honesty and rigor in the presentation and processing of information” because “Abortion cannot be presented as a cause of death.” A factual statement was banned in the media because it conflicts with the suicidal ideology that is contributing to France’s cratering birthrate to begin with.

             We are killing at least a country’s worth of people every single year. No other single fact explains so much about the upheaval taking place around the world. You cannot have war in the womb and peace in the streets.

Consequential Leadership

Closing remarks of House Speaker Mike Johnson in his address upon his re-election to lead the House of Representatives, on Jan. 3, 2025 (for which we are thankful to God)

             … This is an opportunity for us to protect our shared American heritage, to maintain the conditions needed for self-government, and to defend what Hakeem said earlier – the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

             Working together, we have the potential to be one of the most consequential Congresses in the history of this great nation, so long as we work together, we do the right thing, and we put America first.

             As we think about all we’ve accomplished in the past 250 years, we can only imagine what life will be like 250 years from now.

             Whatever the future may look like, if we do our jobs now, we can help ensure that our civic virtues will endure. That this nation will still be an example to all the world for its greatness and its example of self-government.

             And that, in spite of our great challenges – and even our disagreements and our healthy debates – this extraordinary institution, the People’s House, will still be standing strong. 

             Thank you all, and God bless America.

And God bless you, Speaker Johnson!