Tag Archive for: abortion

Prosecution of Pro-Lifers Continues under Biden’s DOJ, with 6 More Convictions

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

On Tuesday, a guilty verdict was announced for six pro-life activists for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act at an abortion facility near Nashville, Tenn. The Biden administration’s Justice Department brought the charges, which stemmed from a peaceful protest on March 5, 2021, in which a group of pro-lifers prayed and sang hymns at the entrance to the Carafem Health Center Clinic.

Video of the protest shows a group of approximately 20-30 pro-life activists peacefully praying and singing hymns while standing and sitting along the walls of a hallway leading to the door of the abortion facility, with a small segment of the group sitting directly in front of the facility’s entrance. Roughly two hours into the vigil, a number of protestors were arrested for blocking the entrance without incident.

In October 2022, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was charging 11 individuals involved in the protest with violating the federal FACE Act, which bars individuals from physically blocking the entrance to an abortion facility. Six of the defendants were eventually convicted on Tuesday, with each facing “up to a maximum of 10 and a half years in prison, three years of supervised release and fines of up to $260,000,” with sentencing set for July 2. Four other defendants are scheduled to stand trial for misdemeanor violations of the FACE Act.

The Thomas More Society, which is representing the defendants, is expected to appeal the convictions.

The DOJ’s FACE Act prosecutions are the latest in a series of legal actions directed at pro-life activists under the Biden administration, in which at least 24 cases have been prosecuted since January 2021. At the same time, there have only been four FACE Act indictments of pro-abortion individuals related to a single attack on a pregnancy resource center in Florida, despite the fact that there have been hundreds of attacks that have occurred against churches and pregnancy resource centers during Biden’s tenure.

As noted by Family Research Council’s Arielle Del Turco during a House Judiciary Committee hearing last year, the FACE Act was originally designed to protect abortion facilities, pregnancy resource centers, and places of worship. The types of attacks committed against churches have included “vandalism, arson, bomb threats, gun-related incidents, and interruption of worship services — all of which are punishable under the FACE Act,” she emphasized.

The disparity in prosecutions has led to Congress taking notice. In October, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced a bill to repeal the FACE Act, citing the biased enforcement that is being carried out by the Biden administration. “We need to repeal it and then stop giving authority to the Department of Justice to be able to go after [pro-life] people,” he told Tony Perkins in September.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, questioned the priorities of the Biden administration’s DOJ in targeting pro-lifers amid a spiraling border crisis and the spreading conflict in the Middle East.

“As countless little boys and girls are being trafficked across the border and wars wage across the world, the Biden administration thinks the most important thing to focus on is prosecuting peaceful protestors attempting to save unborn babies from a brutal death,” she pointed out. “Yes, these protestors violated the FACE Act, but the Biden administration should consider spending taxpayer dollars to protect America’s border — not to stop non-violent men and women who are simply singing hymns while defending the unborn.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Report Catalogues Dozens of New Incidents of Persecution against Christians in the West

POST ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Dems Want to Give Up U.S. Sovereignty’ to ‘New World Order’: Senator on WHO Treaty

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

The Democratic Party in general, and the Biden administration in particular, are eager to hand global governance institutions more influence over U.S. health policy, said the prime opponent of a new pandemic agreement.

The Biden administration has signaled its intention to adopt the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new accord on responding to global health pandemics such as COVID-19 or “Disease X.” The WHO Pandemic Agreement demands the U.S. turn over one-fifth of all vaccines and protective health equipment to WHO for redistribution, adopts a controversial “One Health” policy that makes human health no more important than animals or the environment, and encourages national governments to combat “misinformation” online. The WHO originally described the agreement as a “legally binding treaty” in December 2022 but changed its formal title to an “agreement” after the Biden administration realized it could not win Senate ratification, as the Constitution requires for an international treaty.

The Biden administration’s willingness to sidestep Congress on the WHO agreement — as it has on student loan “forgiveness,” an eviction moratorium, and other issues — troubles Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who introduced the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act. But the bill is “not getting much traction here in Congress,” Johnson told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on January 25, because the international accord has become “a partisan issue.”

“Every Republican except for the bill’s sponsor voted for my amendment, which would have deemed” the WHO agreement, which would give WHO greater authority over all Americans during deadly outbreaks, “a treaty subject to ratification in the Senate. And every Democrat voted against it,” said Johnson. “So, Democrats apparently want to give up U.S. sovereignty.”

Pro-life and pro-family advocates should be most concerned about expanding the WHO’s reach, power, and prestige, as it moves to polarize global health policy in favor of abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism, say its opponents. At last month’s board meeting, WHO announced it may strike a partnership with the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), a well-funded pro-abortion lobbying group that pressures governments to enact lax abortion laws.

CRR is “one of the most nefarious, aggressively pro-abortion groups on the face of the Earth,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) told Perkins earlier in the same show. That stems, in part, from its secretary-general, Tedros Ghebreyesus, who won his post with China’s endorsement. “I’ve known him for 30 years. He used to tell me how pro-life he was. He is absolutely pro-abortion.”

Smith, the co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, and his wife have tracked the influence CRR and WHO have had on global abortion policy for decades. Two decades ago, Smith entered into the Congressional Record “a document put out by the World Health Organization, and it’s all about the model legislation that they want for every country,” he said. WHO wants “no gestational limits, just like Biden is doing,” establishing a right to “abortion until birth.” WHO and the Democrats also believe pro-life physicians, who object to participating in abortions due to religious or moral reasons, should have “no ability to say no, no right of conscience. They say that is a barrier to access to abortion.”

Democrats and global WHO bureaucrats also oppose mandatory waiting periods, which have been shown to reduce the abortion rate and increase the number of babies born alive. “Very often when there’s a parental notification, or a waiting period, or some other small-but-necessary protection, women rethink it and they come to a different conclusion,” Smith told Perkins. “They want none of that.”

WHO is also scheduled to roll out a global health guidance instructing physicians how to respond to adults who identify as transgender — and stacked the group writing the guideline with radical transgender activists, most of whom have no medical background. One proposed member of the Guideline Development Group (GDG) previously took part in a global LGBT health symposium that “emphasised the need to provide [an] uninterrupted supply of … medical [hormone therapy] and gender-affirmative surgeries for trans people.” The minority of GDG members who have medical backgrounds often carry out, and financially benefit from, transgender procedures, creating a blatant conflict of interest.

WHO’s emphasis on climate change, and its lowering human health to the level of ecosystems, should also give Americans pause, said Johnson. President Dwight D. “Eisenhower, in his farewell address, warned us about four things,” he noted. “The final thing he talked about [was how] we cannot let global society fall into a state of ‘dreadful fear and hate.’” But both have been inflamed by extreme COVID-19 lockdown advocates and Green activists who perpetually flog the threat of “catastrophic climate emergency” while demonizing their opponents, he said. “This is what tyrants do. They control people. They take away your freedom based on a state of fear.”

Johnson said the end game of those promoting the WHO Pandemic Agreement and other destructive policies is “the New World Order, total control, a borderless world. That’s part of the strategy behind an open border here in America.”

He quoted a video produced by the World Economic Forum, “‘You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.’ That’s basically their rallying cry. It’s sick. It’s frightening.”

“There are a lot of people,” warned Johnson, “in leadership positions who want to take your freedom away.”

He hoped other nations would recognize “that their national sovereignty, their health freedom may be taken away from them in this very dangerous negotiation.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: RFK Jr.: WHO Pandemic Agreement ‘Should Be Dead in the Water’

RELATED VIDEO: Tucker Carlson contrasts two cases of people called in front of a Congressional Committee: Revolutionary vs Counter-Revolutionary

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Social Media Goes Ballistic As Biden Speech Devolves Into Word Soup And Supporters Clap ‘Like Brainless Seals’

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Social media went ballistic after President Joe Biden gave a speech that devolved into a word salad bad enough to rival his vice president and yet his supporters clapped enthusiastically.

Biden, speaking alongside Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally in Virginia on Tuesday, tried to emphasize the issue of abortion heading into the 2024 race.

“We’ll teach Donald Trump a valuable lesson, don’t mess with the women of America unless you want to get the benefit,” Biden said, slurring the entire time and forcing people who are transcribing it to listen several times.

Yet for some reason, the crowd went BALLISTIC. Enthusiasm not seen since for Biden since, well, never.

But social media sleuths took Biden to task for his speech.

Greg Price, who does communications for the State Freedom Caucus Network and is also a former Caller employee, tweeted, “I love how nothing he said made any sense here yet the people still clapped and cheered like brainless seals.”

Outkick’s Tomi Lahren challenged viewers to “caption this.”

Other users joked that “idiots just blindly cheer while Grandpa has a stroke on stage.”

Another user said, “Bosses in news companies are going to torture their least favorite employees by assigning them Biden subtitles duty.”

But perhaps the question shouldn’t be “what the hell did our president just say?”

Maybe we should start with something a little easier.

Mr. President, what is a woman?

AUTHOR

BRIANNA LYMAN

News and commentary writer. Follow Brianna on Twitter.

RELATED ARTICLE: McDonald’s, Missiles & Marches: Biden’s Thursday Devolves Into All-Time Gaffe Reel

RELATED VIDEO: Incapacitated: Biden fiddles while the world burns with guest Lee Smith

POST ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

GOP Leader Urges Party: ‘Stop Using the A-word and Start Talking about Life’

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

The closer we get to November, the more high-profile Republicans are admitting it: Silence isn’t selling on abortion. From RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel to the head of the House’s GOP fundraising arm, the cry to get off the sidelines on life is echoing off the walls of campaign headquarters. Lt. Governor Mark Robinson (R-N.C.) is the latest to join the chorus of conservatives, telling candidates to “stop being cowards and stand up for what you believe.” But know this first: the problem is as much about how the GOP is messaging as whether they do.

“I’m tired of talking about abortion,” the candidate for governor told reporters. The “a-word,” as he calls it, is what sent the party in a tailspin to begin with. “I’ve changed what I’m saying,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “Democrats, the leftists, they want everyone to say the word ‘abortion.’ They want our children to say it in schools. They want us to say it in our churches. They want politicians to say it on the floor of the House and on the floor of the Senate. They want me to say it. As the lieutenant governor, I’m bound and determined to stand up for what I believe in. And what I believe in [is] life — and it’s time for us to start using that word. This is an issue of life, about protecting life, and then about doing what we can to elect officials to make sure that once those lives come into the world, that they have life and have it more abundantly.”

His intentional shift raised the antenna of local media, who’ve started reporting that Robinson is trying to duck the issue now. Baloney, he replies. “They think that I’ve changed my position,” he said. “I have not changed my position.” Instead, he’s doing what he believes every pro-lifer should do: he’s changed the terms. “The subject is not abortion,” the lieutenant governor insisted, “the subject is life.” And that’s where conservatives need to debate.

Perkins nodded emphatically. The FRC president has also called for a shift in language, drawing America’s attention back to the unborn baby, not the procedure. Of course, that’s become more difficult, the “Washington Watch” host pointed out, since Republicans let Democrats define the terms when “so many were just silent.” Now, he shook his head, they’ve “started stuttering.” “We need to go out and tell people what we’re for. We are for protecting the unborn and preserving a culture of life in this country.”

Bringing the conversation back to life also extends an arm to women, Robinson wanted people to know. “… [W]hen I speak, I want to be that person who’s there, who’s understanding. I want to be the person who’s … not up on a platform telling the young woman why she can’t have an abortion. I want to be that person who’s coming down, putting my arm around that young woman who may find [herself] in crisis, and telling them why she doesn’t have to have an abortion… [and that] our folks as elected officials [are] going to fight hard to make sure that you can bring that child into the world — and not only bring that child into the world, but have a great life for that child, yourself, and your family.”

It’s exactly the kind of message he and his wife needed to hear when they were struggling with an unexpected pregnancy before they were married. “My wife and I chose the route of abortion years ago,” he admitted, “and I cannot tell you the immense pain, the solid pain that we went through for so many years over this issue. It was just this unspoken thing that hurt both of us very deeply. And we have always regretted it, almost to the point where we just couldn’t even speak to one another about it because it was so painful.” But the difficulty of reliving that choice hasn’t stopped Robinson from sharing what they’ve been through. “We want to tell those stories to young people.” In fact, “It’s because of this experience and our spiritual journey that we are so adamantly pro-life,” he’s said.

Since that conscious decision to open up about it, the Robinsons have been amazed to see “how God used that to reach so many people who felt the exact same way, to encourage them to keep going and to know the mistakes that they made are shared by so many of us.”

And the beauty of that, Perkins added, is that when you do share it, “Yes, there’s pain, there’s guilt — it still bothers you — but there’s forgiveness. And that’s the good news of Jesus Christ in the gospel message, is that we don’t have to carry that burden. We don’t want others to do it, but we don’t have to carry that burden any longer.”

That’s exactly right, the lieutenant governor agreed. “That’s one of the best things about giving your life to Jesus Christ, you know when Jesus forgives. It’s a forgiveness that you can feel down deep in your soul. … But I would definitely warn anyone, any young person out there, do not take this issue lightly. Do not take this issue lightly. It haunts, it hurts, and it causes deep emotional distress.”

But the abortion crisis didn’t start overnight, he pointed out, and Republicans can’t end it overnight. “Educating our young people is going to be crucial,” Robinson urged. “You want to empower a young person? Empower that young person to know the greatest thing that they can do for their future is hold control of their body and make sure that they’re not falling into those traps that popular culture is pushing so many of them into. That’s real empowerment. That’s real progress.”

That’s not a message North Carolina is hearing form its current governor, Perkins half-joked. Roy Cooper (D) has embraced the radical agenda of the Left on everything from abortion to transgenderism. And yet, his challenger says, “People love [my] message. They love it.” So what advice would he give conservatives who are running from the issue?

“The number one thing I would tell them to do is to stop listening to the bad reports of CNN, CBS, and ABC and all those news agencies that are using this issue to try to browbeat Christian, Bible-believing conservatives. That’s number one. The second thing that I would say is, quite frankly, stop being a coward and stand up for what you say you believe in. It’s time for the people of this nation to realize who we are.” Look, he said, “America’s survival is at stake” in this election. “We need to make our stands strong — and it starts with us standing up for what’s right.” Without apology.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: WHO Chief: Nations Must ‘Counteract Conservative Opposition’ to Abortion, Promote Transgenderism

RELATED VIDEO: Sarah Gabel Seifert Reveals How Women Have Been Lied to About Abortion and Birth Control

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

WHO Chief: Nations Must ‘Counteract Conservative Opposition’ to Abortion, Promote Transgenderism

/in , , , , , , , /by

A global government body has told nations it is “imperative” that they “counteract conservative opposition” and “enact progressive laws” that legalize prostitution and intentionally infect people with AIDS. At the same time, the international body has indicated it plans to roll out guidelines normalizing transgender cross-sex hormone injections worldwide.

The World Health Organization (WHO) ushered in 2024 with a bulletin titled “Advancing the ‘sexual’ in sexual and reproductive health and rights: a global health, gender equality and human rights imperative,” co-written by WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, a former associate of Ethiopia’s repressive Marxist government.

“Political leaders at all levels must champion sexual health as part of sexual and reproductive health to counteract conservative opposition,” states the WHO Bulletin released on January 1. “Policy-makers must enact progressive laws and policies to expand access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services,” it says.

“Countries must repeal laws that criminalize homosexuality, sex work and HIV transmission,” the bulletin advises. Ghebreyesus calls on world leaders to “foster societies where all people can experience their sexuality safely, positively,” couching the advancement of the Sexual Revolution as a moral imperative.

“Upholding sexual health is a moral obligation. Immense suffering is caused when people lack bodily autonomy; control over their fertility” — a likely reference to abortion — as well as “the freedom to experience safe, consensual and pleasurable sexual relationships,” states the bulletin. The bulletin did not explain how having sex with strangers for money and allowing people to spread AIDS with impunity increases sexual pleasure. Surveys have continually found the most sexually satisfied people are committed married couples who had no previous sexual experience.

The WHO bulletin also advocates population control measures in the name of reducing carbon emissions. “Sexual health even impacts environmental sustainability. Slowing unsustainable population growth by investing in family planning and education reduces pressures on natural resources and helps break cycles of poverty,” writes Ghebreyesus.

The bulletin insists that such libidinous concerns as the “right” to pleasure are “not fringe issues” but flow naturally from “universal values that cut across religious, partisan and cultural divides.”

The WHO missive echoed a 2012 report from the Global Commission on HIV and the Law — formed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and funded in part by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations — which called on nations to repeal laws that “prohibit commercial sex, such as laws against … brothel-keeping.” It also opposed laws criminalizing intentionally infecting others with HIV/AIDS, while criticizing “conservative interpretations of religion” and laws based on “morality.”

The new WHO bulletin advocates a broad agenda rooted in the extreme left-wing concepts of intersectionality and equity. “Violations of human rights in the context of sexual health are embedded in hierarchical structures of gender, generation, lineage, race, class, and caste, in which more powerful or privileged people control the bodies and emotions of the less powerful. People with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities often face stigma and discrimination,” states Ghebreyesus.

WHO condemned medical researchers for fixating on 99% of the global population through their “focus on predominantly cisgender and heterosexual populations.”

Ironically, WHO encourages politicians to enact new policies, because “[s]exual health of women and girls and gender-diverse individuals is politicized.” Yet WHO wishes for global support of the Sexual Revolution to go beyond political leaders to become a whole-of-society undertaking.

“Civil society and affected communities must mobilize to demand services, promote rights and reduce stigma,” writes Ghebreyesus. “Global leadership and funding are essential. International institutions should ensure sexual health is integrated within health, development and human rights frameworks.” Foreign aid should prioritize WHO’s goals, as should private nonprofit organizations, the memo states.

The New Year’s Day bulletin came as the World Health Organization asked for comment on the group of radical transgender activists WHO recruited to draw up global health guidelines on transgender procedures. The vast majority have no background in medicine.

After public backlash, WHO announced the group would not decree how doctors should care for minors who say they’re experiencing gender dysphoria. However, the adult guidelines will clearly affirm the transgender industry’s invasive procedures in the name of human rights.

“This guideline has a specific focus on adults and will not address issues relating to children and adolescents,” WHO announced last Monday, January 15.

WHO groused that many global health care settings “lack policies to facilitate access to inclusive and gender affirming care.” It clarified that “gender-affirming health care can include … a number of social, psychological, behavioural or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions,” but “these new technical guidelines … will not consider surgical interventions.”

However, the new guidelines will insist doctors “provide more inclusive, acceptable and effective” care for trans-identifying people — by which they mean cross-sex hormone injections. “The guideline will reflect the principles of human rights, gender equality, universality and equity,” the January 15 statement proclaimed. It will also advance WHO’s alleged commitment to two United Nations statements “to protect all people from discrimination and violence on the grounds of gender identity and/or gender expression” and “eliminate discrimination in healthcare settings, including discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.”

Banning alleged “discrimination” against transgender people could penalize Christian health care workers with faith-based objections to carrying out gender-conversion procedures.

“This is obviously highly concerning for several reasons,” Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “One is the aggregation of worldwide power into entities like the World Health Organization, which are far removed from the proper decision-making authority.” But a more pertinent objection, he said, is the content of global governance bodies’ decisions.

“We’re seeing WHO and other world bodies — the U.N., Organization of American States, World Economic Forum — increasingly aligned with the anti-Christ position,” advancing views that are “antithetical to the Word of God. They are opposed to what Jesus says,” Weber told TWS. “God speaks to us about creation, about creating us male and female, about how before He formed us in the womb He knew us. That’s very different than what the world power centers are saying about reality.”

It is all the more concerning such ideological impositions are being carried out in the name of “science,” he said. Weber compared the use of the word “science” to a cargo vehicle driving down the highway: “We see the car moving, but we don’t see what’s being carried inside it. What’s inside [WHO’s use of the term ‘science’] is ideology. The term ‘health’ is taking on an ideological bent — not only on gender ideology but on abortion, which is the taking of an innocent life. The term health is being used to promote a pro-abortion ideology worldwide.”

The new documents come as the U.S. government is asking citizens to comment on the proposed WHO Pandemic Agreement, originally called a treaty, which the Biden administration is considering adopting without Senate confirmation. The WHO agreement would require the U.S. to redistribute 20% of all vaccines and other equipment to WHO for redistribution, adopts a “One Health” policy equating human health with animal and plant life, and calls on governments to crack down on any social media post WHO dubs “misinformation.”

WHO’s decision to promote legalized prostitution, transgenderism, and population control measures in the name of health makes the global body “a dangerous place for everyone,” Weber told TWS.

The deadline to comment on the WHO Pandemic Agreement is Monday, January 22 by 5 p.m. Eastern time.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Ben Carson Warns Christians: ‘You’ll See the Attacks Ramp Up Significantly as the Election Approaches’

Today, and Every Day, Pray for the Legal Protection of Every Unborn Child

POST ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Abortion, Trump And Censorship Headline Supreme Court’s Docket In The New Year

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

  • The Supreme Court will grapple with issues involving former President Donald Trump, the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies to censor speech online and the abortion pill in the lead up to the 2024 election. 
  • Abortion is back at the Supreme Court just two years after it issued a major ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, with two cases on the issue.
  • The justices will hear oral arguments on Trump’s eligibility for office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in February.

Issues involving the chemical abortion pill, former President Donald Trump and the Biden administration’s encouragement of censorship online top the Supreme Court’s docket in the New Year.

Though only one decision has been released so far this term, the justices have already heard arguments on gun restrictions for subjects of domestic violence restraining orders, government officials blocking constituents on social media and Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement. Other pending cases will require the Supreme Court to grapple with multiple hot-button issues in the lead up to the 2024 election.

Abortion

Just two years after overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the justices agreed to hear another major abortion case challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the chemical abortion pill mifepristone.

U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled in April that the FDA must reverse its approval of the pill. The Fifth Circuit later declined to fully remove the pill from the market, but upheld the portion of the decision rolling back FDA rules issued in 2016 and 2021 that had expanded access, allowing the pill to be sent via mail and used later in pregnancy.

However, due to an emergency order issued by the Supreme Court in April, both decisions are paused until the Supreme Court rules on the case.

The Supreme Court also agreed Friday to hear a second big case considering whether the federal law requires emergency room doctors to perform abortions in violation of Idaho’s law, which prohibits abortions unless the mother’s life is in danger. The Biden administration argues the that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which instructs doctors not to turn away patients in need of “emergency stabilizing care,” preempt’s Idaho’s ban and requires doctors to perform emergency abortions.

On Friday, the Court agreed to allow Idaho’s ban to remain in effect until it could hear the case in April.

Censorship

The Supreme Court will weigh in on the Biden administration’s coordination with social media companies to suppress speech online in Murthy v. Missouri. District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty called the government’s censorship efforts “Orwellian” in his July 4 ruling finding the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment, noting the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri “produced evidence of a massive effort by Defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content.”

The Supreme Court paused the ruling in October pending its consideration of the appeal. Justice Samuel Alito dissented, along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, writing the decision could be construed in the meantime as “giving the Government a green light to use heavy handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news.”

Election officials in eight states filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the appeals court’s ruling, expressing dismay that communications made with platforms during the 2020 and 2022 election season have “essentially ended” ahead of “a critical and hotly contested 2024 election season.”

The Supreme Court will also hear a case considering former superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services Maria Vullo pressuring banks and insurance companies not to do business with the National Rifle Association. Aaron Terr, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) director of Public Advocacy, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in November there are “clear parallels” between the cases.

“Each case involves government officials exceeding constitutional boundaries by coercing private companies to censor or dissociate from speakers expressing views those officials dislike,” he said.

Trump

As the 2024 election draws near, issues surrounding former President Donald Trump are creeping into the court’s docket.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Feb. 8 to consider Trump’s appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision finding him ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The justices decision will clarify whether other states can take similar actions to remove Trump from the ballot, as Democratic Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows did in a Dec. 28 ruling finding Trump ineligible to appear.

The justices also agreed to hear a case on the scope of an obstruction statute used to charge hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, as well as Trump.

The statute, Section 1512(c)(2), threatens fines or up to 20 years in prison for anyone who “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding.” It is connected to two of the four charges in Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump for alleged election interference.

If the Supreme Court limits the scope, it could shake up Jan. 6 cases along with impacting the former president’s case.

Special counsel Jack Smith already asked the justices in December to consider Trump’s presidential immunity appeal before the lower court had a chance to weigh in, a request they ultimately denied. Still, the issue will likely be back before the justices soon, as the D.C. Circuit is slated to hear oral arguments on the issue Jan. 9 and issue a decision sometime after.

Other coming cases to watch

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Jan. 17 for a pair of cases that challenge “Chevron deference,” a legal doctrine that instructs courts to defer to executive agency interpretations of statutes when the language is ambiguous. Critics argue the doctrine enables federal agencies to adopt expansive interpretations of statutes that broaden their power while evading the checks and balances of the judicial branch.

In February, the Supreme Court will hear a case challenging a Trump-era federal ban on bump stocks, along with a pair of cases considering red state laws aimed at preventing viewpoint censorship on social media.

AUTHOR

 

RELATED ARTICLES:

Dems Seek To ‘Affect The Outcome’ Of Key 2024 Cases Through Public Pressure On SCOTUS, Legal Experts Say

Here’s The Legal Question That Could Determine The 2024 Election

Judge Denies Trump’s Team From Referencing E. Jean Carroll’s Rape Claim For Future Defamation Trial

RELATED VIDEO: Epstein Files Clear President Trump of Involvement (Duh) | TIPPING POINT

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PODCAST: The Ethics of Voting As A Christian

/in , , , , , , , , /by

As 2023 comes to an end, many Americans are looking into 2024 with one specific national event on their mind: the presidential election.

Be it Republican or Democrat, Libertarian or Independent, there are a lot of options to choose from, but how does one know whom to pick?

Host Joseph Backholm is joined by Andrew Walker, Associate Dean in the School of Theology, and Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to discuss the morals and methods that Christians should implement when voting.

To Walker, politics is about promoting the common good and loving your neighbor.

Listen now to better understand how to ethically vote for candidates that align with your values!

GUESTS

Joseph Backholm

Joseph Backholm is Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council.

Andrew Walker

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Left Wants Pro-Lifers to Despair after Tuesday’s Election. Don’t.

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Unlike a lot of things in life, losing doesn’t get any easier the more you do it. If anything, the sting turns to despair, as pro-lifers, who’ve slogged through seven bitter defeats since June of 2022, know well. Over the last several months, the jubilation of seeing Roe fall has been replaced by a sinking feeling that the cause of the unborn is doomed in the very place the justices have entrusted it: the states. But is that true — or are we just experiencing the pains of a battle we only just started fighting?

There had been real hope that Ohio, the first conservative state to weigh in on a radical abortion measure, would reverse the string of losses since Dobbs. When that didn’t happen, and Buckeyes voted 56-43% to let parents take their child’s life right up to the moment of birth, the media’s taunts that life is a political loser felt truer. Maybe, as notorious squishes like Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) are already saying, the movement should just give up. Stop talking about abortion.

But, as the editors of National Review so powerfully write, “In the mind of anyone who knows the truth that abortion deliberately kills an innocent human being, giving up on the most important human-rights cause of our time is unthinkable. After five decades of Roe and less than two years from Dobbs, the fight for life in the democratic arena has barely begun.”

Remember, they told discouraged readers, “Advocates of same-sex marriage suffered a string of 32 losses at the ballot box before succeeding for the first time, in the bluest of states, in 2012. … Their success serves as a reminder that a string of defeats at the ballot box is no reason to believe a cause is lost.”

For a half-century, pro-lifers have marched, prayed, volunteered, voted, suffered blows, and stepped right back into the ring — not because the cause was politically advantageous, but because it was morally right. That cause didn’t end when the Supreme Court righted one wrong. It ends when every square inch of this nation is a safe place for children in the womb. Anyone who thought that would be easy has quickly forgotten the lessons of the last 50 years.

We have to do what we’ve done since the beginning — stand up, dust ourselves off, and, as the NRO editors urge, “Take the long view on the fight on life.” “Do not despair,” pro-life scholar Michael New insists. “We were never promised a smooth glide path to victory. This is an important lesson. Because history tells us, when we persist, we win!”

Does that mean we don’t have things to learn? Absolutely not. We’re in a new and volatile political environment that Dobbs created, and if we’re going to turn the tide, it’ll take time. And while we don’t need to rethink our principles, we do need to rethink how we talk about them — if, in some cases, we even are.

In one of the more astonishing statistics from Tuesday night, a whopping 24% of self-described “white evangelical or born-again Christians” supported Ohio’s Issue 1, which not only puts the Buckeyes on par with California’s abortion extremism but gives the green light to minor transgender surgery — without parental consent. We’re expecting voters to act with moral clarity when the church won’t even speak to it. Until that changes, pro-lifers will have a much steeper hill to climb. If Christians have been complacent after the Dobbs victory, we need to ensure they’re no longer complicit after defeat.

Why would Christians be voting for abortion anyway? Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm thinks the answer “could be the silence on these issues in many parts of the church. Many churches don’t want to be divisive, so they choose to say nothing, but when you say nothing you say something. Many Christians have been left with the impression that it doesn’t really matter what Christians think about abortion because the people they look to for guidance on these issues live and act like it doesn’t matter.”

Elsewhere, in Virginia, where abortion was the only messaging point Democrats had to run on, the media rushed to gloat that conservative agendas like Governor Glenn Youngkin’s had been rebuked. Among the more creative post-election name-calling was Fox Business’s Dagen McDowell, who labeled Youngkin a “damp Dorito” for putting so much emphasis on life.

But the reality is, NRO’s Jim Geraghty points out, “Virginia is shifting from narrow GOP control of the state House and narrow Democratic control of the state Senate, to narrow Democratic control of both chambers. Control of the state legislature is probably going to come down to a couple thousand votes in a handful of districts. It’s a frustrating result for the GOP, but not a sweeping rebuke.”

That step-away-from-the-ledge rationale was echoed by politicos like John McCormick, who noted that what happened Tuesday night isn’t all that different from what happened the year Youngkin won. “The House of Delegates went 52R-48D [to] 51D-49R house now.” And let’s not forget, he posted, Virginia is “a Biden +10 state,” and voters were still “evenly divided [46-47%] on a 15-week [abortion] limit.” Oh, and by the way, the damp Dorito has a 54-38% approval rating. Biden hasn’t sniffed a percentage like that since inauguration.

So losing the legislature by 1%, especially after Democrats banked their whole campaign on the outrageous lie that Republicans want to ban “all abortions without any exceptions” isn’t exactly a death knell for conservatism in the Commonwealth. And yet, McCormack shakes his head, “Twitter is treating it like a political earthquake.”

Even more encouraging, at least in the winning hearts and minds category, is that Americans believe the Democrats’ position on abortion is more extreme — by a two-to-one margin. Pro-lifers just have to figure out a way to continue driving that point home on the road to reasonable compromise.

In other words, Geraghty emphasizes, “The results last night are no reason to panic.” “The elections in the year before the presidential election are a little odd — much lower turnout, governors’ races in a trio of Southern states with their own quirky histories and dynamics, and intense waves of advertising in state legislative races that usually fly under the radar.”

But, he continues, “If you look back eight years to 2015, you see Republicans won two governors’ races (Kentucky, Mississippi) and lost one (Louisiana). This year, Republicans won two governors’ races (Louisiana, Mississippi) and lost one (Kentucky). (Jeff Landry won the Louisiana governor’s race in the first round in October, and everyone seems to have forgotten about that.)”

Tuesday night’s results were disappointing, to be sure, but they don’t negate all of 2023’s other victories. In a year that’s seen the beat-back of Pride, a surge of anti-woke boycotts, an education revolution, the repudiation of ESG, 19 signed SAFE Acts, a nationwide parents’ revolt, and the election of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), America is a long ways from writing social conservatives’ obituary. The cultural undercurrents continue to be strong on the Right, even if the electoral fruit doesn’t always bear that out.

The outcome in Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, and other states may not have been what we hoped for, worked for, or anticipated, but even in the midst of it, we shouldn’t once question what we did or what we stood for. In days like these, we have to keep an eternal perspective, remembering that, as Christians, we go from victory to victory. That doesn’t mean every election ends with a parade, because our battle is not temporal; it’s spiritual. Voters may reject the values that have sustained this nation for more than 240 years — but an election is not going to change the sovereignty of God.

Our charge is to not lose heart, to stay faithfully engaged in the struggle, and to pray. “In this world you will have trouble,” Jesus warned. “But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

“It took us 50 years to get here,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told TWS. “But the way forward is the same way we arrived at this point — continuing each and every day to win the hearts and minds of people by telling truth. Now, the volume has been ratcheted up where the lies are being fueled by millions of dollars, but that just means we need to speak the truth with more passion and more consistency to break through Left’s deception.” Even so, he insisted, “We’re not going to retreat. We’re not going anywhere.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Ohio’s Issue 1 Erases Parenthood

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

If Issue 1 passes in Ohio, it will effectively deny parents the ability to protect their minor daughters from predatory neighbors, family members, or industries favored by the Democratic Party. But perhaps its greatest offense comes in its attempt to legally dismantle parents’ rights to direct, guide, or even be aware of the most consequential decisions in their children’s lives.

Issue 1 would establish the right of an “individual” of any age to make “reproductive decisions,” including “but not limited to” abortion. Its sponsors tacitly acknowledge the real battleground in Ohio is the way the amendment affects parental consent. Their latest ad turns the concept on its head, irrationally claiming the amendment somehow protects young girls from child molesters.

In reality, Issue 1 empowers predators to victimize young girls twice, sexually exploiting them and then using abortion to dispose of the evidence. Sadly, Ohio has already proven this.

In 2003, John Haller, a 21-year-old soccer coach, began abusing a 13-year-old eighth grader, getting her pregnant shortly after she turned 14. He took her to a southwest Ohio Planned Parenthood for an abortion, posing as her father to authorize the abortion. Issue 1 would save him the trouble; Planned Parenthood, which has a history of covering up sexual abuse and human trafficking, would not have to go through the motions of asking about parental consent. Issue 1 transforms the child’s rapist into a crusading hero helping the girl exercise her “reproductive freedom” (which her parents might seek to deny). If Issue 1 passes, the Ohio-based pro-life group Created Equal accurately notes, “A sexual abuser could drive your daughter to an abortion, and you’d be left in the dark.”

But a cynic would be tempted to believe the abortion industry (which constitutes the heart of the coalition sponsoring the amendment) specifically designed Issue 1’s sloppily-worded amendment to stave off future legal issues. How did the abortionist react when they learned of their role in covering up the sexual molestation of a young teenage girl? Planned Parenthood sued all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court to deny her parents the right to see full medical records that could establish whether the facility engaged in a pattern of concealing minors’ sexual assaults. Issue 1 would allow the abuse-facilitating abortion industry to say parents have no standing to interfere in their children’s “reproductive decisions” and wash their hands clean of it.

Indeed, one of the sponsors’ ads says the quiet part out loud: Voting yes on Issue 1 “gets government out of the way” and gives the abortion industry free rein when it comes to your daughter.

Even when an underage pregnancy does not result from rape, Issue 1 renders loving parents incapable of shielding their daughters from the harmful mental and emotional impacts of abortion. A 2011 meta-analysis from Bowling Green State University’s Priscilla Coleman found “a moderate to highly increased risk of mental health problems after abortion.” (The evidence of abortion’s harms is far from restricted to Coleman’s work.)

“There are physiological, psychological, emotional consequences of abortion, and the pro-abortion side doesn’t ever want to talk about that,” said Ryan Bomberger, founder of the Radiance Foundation, on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Thursday. “That’s why when they say things like, ‘It’s no different than having a tooth pulled,’ well, there aren’t support groups for people who have their teeth pulled, but there are many hundreds, if not thousands of support groups across the United States for those who are post-abortive.”

That is why the abortion industry refers to its product only in “euphemistic” phrases “about ‘reproductive health and freedom’” — or, in the case of Issue 1, “reproductive decisions,” he said. “When they minimize this and they trivialize the impact of the violence of abortion, it shows which side actually cares about women, which side actually cares about the dignity of human life,” Bomberger insists.

One final point worth pondering: Each state legislates the age of statutory rape. Honest question: If Issue 1 establishes a constitutional right for “individuals” of all ages to make “reproductive decisions,” how would that affect Ohio’s age of consent laws? Isn’t having sex the ultimate “reproductive decision”? Even when statutory rape is illegal, left-leaning legal authorities often forbid parents from protecting their minor daughters on a mass scale. A human trafficking ring victimized more than 1,400 young girls under the nose of British authorities; records show police and social workers often told parents to accept that their 12-year-old daughters were “growing up.” The London Telegraph reported about “two separate cases where fathers who had tracked their daughters down and were trying to remove them from houses where they were being abused, were themselves arrested.” They watched helplessly as their daughters were abused, threatened, and trafficked around the United Kingdom, unable to defend them.

Issue 1 creates the legal environment in which all of this could occur. Every parent has a duty to vote no.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Sick: Ohio Issue 1 Ads Present a False, ‘Pro-Abortion’ Jesus

‘Separation of Church and State’ Myths and the Ohio Issue 1 Abortion Battle

‘Satan Doesn’t Want to See More People Following Christ’: Religious Persecution Grows Globally

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Tucker Carlson Declares Abortion a ‘Spiritual Battle’

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Veteran reporter and cultural-cum-political commentator Tucker Carlson is declaring that the fight against abortion is in fact a matter of spiritual warfare. Speaking at a gala hosted by The Center for Christian Virtue last week in Cleveland, Carlson stated that abortion is not a “political debate” but a “spiritual battle.”

The ex-Fox News host said that for most of his life and career “the debates that we had in the political sphere were over competing visions for how to improve people’s lives.” Referring to debates over issues like minimum wage, Carlson said, “I was on one side of it, but I could also sort of see the other side. Both sides were at least pretending to try to improve the lives of the people who voted for them.” The prevalence of abortion as a political issue is, argued Carlson, a departure from the sort of debate he and much of America has long been accustomed to.

Carlson pointed to two Ohio ballot initiatives — one enshrining abortion in the state constitution and the other decriminalizing recreational drug use — that he found especially distressing and disturbing. He asked, “When you wind up in an election where the two top ballot initiatives are 1) encouraging people to kill their own kids and 2) encourage their kids to do drugs, who’s benefitting here?” He then extolled the joys of being a parent and raising a family, saying, “I’m serious. The one unalloyed source of joy in your life is your children, the point of life is to have children, and to watch them have grandchildren. Nothing will bring you joy like that will — nothing comes close, nothing comes close.” Carlson continued:

“So anyone telling you, ‘Don’t have children, kill your children,’ is not your friend, it’s your enemy. And by the way, it’s a very recognizable promise that they’re making to you, because it’s as old as time and it’s chronicled in great detail throughout the Hebrew Bible — it’s human sacrifice, which rears its head about every four chapters, and which is singled out for approbation every time. Of all the sins the ancient committed, that sin, every single time it’s described, is called detestable… Detestable. God singled that out.”

“Why were people doing that?” he asked. “Because, of course, they believed that they were getting power and contentment and happiness in return.” Carlson explained that child sacrifice was not a practice relegated to the Mayans or Aztecs but was practiced by practically every major civilization or peoples from antiquity. “Human sacrifice, the sacrifice of children, the killing of children is the one constant in human civilization.”

He continued to note that all these various ancient civilizations, spread across different regions and continents across the globe, all reached the same conclusion: that child sacrifice might provide happiness or safety. Carlson said that conclusion couldn’t be reached “organically,” pointing out that it contradicts evolutionary biology and the instinct to preserve and continue not just the species but the family.

So where did human sacrifice come from? “That’s an idea, an impulse that was introduced,” Carlson explained. “Outside forces are acting on people at all times throughout history in every culture on the planet to convince people that if they sacrifice their children they will be happy and safe.” He continued:

“And that’s exactly what this is. This is a religious rite. This is not a policy debate, they’re not telling you that some girl got raped at 13 and she needs to go to college and therefore, unfortunately, we need to abort the child. No. That was 20 years ago. Now they’re saying, ‘Abortion is itself a pathway to joy.’ Really? So this is not a political debate, this is a spiritual battle. There is no other conclusion.”

Addressing the other ballot initiative promoting recreational drug use, Carlson quipped, “Take more drugs and be happy? Right, okay.” He expounded that the results of that initiative would essentially zombify the population. “Less conscious, less aware, give your soul over, dull yourself, become a robot. Really? Those are the promises they’re making?”

The bulk of Carlson’s speech last week is reminiscent of a speech he delivered earlier this year at The Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala. In that speech, Carlson said that American debate used to center on differing policy plans for achieving what was generally an agreed-upon good outcome. But now, he said, “people … decide that the goal is to destroy things — destruction for its own sake — ‘Hey, let’s tear it down’ — what you’re watching is not a political movement, it’s evil.”

Referring to abortion, he reiterated that abortion advocates have gone from claiming that abortion is “sometimes necessary” to foaming at the mouth for abortion on demand anywhere, any time, for any reason. “If you’re telling me that abortion is a positive good … you’re arguing for child sacrifice.… That’s like an Aztec principle, actually.” He argued that the era of policy paper debates is over and America is now in a period of “theological” war. Days after delivering that speech, Carlson was removed from Fox News, reportedly because then-Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch thought the speech was too Christian and was unsettled by its theological overtones.

Last week, though, Carlson did more than just highlight the reality of America’s present spiritual war. He asked, “So how do you respond to this?” The answer, he suggested, is to remain courageous. Citing St. Paul as a hero of his, Carlson said:

“This is like the bravest guy ever. There’s not a letter he wrote where he didn’t have a sword hanging over his neck, he expected at any moment to be murdered, and I think the consensus among historians is, in the end he was. He was murdered. … But he lived with the certainty that he was going to be killed for his beliefs every day. And he was totally unbothered by it, completely. … He was never afraid.”

“And by the way,” Carlson asked, “why would he be afraid? He believed his fate was sealed. He was going to join Jesus. He was going to Heaven.” Carlson proclaimed that courage is the “marker” of the Christian faith, adding that if a Christian is afraid, then “you’re kind of not doing it right, are you? There’s no excuse for being afraid.” Whether facing the threat of a worldwide “pandemic” with a 99% survival rate or facing a firing squad for being a Christian, Carlson’s exhortation was clear: be not afraid.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

House Blocks Joe Biden From Using PEPFAR Program to Force Americans to Fund Abortions

Congressional Resolution Declares Unborn Babies are Persons With a Right to Life

Pro-Abortion Radicals Have Threatened to Rape and Kill Me Because I’m Pro-Life

Woman Heading to Abortion Clinic Rejects Abortion When She Sees Pro-Life People Praying

RELATED TWEET:

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

he Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Huge Victory’: 5th Circuit Rules Against Mailing Abortion Pills and Ignoring Women’s Injuries

/in , , , , , /by

The Biden administration suffered a major setback, as a federal appeals court has ruled the abortion industry cannot send the abortion pill through the mail, nor ignore the life-threatening harms suffered by the women who take it. The unanimous decision, which pro-life advocates say could save tens of thousands of lives, likely places the pro-life movement and the abortion lobby on another collision course for the Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, ruled against laxer safety standards placed on the abortion pill by the Obama and Biden administrations. In the case, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a collection of doctors and OB-GYNs represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom argued the FDA had negligently abused its expedited approval of the chemical abortion drug mifepristone in 2000 for political purposes.

The panel believed the doctors waited too long to file a legal challenge, as the statute of limitations had likely expired. But it overturned abortion expansions made in 2021 by the Biden administration and in 2016 by the Obama-Biden administration. Wednesday’s ruling:

  • reduces the number of weeks mifepristone may be dispensed from 10 weeks to seven;
  • stipulates that only a physician may prescribe the pill, also known as RU-486;
  • ends telemed abortions by requiring an abortion-minded woman to have three in-person visits with a doctor: the first to confirm pregnancy and to take mifepristone, the second to take misoprostol, and a follow-up to check for adverse effects caused by the chemical abortion;
  • bars abortion pills from being sent through the mail; and
  • mandates that abortionists report all adverse events caused by mifepristone, not merely when the pill causes a woman’s death.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins called the ruling a “significant victory for the health and safety of women.” Former Congressman Jody Hice said the judgment constitutes “a huge, huge victory for the pro-life movement as a whole and for protecting the health of women.”

The Biden administration “unlawfully allowed for mail-order abortions,” ADF senior counsel Erin Hawley told Hice on “Washington Watch” Thursday. “The Fifth Circuit’s decision puts an end to that.” The decision “makes good on the promise of Dobbs” by stopping abortion activists in Democrat-controlled states from shipping mifepristone into pro-life states, eviscerating state pro-life protections for the unborn.

The ruling reversed abortion-expanding executive actions taken by two Democratic administrations. Barack Obama and Joe Biden both moved to change the rules governing the distribution of mifepristone, known as Risk Evaluation and Mitigation System (REMS). In 2016, the Obama-Biden administration said abortionists no longer had to report serious side effects of the abortion pill to the FDA’s Adverse Events Reporting System (FAERS), only deaths. In December 2021, Biden’s FDA allowed the abortion pills to be prescribed online, without a medical check-up to verify the woman does not have an ectopic pregnancy, or that she is pregnant at all. The impact weighed heavily on the panel.

“In loosening mifepristone’s safety restrictions, FDA failed to address several important concerns about whether the drug would be safe for the women who use it,” wrote Judge Jennifer Elrod in the majority opinion. “It failed to consider the cumulative effect of removing several important safeguards at the same time.”

One of the plaintiffs in the case, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologist (AAPLOG), told The Washington Stand the ruling is “a first step towards reprioritizing women’s health over the interests of the abortion industry and its allies within our profession.” FRC senior fellow Meg Kilgannon stressed that, although the abortion pill is “never safe for the baby” — “the baby is going to die” in any abortion — these terms constitute a “huge improvement over” existing practices. Giving abortion pills directly to the mother is “medically much safer for women” than shipping them via the mail, because it “ensures that no third party can have access to them and then further exploit women: a trafficker, a human trafficker, someone who would give these drugs to a woman unbeknownst to her.”

Pro-life advocates “should be cautiously optimistic” as the case moves forward, Rev. Jim Harden of CompassCare told TWS. “Pending the Supreme Court’s review, the drug remains available to women without medical oversight. Furthermore, the abortion industry continues to illegally ship the drug to women’s homes in violation of 18 U.S. Code § 1461 and 1462,” conventionally known as the Comstock Act. Two days after Christmas 2022, Biden’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued an opinion that pharmacies may mail or ship abortion pills to pro-life states.

These measures will not take effect immediately, if at all. The Supreme Court issued a stay requiring the case to be fully adjudicated, possibly all the way to the High Court, before the appeals court ruling can take effect. Justices have not yet indicated if they plan to hear the case without a conflicting ruling from another court.

The panoply of possible harms has multiplied as U.S. chemical abortions in the U.S. doubled between 2011 and 2020. Mifepristone now accounts for 54% of all U.S. abortions, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. The current regimen of unsupervised “mail-order abortion pills put thousands of women and girls at risk of serious complications from abortion pills every year,” said Katie Daniel, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s state policy director.

Studies have documented that the two-drug abortion cocktail causes four times the level of harmful side effects for women than surgical abortions. The FDA documented 4,207 adverse events from mifepristone use — including 26 deaths, 1,045 hospitalizations, 603 events requiring a blood transfusion, and 413 infections between 2000 and 2021. One study found that as many as 35 of every 100 women who ingest both pills will end up in the emergency room. In a pending lawsuit in New York City, a 16-year-old girl swore that mifepristone left her permanently “sick, sore, lame and disabled” — and caused her child, who survived, to be born with “profound birth defects.”

“I’ve personally treated many women for complications from the abortion pill (mifepristone and misoprostol), including performing emergency surgery on a woman who bled for two months after receiving these drugs,” noted Dr. Ingrid Skop, an OB-GYN who serves as vice president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute. “Those promoting unsupervised DIY abortion pills clearly prioritize the deaths of unborn children over the health and safety of women.”

A majority (55%) of women who consider themselves “pro-choice” regret their decision to take mifepristone, according to a national survey from Support After Abortion. One-third of women subjected to a chemical abortion “reported an adverse change” in their lives, such as “depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and thoughts of suicide,” the group found.

Mail-order abortion “lacks any sort of meaningful medical oversight and places women in danger of serious, life-threatening complications, and ends the lives of unborn children,” Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, told TWS. “The FDA has a solemn duty to prioritize health and safety over politics and should be held accountable for failing to do so.”

The Fifth Circuit partially affirmed and partially vacated a stronger decision from U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, who ruled on April 7 that FDA wrongly approved mifepristone in 2000. They allowed the drug to be dispensed according to 2016 standards and allowed a 2019 motion for the name-brand Mifeprex to be dispensed as a generic drug.

Pro-life advocates hope if and when the case comes before the Supreme Court, justices will reconsider mifepristone’s controversial approval in 2000, which they contend took place under political pressure from the Clinton administration. In doing so, they state, the FDA violated the Administration Procedure Act.

“The FDA, just like any other agency, has to follow the rules. They didn’t do that for chemical abortion. They bowed to political pressure,” Hawley told Hice. The courts should view the litigation “not as an abortion case, but as a case in which an agency simply failed to follow the rules.” One of the panel’s judges — Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee — dissented that the FDA’s approval of mifepristone should be reversed, pulling mifepristone off all pharmaceutical shelves.

“The FDA exists to protect Americans from dangerous drugs, yet numerous pro-abortion presidents used the agency as a political tool to promote elective abortion at the expense of pregnant women and their preborn children,” Texas Right to Life president John Seago told The Washington Stand. “We hope the court will take accusations against the FDA seriously and will fairly examine the agency’s negligent and politically-motivated approval of this deadly abortion drug over the last 23 years.”

Multiple levels of the Biden administration immediately registered their outrage at Wednesday’s ruling. A spokesperson for Biden’s Justice Department said the administration “strongly disagrees with the Fifth Circuit’s decision” and “will be seeking Supreme Court review.” Vice President Kamala Harris deemed the decision “a threat to a woman’s freedom.” Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra stated that banning the abortion pill would have “a devastating impact on women’s health” by denying them “the medications they need.”

The Biden administration has lost no chance to push back against the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and returned abortion to the democratic process for the first time in 49 years. Last July, the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent a guidance to 60,000 pharmacies threatening to take legal “corrective action” against anyone who refuses to dispense the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone to “pregnant people” and explain “how to take” it. Others continually urge the administration to go further. Before the ruling even came down, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) advised the Biden administration to “ignore the ruling” and “keep this life-saving drug on the market,” likening lawlessness to Abraham Lincoln’s actions freeing the slaves.

Deep-blue states including California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and Washington state have begun stockpiling mifepristone (and in some cases, misoprostol). So-called “abortion sanctuaries” have promised not to prosecute abortionists who mail mifepristone across state lines, in violation of state or federal law. “Because of this, women are more at risk for chemical abortion injury now than ever before,” said CompassCare’s Jim Harden.

If justices agree to take up the decision, yet another Supreme Court ruling on abortion could impact the 2024 elections. Perkins noted that the three-judge panel — Judges James Ho, Cory Wilson, and Jennifer Walker Elrod — were all appointed by pro-life presidents, highlighting how Christians’ votes lead to concrete decisions that save lives. “With two of the justices on the Fifth Circuit appointed by President Trump” — and Elrod named to the court by George W. Bush — “this ruling also underscores the importance of presidential elections,” Perkins said.

Constitutional lawyers vow they will not relent until the abortion pill, which kills children and hurts women, is removed from all venues. “We won’t rest until the FDA and the profit-driven abortion industry are held accountable for the suffering they’ve inflicted on women and girls, as well as the deaths of countless unborn children,” said Daniels.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: RFK Jr.’s Abortion Flip-Flop Reveals Democrats’ Abortion Radicalism

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden: Already Declared Climate Emergency ‘Practically Speaking’

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

President Biden has “practically speaking” already declared a national emergency on climate change, the president said in an interview with The Weather Channel published Wednesday. “We’ve conserved more land. We rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, we passed a $368 billion climate control facility.” At first, he said he had declared an emergency, but when pressed he said he had done so “practically speaking.”

The point of an emergency declaration is so that executives can exercise special powers to respond to an emergency, which would be unlawful under normal circumstances. However, due to the enormous powers they unlock, federal emergency declarations are limited by three federal laws.

Under the Public Health Service Act, the Health and Human Services Secretary can declare a public health emergency that grants the secretary extensive powers to respond to the public health emergency.

Under the Stafford Act, a state governor or tribal area chief executive can request federal assistance, allowing the president to declare a disaster or emergency; such a declaration enables the federal government to disburse financial assistance and other relief, coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Under the National Emergencies Act, the president may declare a national emergency without a request from a specific state, which confers 123 powers granted in other laws, although the president must specify which authorities are activated.

The law does not recognize a method of declaring an emergency, “practically speaking,” without an official declaration. Thus, even CNN acknowledged, “President Joe Biden incorrectly claimed in an interview with The Weather Channel that he has already declared a national emergency on the climate crisis.”

Biden elaborated on what he meant regarding a climate change emergency. “It’s the existential threat to humanity,” he stated. A threat to humanity’s existence would logically involve a threat to American lives, and a natural event that threatens American lives would typically be an appropriate subject for an emergency declaration. In that sense, it’s possible to follow Biden’s logic.

But while the logic is certainly clear, the solution is not. To protect lives during a hurricane, tornado, or manhunt, a governor could order citizens to evacuate, shelter in place, or avoid a certain area, as well as stockpiling emergency resources. Then, once the emergency is past, citizens can resume their normal lives. These are not only inadequate but meaningless responses to something as ill-defined as “climate change.” Evacuate to where? For how long? The current climate change narrative identifies a global crisis extending for lifetimes.

In fact, the lack of workable solutions might explain why President Biden has so far declined to declare a climate emergency. Biden has labelled climate change an “emergency” in speeches and vowed to combat it through executive actions, but he has stopped short of declaring an official emergency. If he did declare an emergency, what powers would he invoke, precisely?

Another possible reason for Biden’s delay is the inevitable legal and constitutional challenges, which he might then lose. Under normal circumstances, emergency powers are as short-lived as the crisis. But a climate emergency would be practically endless, enabling a presidential administration to sweep away America’s normal operating procedure forever, “practically speaking.” The courts have already struck down a number of Biden administration executive actions on the climate — from stopping offshore drilling to redefining inland waters — and they might not look too kindly on what would amount to a massive power grab.

But climate change is not the only issue on which emergency powers allure Biden. Biden has been contemplating an abortion emergency declaration since last year. He contemplated declaring an emergency over monkeypox, which primarily affects a very specific subset of the population. And he kept extending the COVID-19 emergency until long after he declared the pandemic over, and Congress had forced him to let it end. Somehow, under the president who promised to restore normalcy to Washington, everything is an emergency.

But President Biden’s track record with emergency declarations — specifically, considering them but not declaring them — suggests they serve a purpose other than good governance. That purpose is politics. When the chief executive is constantly mulling an emergency declaration, that stokes fear and alarm in the public, who assume he has alarming information they don’t. Fear can be a powerful motivator, driving people to vote, protest, or answer polls in the desired way. And many politicians today traffic almost exclusively in the rhetoric of fear. Even 70% of churchgoers have a growing sense of fear, although the Bible repeatedly exhorts them to “fear not.”

Biden is not the only figure to misuse an emergency declaration to advance a political agenda. In May, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) officially declared a state of emergency because the legislature was considering a school choice bill. In June, the Human Rights Campaign — an activist organization with no governmental or emergency power — declared a state of emergency for people in Florida who identify as LGBT because the state government enacted measures to check the inroads of transgender ideology in education and medicine. These nakedly political emergency declarations cheapen the whole concept, so that people are tempted to take it less seriously in the event of an actual emergency.

Today’s progressives are apparently trying to improve on former Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel’s slogan, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” After lurching society to the Left, their worry is not that they might waste a crisis by failing to achieve their agenda, but that there aren’t enough crises to accommodate it all. Thus, they are proactively looking for crises to exploit or, if necessary, manufacture. “Is this a crisis?” they ask themselves. “Or rather, would people believe it is?”

Healthy representative governments don’t flit breathlessly from crisis to crisis, nor do they replace mature deliberation for fear-driven urgency. This is unacceptable, and it must not continue.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARITICLE: Two Princeton, MIT Scientists Say EPA Climate Regulations Based on a ‘Hoax’

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘The Democrat Socialist Party Is Throwing a Hissy Fit and I’m Looking Forward to the Fight’

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

The Biden team has spent an awful lot of time talking about Senator Tommy Tuberville — but barely any time talking to him. That changed briefly Tuesday when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin decided to carve out a few short minutes to address what Democrats would have you believe is the single greatest threat to military readiness: a few months’ delay in flag officer promotions.

Their brief conversation was hardly indicative of the hair-on-fire crisis the White House keeps insisting it is. Based on Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s comments Tuesday, you’d think the Alabama coach was a bigger threat to America than communist China. “I wanted to start today, once again, by calling out an unprecedented harm that Senator Tuberville’s actions have to our military readiness and military families — to every branch of our Armed Forces, disrespecting those who serve and the families who serve with them.”

Her Pentagon counterpart, John Kirby, took it a step further, blaming the Republican for everything from the DOD’s recruitment woes to a loss in military talent. At one point, he even accused Tuberville of “abusing” military families (as if somehow underwriting the slaughter of their unborn offspring isn’t).

Asked how his conversation went with Austin, the coach admitted they hadn’t made much progress. “No, not yet,” he told reporters. “None. … Just cordial [conversations]. Everybody gives their position and then, ‘Well, let’s talk again.’”

That talk may be unnecessary, depending on the progress Republicans make with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in the Senate. Thanks to the House’s conservatives, the latest version of the military spending bill includes language that would roll back the Pentagon’s illegal taxpayer-funded abortion policy — the very lawlessness fueling Tuberville’s stand.

The sooner the better, Tuberville told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.” “We’re looking forward to getting some closure to this. It’s been a pretty good fight for about six months now, but they’re really ramping up the pressure. I’ve got the IRS after me. I’ve got national TV going to Alabama interviewing people. You know, it’s just one thing after another. … They’re turning up the heat, but they don’t know what heat’s all about.” As for the battle heating up in the Senate, the coach said, “The Democrat socialist party is throwing a hissy fit. … Let them. I’m looking forward to the fight.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) inched closer to a compromise Wednesday, announcing that he wouldn’t stand in the way of a vote on the military’s policy. “The bottom line is that if he wants to have an affirmative vote, we would not object to it,” the New York Democrat said during a press conference. “Tuberville said he wanted a vote, we’ll see what happens.”

The offer seemed to surprise Tuberville, who was informed and replied, “Oh, really? Well, I’ll have to talk to him. … I’ve never talked to him in two and a half years.”

Meanwhile, Schumer ramped up the hyperbole, insisting that Republicans should do a better job keeping their senators in line. “They are risking our security, and it’s up to them to fix it.”

Give me a break, Tuberville told Perkins. “If I thought I was holding up readiness and national security [in] this country, I wouldn’t be doing this. But that’s not happening. What’s causing our readiness [problems] is the woke policies that this administration is pushing. It’s awful. … And I don’t think they really understand what they’re doing to — not just the military — but all of our other institutions. But it is a total mess right now.”

As Republicans have argued since the beginning, the military has never provided abortion on demand at taxpayers’ expense — not under conservative administrations and not under liberal ones. “You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game,” the coach insisted. “And that’s exactly what they’re doing. They could care less about the Constitution. They have stomped all over our Constitution in the last two and a half years, and the American people should be outraged.”

At the end of the day, the coaching legend explained to Perkins, “The only way I’m going to move these holds is if they move that policy back, and then we bring a vote to the floor. And it’s pretty simple and we get back to business.” In the meantime, he warned, “… I’m standing up for the unborn, and I’m standing up for the taxpayers of this country. That’s what I’m here for.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

A Defiant GOP Smashes Woke Military Policies with Rock-Solid NDAA

/in , , , , , , , , /by

The biggest story of this past week isn’t that the House passed the military spending bill — or even that they passed it with language that beats back President Biden’s woke policies. The biggest story is the one that won’t be told: of House conservatives refusing to give an inch.

Former Congressman Jody Hice, now a special advisor to the president at Family Research Council, was blown away by the sea change in how this new Republican majority is doing business. For the last couple of years, Hice watched his party buckle under Democratic pressure, especially where military policy is concerned. “Progressively,” he told The Washington Stand, “the NDAA bills were becoming more and more woke. And we, as a Republican conference, were compromising to the demands on the Left. To see what took place Thursday night, I was just blown away. This is a major shift — not only from the woke agenda push from this administration — but this is a major shift from the direction of our own conference over the last several years, as it pertains to the NDAA.”

Late Thursday night, Republicans finally went to sleep after accomplishing what seemed impossible only hours before: adding a slew of pro-life, pro-military, anti-gender transition amendments to the bill. Democrats and the media spent the wee hours of the morning blasting the conservative changes, vowing it would never pass with such “poison pills.”

They were wrong.

Barely nine hours later, the entire NDAA — anti-woke language included — had squeaked by in a 219-210 vote, thanks to an even swap of Republicans and Democrats (four) trading sides. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), and Don Davis (D-N.C.) all threw their support behind the GOP-led bill.

Of course, the most jubilant celebration came Thursday afternoon when Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) managed to include language rolling back the Pentagon’s taxpayer funding of abortion — an absolute defiance of the law. In one of the most powerful moments of that debate, mom-to-be Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) stood on the House floor and made it clear: “I am a United States veteran and a woman elected to Congress while pregnant. Advocating for a service member to have a child ripped from her womb completely destroys everything this military stands for.”

As Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) explained on “Washington Watch” moments before that vote, what the Department of Defense did with this sudden policy was nothing but an unconstitutional “end run around many of the pro-life states’ laws and all the hard work that’s been done after Dobbs overturned Roe.”

“This has become a really important issue in the country,” Johnson insisted. And what they’ve done, he explained, is used “executive fiat” through the Department of Defense. Secretary Lloyd Austin “[has] said that they will pay for or reimburse expenses relating to abortion services. So in other words, if a service member or a woman serving is pregnant, and she’s on a base somewhere in a [red state] … then she can travel to a state that provides abortion — and taxpayers will reimburse her for that. That’s a violation of the Hyde Amendment,” Johnson fumed.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins made sure to emphasize, “Just to be very clear here, we’re talking about elective abortions. So this is new territory [President Biden is staking out]. For decades, [there] has been a bipartisan position that taxpayers would not be forced to facilitate abortion.”

Obviously, this has been a huge flash point in the Senate, where Coach Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has taken months of heat for holding up certain military promotions until the DOD drops its reckless abortion advocacy. And while Democrats — the president included — blame the senator for everything from recruitment problems to retention, they refuse to even meet with Tuberville. If this delay was really so devastating to military readiness, the coach has said, you’d think Biden would pick up the phone and try to negotiate.

“That’s what this place is about,” he added. “It’s about working with each other, talking it out, getting in situations where you can maybe compromise to a point. I mean, here’s a guy that doesn’t even want to talk.”

He may be forced to, now that Republicans have teed up a 1,200-page rebuke of the last two years of Defense Department radicalism. If Biden wants to blame someone for America’s shrinking force, he ought to look in the mirror.

After all, it’s “the president and his administration [who’ve] injected into the military all of this woke social policy nonsense. … We have ESG and DEI and anything else you can imagine —the funding of drag queen shows on military bases, [the] violation of parental rights. We were able to get amendments … to take care of all of that,” Johnson said. But frankly, “it’s far more contentious than it should be. You know, our military has a very important job,” he insisted. “They’re trained to be a powerful force that wins wars and defends our nation, not experimentation with social policy. And so it’s just completely disingenuous for the president to [blame Republicans or blame Tuberville for these problems]. … [I]t’s not Republicans and conservatives that are inserting this. It was him. We’re undoing the damage that has been done.”

Along with crushing the Biden abortion policy, Republicans also held the line on the avalanche of diversity training and wildly inappropriate mission creep like taxpayer-funded gender transitions. Amendments to:

  • Outlaw the flying of Pride flags on military property (Norman Amendment #34) passed 218-213;
  • End the indoctrination of children in Defense Department schools by banning pornographic and dangerous gender ideology books (Boebert Amendment #35) passed 222-209;
  • Ban taxpayer-funding of gender transition procedures (Rosendale Amendment #10) passed 222-211;
  • Strip the funding for Chief Diversity Officers or Senior Advisors for Diversity and Inclusion from the ranks (Roy Amendment #30) passed 217-212; and
  • Outright block the DOD from creating new DEI administrator positions or taking action to fill existing DEI jobs (Burlison Amendment #62) passed 218-213.

One lone Democrat — Rep. Henry Cuellar (Texas) — voted with conservatives to stop the president’s out-of-control extremism on abortion and transgenderism. And while he refused to comment about the decision, he probably heard from the same constituents that his neighbor Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) did. “The American people I’ve talked to back home don’t want a weak military; they don’t want a woke military; they don’t want rainbow propaganda on bases; they don’t want to pay for troops’ sex changes.”

And yet, as Perkins pointed out, Biden blames Republicans for injecting social issues into the military. “You know, it’s like they poke the bear, and the bear pushes back — and they accuse the bear of being aggressive. The Left has been pushing this stuff for years.” And finally, conservatives pushed back.

“I do want to point out,” Perkins said, “that there’s something unique here under this Republican Congress. … I don’t want people to miss that … a year ago, we couldn’t even have a debate under the Democratic rules. There was no debate. It’s just that you were steamrolled in the Left’s process of getting their agenda through. … [This open dialogue] is something that hasn’t happened in a very long time.

“Yeah, what a concept,” Johnson joked. “We were able to get some real process reforms in that long, drawn-out battle for the speakership in January. And as painful as that process was for everyone, the result was really good. We got transparency again. We eliminated—forever, we hope—the possibility of omnibus spending bills and giant pieces of legislation that no one has read. … It takes a lot more time and effort, but this is what is demanded, and it’s what the American people deserve. And I’m really glad we’ve gotten back to some regular order here.”

In the meantime, Republicans are crossing their fingers that the heavy lifting they’ve done on the NDAA survives the Democrat-led Senate. One thing’s for sure, Perkins said. Biden doesn’t have Tuberville to kick around anymore. If he wants to end the freeze on military promotions, there’s a simple solution now: support this bill. “The remedy’s right here in front of him.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: House State and Foreign Ops Funding Bill Contains First-of-Its-Kind Pro-Life, Pro-Family Protections

EDITOR NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Beyond Dobbs: Trump, GOP Rivals Back National Pro-Life Protections

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

President Donald Trump has been called many names, but he would like to add one more: abortion terminator.

“We terminated Roe v. Wade,” declared the 45th president on the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on Saturday. He and other GOP presidential hopefuls also advocated expanding protections to unborn children at all levels of government while addressing the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority policy conference.

“There of course remains a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life” in a post-Dobbs America. “Every child, born and unborn, is made in the holy image of God, and that is why I have asked Congress to prohibit late term abortion of babies,” he said. “We will defeat the radical Democrat policy of extreme, late-term abortion.”

The former president told the fired-up crowd, during his four years in office, “I got it done.” His record of life-protecting executive actions includes:

  • Trump appointed three of the six justices who handed down the Dobbs ruling, clarifying that the Constitution never contained the unalienable “right” to abortion liberal justices claimed to discover in 1973;
  • Trump introduced the HHS Protect Life Rule, which prevented Title X funds from going to offices that carry out abortions, such as Planned Parenthood — a policy supported by 60% of Americans;
  • He expanded President Reagan’s Mexico City Policy into the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy, which protected U.S. taxpayers from funding abortion or entities that promote abortion overseas — a policy supported by 78% of Americans;
  • Trump’s Justice Department sued the University of Vermont Medical Center in 2020 for forcing a woman to participate in an abortion — a policy supported by 77% of Americans; and
  • President Trump promised to “veto any legislation that weakens existing Federal protections for human life” and sign federal legislation safeguarding unborn children capable of experiencing pain from abortion.

Trump’s forward-looking agenda followed a May 8 meeting with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser, and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) after media outlets reported the president believed all future pro-life legislation should be left at the state level. “The purpose of the meeting was simply to encourage the president to stay strong on the issue of the sanctity of human life,” including the federal level, Perkins told his “Washington Watch” audience two days after the meeting. “I’m pleased to say that the president understood.”

Congress and the next president must take action at the federal level to protect life, Trump’s erstwhile partner-turned-rival Mike Pence told the conference. “Some will come up to this podium and say that the Supreme Court returned the decision back to the states, and nothing more should be done at the federal level,” said Pence during a speech on Friday. “The cause of life is the calling of our time, and we must not rest or relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of law in every state in this country.”

“Every Republican candidate for president should support a ban on abortion before 15 weeks as a minimum nationwide standard,” said Pence — a sentiment shared by fellow presidential candidate Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.).

“A minimum ban of 15 weeks on the federal level will help us get to a place where there are fewer late-term abortions, and fewer and fewer abortions,” said Scott. “The radical Left has lost so much faith in America that they’ve lost faith in life itself, but we are here to tell them that life is good — and we are proud to be Americans.”

National pro-life leaders have encouraged presidential hopefuls to embrace the issue of life and expose Democratic candidates who cannot name a single pro-life policy they would enact. “Any candidate who wants to qualify from our perspective of being a candidate has to at least be for the 15-week limit [on abortion]. Otherwise, we will not support you,” Dannenfelser told the Townhall for Life, organized by FRC, last Wednesday night. “You tell me: Can you win the presidency without the pro-life movement?”

Her co-panelist, Senator Graham, introduced a bill protecting children conceived after 15 weeks — the Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act (H.R. 8814) — with Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) last fall. Nearly three out of four Americans (72%) believe abortion should not be allowed after 15 weeks — including 60% of Democrats, 70% of registered independents, and 75% of women — according to a Harvard/Harris poll supervised by former Clinton strategist Mark Penn.

Trump’s most significant opponent for the Republican Party presidential nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, told the audience on Friday that he has spent his tenure in the governor’s mansion “promoting a culture of life. That means signing the heartbeat bill into law. That protects unborn children when there’s a detectable heartbeat,” a process that science notes begins by six weeks gestation.

Polls taken in 2017, 2019, and 2022 found a majority of all Americans support heartbeat bills.

“A 15-week ban still includes [94%] of all abortions, so it may be a starting point, but it’s not an end point,” noted Ryan Bomberger, the founder and chief creative officer of The Radiance Foundation, at the opening panel of the Pray Vote Stand Summit in Atlanta last September.

This weekend’s conference also heard from Republican presidential hopefuls such as talk show host Larry Elder, Ohio-based businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, businessman Perry Johnson, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. Christie, who once advocated a national ban on the abortion of pain-capable babies, now says he “would not be for the federal government being involved in the issue of abortion in any way.”

After the conference, Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison slammed Trump for allegedly endorsing “a national abortion ban” during his speech. But the Democratic Party has also promised to nationalize the abortion issue.

“We are not going to stop until Roe v. Wade is the law of the land once again,” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) last week to commemorate the Dobbs anniversary. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) added, “Democrats will never, never stop fighting to protect” abortion-on-demand.

The pair have advanced or voted for sweeping, top-down legislation such as H.R. 8296, the so-called “Women’s Health Protection” Act, which passed the House of Representatives by a near party-line vote last July. The bill would strike down nearly all 1,381 pro-life protections enacted by state legislatures in the 50 years since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, including:

  • prohibiting sex-selective abortions;
  • barring many abortions after viability;
  • preventing abortions on babies 20 weeks or older, who are capable of feeling pain;
  • disallowing abortions undertaken without parental consent or notification;
  • prohibiting telemedicine abortion drug prescriptions, which involve no in-person medical examination;
  • banning unlicensed individuals from carrying out abortions;
  • allowing pregnant mothers to receive scientifically accurate information about their babies’ development, or to see an ultrasound or hear the child’s fetal heartbeat; and
  • allowing pro-life medical professionals the right to refuse to participate in an abortion.

The dueling approaches to abortion grow out of the two parties’ contrasting platforms. The most recent Republican Party platform endorses “state and federal efforts against the cruelest forms of abortion,” including discrimination-based abortions, due to the child’s sex or disability status, and dismemberment abortions. It also calls on Congress to adopt a Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution clarifying that “the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”

The Democratic Party platform promotes taxpayer-funded abortion until the moment of birth, vowing to “codify the right to” abortion, which it euphemistically calls “reproductive freedom.”

Abortion motivates voters in both parties’ bases, and reclaiming the White House in 2024 will take the entire Republican Party constituency, said Trump. “Together, we’re warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, globalists, and the Marxists — and that’s what they are — and we will restore our republic as one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Over 24,000 Petitioners Call for GOP Senators to Support Tuberville’s Ongoing Fight for Life

Propaganda versus Grace

Political Spiritual Warfare Is an Opportunity to See the Goodness of God’s Grace

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.