Life Advocacy Briefing

Showing Up for Life

STATE-LEVEL MARCHES FOR LIFE ARE COMING UP in Pennsylvania (Sept. 23 in Harrisburg), Ohio (Oct. 4 in Columbus) and North Dakota (Oct. 6 in Bismarck). Information can be found on the marchforlife.org website.

Also coming up are Life Chains throughout America, a very localized and easy to pop up roadside demonstration in towns and cities on Sunday, Oct. 6. Details are available at lifechain.org.

Both are great opportunities for families to witness a pro-life commitment and bring their children into the cause.

Facts Sell

ONE OF THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL LESSONS WE OFFER PRO-LIFE CANDIDATES in the communicator seminars we have presented since our 1992 founding is this: Facts Sell. It is fundamental, and in many campaign consultant shops, it is ignored.

The political conflict over abortion policy is dominated by the abortion lobby’s deceitful smears of pro-life candidates and about the reality of current abortion policy. Those smears attach themselves to well-intended but poorly counseled pro-life candidates, who are too often advised to move on to the next question as soon as possible.

Pro-life candidates are too often ill equipped to use facts and truth in taking these critical issues to voters. They are advised – wrongheadedly – to use bumpersticker language when asked about abortion; typically this sounds like, “I’m pro-life. Next question.”

How does that serve to inform or attract voters who do not spend their days mulling abortion policy? How does that serve to attract votes from ordinary people who care about a candidate’s personal integrity, a candidate’s motives, a candidate’s philosophy? The only people that speaks to are those who are committed to the right to life and eager to find candidates who embrace it. To those voters who do not focus on this issue, such bumpersticker issue-avoidance language says, here’s a candidate who is just mouthing what he or she has been told to say, not a man or woman of character who is willing to explain a position on one of the key issues of the day.

So, we advise our candidates to give a little credit to the voter. Facts sell. Use facts to open minds and touch consciences. (It helps also to expose the radicalism of candidates who use euphemisms like “choice” when their actual advocacy is for the elimination of already conceived human beings.)

We offered an example a few weeks ago. Did you, as our reader, take in the brief story we ended with “You just killed Beethoven”? Facts sell. That story was all about the dire circumstances into which the baby who became one of the most brilliant and inspiring composers of all time was conceived and born.

There are plenty more facts that can be asserted by those who care to persuade, to open minds, to lead America toward a pro-life future full of talented, hopeful, even brilliant people.

Here’s one for you: Abortion is the leading cause of death. Your editor saw that assertion on an advertising card posted in a Chicago Transit Authority subway car many years ago. It was a paid ad by Illinois Right to Life Committee, and it caused your editor – who was already pro-life – to muse, hmm; wonder whether that’s true. So, your editor obtained from the Illinois Public Health Dept. a chart showing the leading causes of death – that is, among people who had been born. Cancer, heart disease, the usual causes of death one accepts as reality in the US. That chart showed the previous year’s death toll for each of those causes. What it did not show was the abortion death toll of lives lost who had not reached the maturity of birth, though those lives lost were just as human as the rest. And guess what? The ad was right. The number of abortion deaths far exceeded the annual death toll from cancer and heart disease, the “leading causes of death” as the government defines it.

Facts sell. That one certainly caught my attention, and our Life Advocacy Reference Manual has included a copy of that bus ad for the past 30-some years. It is a fact, a fact which opens minds and causes folks who have ignored this issue – or worse – to think again, a form of mental whiplash.

Now we have the Illinois Family Institute to thank for a new billboard along a Chicago expressway: “Abortion kills a human life.”

Yes. Yes, it does. And seeing that billboard prompts a line of thought that could literally save a life or, more likely, lives.

In the midst of an issue that is being portrayed as “complex” or “difficult” or “challenging” or “risky,” our communicators have an obligation. Think and communicate. Tell the truth. And while you’re at it, you can keep it simple without having to resort to bumpersticker language. Facts sell.

So Much for ‘Leaving Abortion Policy to the States’

SINCE THE SUPREME COURT HANDED DOWN ITS DOBBS RULING overturning Roe v. Wade, the state of abortion law in the US has been repeatedly characterized as “up to the states.” But whichever justice of the Supreme Court issued an unsigned order to Oklahoma early this month does not appear to have read the memo.

The high court “declined,” reports S.A. McCarthy for The Washington Stand (TWS) on Sept. 5, “a request from Oklahoma for an emergency injunction to prevent the [US] Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS) from stripping the state of $4.5 million in federal Title X [Ten] family-planning funds” over the state’s policy of not referring expectant mothers to abortionists, even though the state outlaws abortion, notes Mr. McCarthy, “in nearly all cases.”

HHS had ordered Title X recipients to “provide abortion referrals,” writes Mr. McCarthy, “in order to quality for funding.” Oklahoma sued the department, “alleging,” reports TWS, “that the Biden-Harris Administration was punishing the state for its pro-life laws. ‘This case presents a clear attempt by the federal government to encroach on the right of Oklahoma citizens and their elected representatives to decide the state’s policies on important issues,’ the lawsuit argued. ‘The funding has been terminated solely because Oklahoma will not commit to providing referrals for abortion, even though Title X expressly prohibits federal money from being directed toward abortion,’ it continued,” reports Mr. McCarthy.

Oklahoma has been turned away by the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma and the 10^th Circuit US Court of Appeals. And now by whichever justice of the Supreme Court received the appeal for an emergency injunction.

State Legislatures in Charge?

NORTH DAKOTA’s BAN ON ABORTION WAS STRUCK DOWN last Thursday by a state judge, reports AP, “saying that the state constitution creates a fundamental right to access abortion before a fetus is viable. … State District Judge Bruce Romanick also said,” notes AP, “that the law violates the state constitution because it is too vague.” The “near-total abortion ban” took effect in April of 2023.

The ruling offers a perfect example of the tragic cloud of nonsense which arises from the refusal to face the facts about the personhood of unborn children. Here’s what Mr. Romanick wrote, as quoted by AP: “‘Pregnant women in North Dakota have a fundamental right to choose abortion before viability exists under the enumerated and unenumerated interests provided by the North Dakota Constitution,’ the judge wrote – even though abortion is not mentioned in the state constitution.

The judge’s excuse? “[Judge] Romanick cited how North Dakota Constitution’s guarantees ‘inalienable rights,’ including ‘life and liberty,’” reports AP, ironically. “‘The abortions statutes at issue in this case infringes [sic] on a woman’s fundamental right to procreative autonomy and are not narrowly tailored to promote women’s health or to protect unborn human life,’ Romanick wrote in his 24-page order. ‘The law as currently drafted takes away a woman’s liberty and her right to pursue and obtain safety and happiness.’”

We would bet (if we were bettors) that North Dakota’s constitution does not mention abortion and that the state has a murder statute that “takes away a woman’s liberty” to kill born people, wondering what Judge Romanick would do with her “liberty” in that instance. Should it not be in the purview of the legislature to conclude that unborn children are persons?

Irony? Included in the judge’s 24-page order, according to AP, was the judge’s citation of “how North Dakota’s Constitution guarantees ‘inalienable rights’ including ‘life and liberty.’” You can’t make this up.

The judge did acknowledge, reports AP, “that in the past, the North Dakota courts had previously relied on federal court precedents on abortion but said those state precedents had been ‘upended’ by the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to ban abortion under the US Constitution. [Aww] Romanick said,” reports AP, “he’d been left with ‘relatively no idea’ how the North Dakota Supreme Court would address the issue, and so his ruling was his ‘best effort’ to ‘apply the law as written to the issue presented’ while protecting the fundamental rights of the state’s residents.”

North Dakota pro-life citizens must object now to their elected lawmakers and to Gov. Doug Burgum (R), as well as pray that higher courts will reject this judge’s rambling rejection of the right to life for future citizens of their state.

Leaving It Up to Alaska?

NOW A STATE JUDGE IN ALASKA HAS BLOCKED the state’s law specifying, reports Cassy Fiano-Chesser for Live Action, “that only licensed physicians are permitted to commit abortions.”

Since a temporary order was issued in 2021, non-physician healthcare workers like nurse practitioners and physician assistants have been committing abortion. Now it has been ruled on by Alaska Superior Court Judge Josie Garton, who has extended the authorization to chemical abortions and surgical aspiration abortions, notes Mrs. Chesser. The judge, she writes, “said the law violated privacy and equal protection rights of patients by potentially making it more difficult to obtain abortions. ‘There is … no medical reason why abortion is regulated more restrictively than any other reproductive health care,’ she wrote.”

How about the fact that there is nothing remotely reproductive about abortion?!

As Mrs. Chesser puts it, “There are medical reasons why abortion would be regulated more restrictively than other ‘reproductive health care’ – primarily in that in the case of abortion, reproduction has already taken place [YES!], and the abortion procedure seeks to intentionally destroy the resulting human life. No legitimate reproductive health care intentionally kills distinct human beings in the womb. [RIGHT!] Referring to the killing of a human being as ‘medicine’ is propaganda on the level of Orwellian Newspeak.”

How did the state’s lawyers seek to defend the law, which merely limits who can do the killing? “Alaska Dept. of Law attorneys Margaret Paton Walsh and Christopher Robison wrote in a court filing,” reports Mrs. Chesser, “‘The quantitative evidence does not suggest that patients are delayed or prevented from obtaining abortion care in Alaska.’” No wonder.

Nebraska Court Ruling Pending re Referendum

NEBRASKA’s SUPREME COURT HEARD ORAL ARGUMENTS last Monday, Sept. 9, on a constitutional challenge, reports the Thomas More Society, to “the state’s abortion expansion ballot initiative, … agreeing to hear a request for a relatively rare proceeding known as an ‘original action.’”

In the pro bono law firm’s brief, Thomas More attorneys, the group reports, “demonstrate how the abortion expansion initiative contains ‘remarkably misleading terms’ and is ‘unconstitutionally riddled with separate subjects’ in violation of the Nebraska Constitution’s Single-Subject Rule.”

Among the points made in the brief, the pro-life law firm “lays out how the abortion expansion initiative ‘effectively will abolish nearly 50 years of legislative enactments’ and may potentially have further ramifications on all existing medical regulations” – something which should be taken into account before throwing the vague proposal before a largely under-informed electorate.

Long-standing, commonsense laws which the constitutional initiative could threaten, Thomas More attorneys assert, “include the state’s dismemberment abortion ban and the parental notification requirement for abortions on minors. Laws requiring physician involvement, physician availability for postoperative care, care of born-alive aborted infants, care of post-viability aborted infants and detailed informed consent requirements will effectively be repealed if the abortion expansion ballot initiative is accepted by voters” – with no input from the lawmakers who put those laws in place after considerable testimony, citizen input and debate.

“The brief further argues that the abortion initiative opens the determination of viability to a large number of non-physician ‘healthcare practitioners.’ Under current Nebraska law, ‘healthcare practitioners’ include not only physicians but also psychiatrists, pharmacists, nurses of varying degrees and many others.”

Let us pray.

A Referendum Worth Fighting For

Sept. 10, 2024, report by Sarah Holliday in The Washington Stand

             … Amendment 1 has recently been added to the [West Virginia] November ballot with the intention of providing “protection against medically assisted suicide.” Ultimately, “the amendment just places what’s already illegal in West Virginia into the state constitution for more security going forward,’ said Pat McGeehan (R), a West Virginia state delegate, on … [Family Research Council’s] Washington Watch. If this amendment is passed, West Virginia would become the first state to amend their constitution to prohibit assisted suicide. The amendment states:

             “No person, physician or healthcare provider in the State of West Virginia shall participate in the practice of medically assisted suicide, euthanasia or mercy killing of a person. Nothing in this section prohibits the administration or prescription of medication for the purpose of alleviating pain or discomfort while the patient’s condition follows its natural course; nor does anything in this section prohibit the withholding or withdrawing of life-sustaining treatment, as requested by the patient or the patient’s decision-maker, in accordance with state law. Further, nothing in this section prevents the state from providing capital punishment.”

             Even though assisted suicide is “implicitly illegal in West Virginia,” McGeehan stated, “we want to send a message against this sort of nihilistic euthanasia movement sweeping the Western world.” And to fight against it properly, “you need to have it in the state constitution, because laws are not simply prescriptive; they’re also pedagogical. They teach people.” It’s McGeehan’s goal for West Virginia to become “the gold standard” in this push against euthanasia. …

             “Ten states have legalized euthanasia in one form or another.” Some states, such as Oregon and Vermont, have actually “opened up their euthanasia programs to not just their state residents but to non-residents,” McGeehan explained. This, he added, has led to a “sort of euthanasia tourism,” which has “essentially grown into a whole marketplace for non-residents coming in to kill themselves.” Some states have gone as far as to offer lodging such as hotels and Airbnb rentals for people coming into the area to die. As McGeehan put it, “Really, they’re death hotels [and] death Airbnbs.”

             The euthanasia process has become so streamlined, he added, that it’s “just like [receiving] any other medication.” He explained, “They give you a cocktail of poisons” and then “you go back by yourself into one of these hotels [and] swallow the cocktail poison, it destroys your organs,” and then “social workers actually come by the next day [to] collect all the bodies in these hotels and burn them.”

             McGeehan shook his head. “We’ve got to push back against this. This is just part of a broader trend of nihilism that’s sweeping the country with the progressive liberal order.”

Life Advocacy Briefing editor’s note: Wouldn’t a God-worshipping spiritual revival be a better “trend” to “sweep the country?” Perhaps West Virginia’s first step could lead to something good.