Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed legislation that repeals the state’s last pro-life law by allowing minor girls to obtain abortions without their parents’ knowledge.
“With reproductive rights under attack across the nation, Illinois is once again establishing itself as a leader in ensuring access to healthcare services,” Pritzker said Friday, complying with the abortion industry’s narrative that ending the lives of unborn children is “women’s health care.”
Pritzker said he was “proud” of his legislature for passing HB 370, named by Democrats the Youth Health and Safety Act:
This repeal was essential, because it was the most vulnerable pregnant minors who were punished by this law: victims of rape and physical abuse in unsafe homes. I thank Representative Anna Moeller, Senator Elgie Sims and the lawmakers and advocates who have fiercely fought to repeal this law and keep vulnerable young people safe. I’m proud that Illinois continues to be a national leader in protecting reproductive rights.
Democrat Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a sex ed bill into law that requires kindergartners to learn to define gender identity. https://t.co/8KRdLSM5H4
Amy C. Gehrke, executive director of Illinois Right to Life, tweeted that, by signing the bill into law, Pritzker “ignored the will of Illinois voters, usurped the right of Illinois parents to be involved in their children’s health care, and endangered countless minor girls.”
Today Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker ignored the will of Illinois voters, usurped the right of Illinois parents to be involved in their children’s health care, and endangered countless minor girls by signing HB 370, repealing Illinois’s Parental Notice of Abortion law.
Pritzker’s office noted Illinois has become an abortion destination state with “more out-of-state patients … now traveling to Illinois” for abortions.
“According to the most recent data from the Illinois Department of Public Health, 7,534 nonresidents received abortions in Illinois in 2019, compared with 2,970 in 2014 and 5,528 in 2017,” the governor’s office observed.
Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed legislation that makes it a civil rights violation for an employer to not hire an illegal alien with a work permit. https://t.co/0Xrk9ALBZL
“Access to sexual and reproductive health care starting at a young age is crucial,” said State Sen. Melinda Bush (D) in a statement. “By providing resources and education, we are giving young girls vital information to allow for free expression and bodily autonomy.”
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D) saw the repeal of the Parental Notification Act of 1995 as a direct reaction to the Texas Heartbeat Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court allowed to remain in effect, prohibiting abortions in the state once a fetal heartbeat is detected.
“When the Texas legislature, aided by the United States Supreme Court, declared open season on people seeking reproductive health care, it became very clear to me that our state is in a unique position to reach out our hands and offer a safe haven to people from Texas and other states that seek to restrict reproductive rights,” Cassidy said in the statement.
“At a time when reproductive rights are hanging by a thread across the country, today’s bill signing means that in Illinois, regardless of age, people now have the full legal autonomy to make reproductive health care decisions that are best for their bodies,” added Jennifer Welch, CEO of Planned Parenthood Illinois Action.
Pro-Life Atheist: Dem. Party in the Pocket of the “Abortion Industrial Complex” pic.twitter.com/BNneYLhQpu
However, State Rep. Avery Bourne (R) said the signing of the legislation is “out-of-touch” with the will of most Illinois citizens and places young girls in danger.
“Parents deserve the right to know if their minor child is seeking any major medical procedure, especially one like an abortion where there can be serious short and long term consequences,” Bourne said, according to the Associated Press. “Instead, today the Democrat majority has chosen to recklessly push those rights to the wayside.”
FDA Building 21 stands behind the sign at the campus’s main entrance and houses the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. The FDA campus is located in Silver Spring, Maryland. | Official FDA photo
Pro-life groups are warning against the Food and Drug Administration for permanently eliminating the in-person dispensing requirements for the abortion pills, thereby allowing women to obtain the drugs by mail and end their pregnancy without seeing a doctor first.
On Thursday, Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, the director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, sent a letter to Dr. Graham Chelius of the Society of Family Planning informing him that the agency intended to modify the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation System (REMS) program for the abortion pills, referred to in the letter as Mifepristone. “The agency has determined that the Mifepristone REMS Program continues to be necessary to ensure that the benefits of the drug outweigh the costs,” she wrote.
“However, we have determined that it must be modified to minimize the burden on the health care delivery system of complying with the REMS and to ensure that the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks,” Cavazzoni said.
“The modifications to the REMS will consist of: (1) removing the requirement that mifepristone be dispensed only in certain healthcare settings, specifically clinics, medical offices and hospitals (i.e., the ‘in-person dispensing requirement’); and (2) adding a requirement that pharmacies that dispense the drug be specially certified.”
In a chemical abortion, women are given two drugs: mifepristone or RU-486, and misoprostol. Mifepristone works by blocking the effects of the natural pregnancy hormone progesterone. Misoprostol induces contractions and a miscarriage.
The Society of Family Planning sent a letter to the FDA earlier this year arguing that the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion pills “confers no benefit in terms of safety, efficacy, or acceptability of the drug mifepristone and instead creates barriers to use that negatively impact public health and equity in access to care.”
The Society of Family Planning’s letter followed the FDA’s May 7 announcement that it was reviewing the REMS and its April announcement that it was suspending the in-person requirements for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic.
Pro-life groups condemned the FDA’s move to permanently lift the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion pills, also known as a chemical abortion.
Tessa Longbons, the senior research associate at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, pushed back on the idea that the abortion pills are safe and not in need of “safeguards,” such as the in-person dispensing requirement: “Peer-reviewed research confirms a 500% increase in the rate of chemical abortion-related emergency room visits.”
“The FDA claims that complications are rare, yet peer-reviewed research from the United States, Finland and Sweden confirms the abortion [pills have] a much higher complication rate than surgical abortion,” she added. “As a woman who has studied abortion trends on a state-by-state level and analyzed major studies on chemical abortion, I find today’s FDA decision to be historically bad. The FDA is putting women and girls at considerable risk through regulatory malpractice.”
Stephen Billy, Charlotte Lozier Institute’s executive director, characterized the FDA’s move as a “Christmas gift” to the abortion industry. Sue Liebel, state policy director for the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, elaborated on how “the Biden administration’s reckless move puts countless women and unborn children in danger” in a statement.
“Abortion activists’ longtime wish has been to turn every post office and pharmacy into an abortion center. They promote abortion drugs as easy, painless and private. Science says otherwise. Women who take chemical abortion pills are significantly more at risk of serious complications and more likely to require a visit to the emergency room,” she added.
Some women even die. Already-exhausted ER doctors and nurses will be forced to ‘clean up after’ an abortion industry that puts profits before safety and won’t regulate itself — all to please [President Joe] Biden’s radical base and pay back political allies.”
In a statement, Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life, asserted that “the FDA’s decision today places women at risk.” According to Tobias, “These changes do not make this abortion process safer for women. What these changes do is make the process easier for the abortion industry.”
“The FDA knows the dangers of this abortion drug combination, but in the name of political expediency, has limited the safety measure requiring an in-person doctor’s visit,” she continued. “With this move today, the FDA further expands the scale of chemical warfare on the unborn, putting the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of women at risk for the sake of a powerful, political abortion industry.”
Tobias characterized the “experiment with mail-order abortion” as a “deadly experiment with women’s lives.” She maintained that “women are at risk everywhere because abortion activists want abortions to be available at any time, anywhere, and for any reason.”
“Making this change permanent puts women at greater risk because they may not be adequately screened to make sure they have no disqualifying conditions like allergies or ectopic pregnancy and are not so far along that the drugs will not work or are more likely to result in life-threatening complications,” warned Randall O’Bannon, director of education and research at National Right to Life.
O’Bannon expressed concern that “Without that screening or monitoring, the likelihood of hemorrhage, infection, and missed ectopic pregnancy are greatly increased, and there is a greater possibility that a woman experiencing these adverse events may end up in the emergency room and could arrive too late for life-saving treatment.”
The FDA’s abandonment of the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion pills comes as the U.S. Senate is considering Robert Califf, Biden’s nominee to serve as the commissioner of the FDA. Pro-life groups have also spoken out in opposition to Califf’s confirmation, citing his efforts during his previous tenure as FDA commissioner during the Obama administration to allow abortion pills to be taken as late as 10 weeks into a pregnancy.
While Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins urged senators to oppose Califf in a letter, four Republican senators have already indicated that they plan to support his confirmation. Meanwhile, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., have come out against Califf’s confirmation, although they cite reasons other than his actions on behalf of chemical abortions.
In a previous interview with The Christian Post, Sue Turner, director of Physicians for Life, said that when mifepristone first came out, the U.S. FDA had a protocol for it to be used through seven weeks or 49 days from conception.
Because many abortion clinics in the U.S. were ignoring the FDA’s protocol and using the drug in chemical abortions up to 60 days, states began passing regulations saying they had to follow the FDA’s protocol. “They didn’t want to have to follow the FDA protocol, so [then President] Obama made the FDA change it to the later date, the 60 days, to match up with what the abortion providers were doing.
“The drug was less effective,” she said, “and abortionists then had to also perform a surgical abortion, which meant that women were being charged for both chemical and surgical procedures.”
Describing the complications that arise from taking abortion pills [specifically misoprostol, the second pill] that induce a miscarriage, Turner added: “I shudder to think what happens to her and what she goes through in that process because in about 30 minutes she starts having horrific contractions. And women can die. If the cervix doesn’t open it can cause all kinds of horrible problems for her.”
A neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), also known as an intensive care nursery (ICN), is an intensive care unit (ICU) specializing in the care of ill or premature newborn infants. | Getty Images
As the medical director of a 50-bed neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) that cares for babies born weighing less than 3 pounds and 5 ounces, I was frankly shocked by Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s outdated assertion last week that very few doctors — she called us “a gross minority” — believe pre-term babies can experience pain at younger than 24 or 25 weeks gestation.
During the Supreme Court oral arguments on Mississippi’s 15-week limit on elective abortions, Justice Sotomayor was openly skeptical that advancements in science and medicine over the last 30 years have any bearing on fetal viability. She questioned whether a baby’s pain is even relevant to the abortion debate and declared the idea of early fetal pain is “not well founded in science at all.” She described doctors who take fetal pain seriously as “fringe.”
Science has not stood still since Roe was decided in 1973. Modern studies demonstrate improved outcomes for babies born on the edge of viability when their pain is avoided, mitigated, or treated. So, it’s good that neonatologists and anesthesiologists are not listening to Justice Sotomayor’s clinical advice. Treating pain in our very youngest patients is not a fringe or fluky thing to do; it is our current, evidence-driven, medical standard of care.
Neonatal medicine treats newborn babies, including those born prematurely. Today some top neonatal intensive care units report that more than 3 out of 4 premature babies born at 22-23 weeks survive. Just a few decades ago medical intervention at 22 weeks was never even a consideration.
The remarkable progress in prenatal and neonatal care is due to advancing medical technology but also to advancements in patient care, including a priority on minimizing the baby’s pain before and after birth. As one example, during fetal surgery anesthesia is routinely administered both to the mother and the unborn baby. Intentionally decreasing painful procedures (such as blood draws) and avoiding noxious stimulation (such as interrupting an infant’s natural sleep time to check their blood pressure) have contributed measurably to the positive outcomes for babies at the edge of viability.
In fact, the presence of pain in premature infants is so uncontroversial that recent studies involve not only decreasing and/or treating pain, but also reevaluating how to make the neonatal environment more soothing. The science indicates that it is specifically our tiniest, most premature babies that benefit from these adjustments.
During last week’s Supreme Court hearing, Justice Sotomayor cited outdated science in another way. She referred to a 2010 study that concluded preborn infants are not capable of pain until the cerebral cortex becomes active between 24-30 weeks of gestation. The co-author of the study was an internationally known pro-choice neuroscientist named Stuart Derbyshire. To this day, pro-abortion activists routinely cite the study to claim that abortion before 24 weeks hurts no one.
Yet Stuart Derbyshire has firmly recanted his 2010 finding because further research demonstrated that preborn infants can experience pain well before they have a developed cortex.
His updated scientific conclusion? “Overall, the evidence, and a balanced reading of that evidence, points towards an immediate and unreflective pain experience mediated by the developing function of the nervous system from as early as 12 weeks.”
The discussion about pain is important because of the ramifications for improving our medical care. However, the capacity to be affected by pain is not what determines our humanity. Neither do the circumstances of conception or whether the new baby is wanted.
Derbyshire confronts this inherent contradiction between abortion and science with rare candor. In a recent interview, he said that even though he remains philosophically pro-choice, from a scientific perspective “the discussion about viability is insane … If you are defending abortion and you’re trying to say a fetus is like a rock or a tree, then you are in trouble. It is alive.”
He didn’t stop there. Derbyshire told the interviewer that pro-choice advocates like himself (and Justice Sotomayor) need to face the fact that abortion impacts two humans.
It’s a simple truth. The baby is fully human whether or not he or she can feel pain; the baby is fully human whether or not the mother reports feeling the pain of grief (often they do, even if it is complicated). However, in uncovering the intrinsic pain that abortion inflicts on mother and baby, perhaps we may uncover better ways to nurture the mother-infant dyad.
Being pro-life is more than being pro-birth. By better caring for both the mother and the baby may their love ignite the embers of hearts grown old and cold beneath the weight of a law that has damaged and destroyed so many.
Dr. Robin Pierucci, M.D., M.A., is an associate scholar at Charlotte Lozier Institute and chair of the American College of Pediatrics Pro-Life Committee. A clinical neonatologist, she serves as medical director of a 50-bed neonatal intensive care unit.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) eased restrictions Thursday on at-home drug-induced abortions by allowing women and girls to end their pregnancies via mail-order pills without having to see an abortion provider in person.
Earlier this year, the FDA had already eased restrictions on the requirement of in-person assessment for drug-induced abortion due to the coronavirus pandemic. The abortion industry and its allies quickly readied tele-abortion services to be utilized on a permanent basis.
The FDA may permanently lift some restrictions on the abortion pill. Not only does the pill end the life of a preborn child, but it also poses serious health risks to women. Policymakers should seek to protect women and their preborn children, not endanger them.
In April 2020, Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson referred to telemedicine abortion as the “silver lining” of the coronavirus pandemic.
Johnson told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman the fact that many states had attempted to include elective abortions among other procedures that should be temporarily banned to preserve scarce medical equipment for healthcare workers treating coronavirus patients was “unconscionable.”
The CEO of the nation’s largest abortion provider boasted the launch of Planned Parenthood’s new tele-abortion service, in which women seeking the procedure have a virtual meeting with a provider and obtain a prescription for abortion-inducing drugs they take at home.
“It is actually a silver lining in this pandemic, that Planned Parenthood and many other health providers have actually been able to really lean into telehealth infrastructure and provide service,” she said.
Dr. Meera Shah, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, touted to the Associated Press (AP) in April 2020 that her organization’s new telemedicine abortion service is so much in demand that one mother began her drug-induced abortion “at home with her children running around behind her.”
In this Jan. 24, 2020, file photo, supporters cheer as President Donald Trump speaks during the annual “March for Life” rally on the National Mall, in Washington. Anti-abortion leaders across America were elated a year ago when Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to appear in person at their highest-profile annual event, the March for Life held every January. The mood is more sober now — a mix of disappointment over Trump’s defeat and hope that his legacy of judicial appointments will lead to future court victories limiting abortion rights. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)
Former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explained in his videos about various abortion procedures how drug-induced abortions work.
The first drug, mifepristone, blocks the action of progesterone, which the mother’s body produces to nourish the pregnancy. When progesterone is blocked, the lining of the mother’s uterus deteriorates, and blood and nourishment are cut off to the developing baby, who then dies inside the mother’s womb.
The drug misoprostol (also called Cytotec) then causes contractions and bleeding to expel the baby from the mother’s uterus.
This series of events now occurs at home when women and girls have the drugs mailed to them.
“We really strongly feel folks should have the abortion experience that they want, and that can mean a number of different things,” Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer for reproductive health services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, said, according to the Chicago Tribune.
States that already restrict abortions may not experience an impact from the FDA’s move, the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute says.
In 32 states, for example, non-physicians are not allowed to provide the drugs needed for termination, while in 19 states clinicians must be physically present when the drugs are administered to end the pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood tweeted the FDA’s decision is a “WIN” since it makes access to abortion easier.
WIN: Today the FDA announced it will remain easier for many patients to access medication abortion! By eliminating medically unnecessary restrictions, patients in many states can access medication abortion in the privacy of their own home. https://t.co/5S0eOvWqDe
“By eliminating medically unnecessary restrictions, patients in many states can access medication abortion in the privacy of their own home,” the nation’s largest abortion provider celebrated.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) continued the narrative that the restriction on mifepristone is unnecessary and even criticized FDA for “falling short of repealing all unjustified restrictions on this safe medication.”
The in-person restriction provided no safety benefit. It only blocked access to essential healthcare, disproportionately harming people who already face severe health disparities and barriers to healthcare access.
Leading medical groups agree — this barrier did nothing but harm.
Pro-life groups, however, have opposed lifting restrictions on drug-induced abortions, citing dangers of young women taking the drugs that ultimately lead to considerable bleeding and contractions while alone, for example, in college dorms.
A study published in November by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, found drug-induced abortion is “consistently and progressively associated with more postabortion emergency room visit morbidity than surgical abortion.”
“There is also a distinct trend of a growing number of women miscoded as receiving treatment for spontaneous abortion in the ER following a chemical abortion,” the researchers concluded.
The study determined chemical abortion visit rates increased by 507 percent between 2002 and 2015, the same period of time during which the surgical abortion visit rate rose 315 percent.
The headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seen in Silver Spring, Maryland, November 4, 2009. | (Photo: Reuters/Jason Reed)
Pro-life groups are slamming President Joe Biden for nominating a “pro-abortion radical” to lead the Food and Drug Administration.
Last month, Biden announced Dr. Robert Califf as his choice to serve as Commissioner of Food and Drugs. If confirmed, Califf would regain the role he briefly held during the latter part of the Obama administration. Califf’s nomination has received renewed attention this week as members of the United States Senate questioned him Tuesday and pro-life organizations slammed the pick as another example of the president choosing a “pro-abortion radical” for an influential cabinet position.
“Robert Califf is the wrong choice for FDA commissioner,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, in a statement. “His track record under Obama provides evidence of his disregard for life and health.”
Dannenfelser expressed specific concern about Califf’s actions to advance chemical abortions, also known as the abortion pill, during his previous tenure: “If confirmed, Califf will work hand-in-hand with Joe Biden, [Secretary of Health and Human Services] Xavier Becerra, and the radical abortion lobby to make every mailbox, post office and pharmacy in America function as an abortion center. He must not be confirmed. Senators on both sides of the aisle should want to ensure that any new FDA commissioner will put the safety of women and children first.”
Kristan Hawkins, the president of the pro-life group Students for Life of America, wrote a letter to members of the United States Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee expressing opposition to Califf’s confirmation: “Dr. Califf previously held this position during the Obama Administration in 2016. Under his leadership, the FDA significantly weakened the health and safety standards, known as Risk Evaluation and Mitigation System (REMS), for chemical abortion pills, allowing them to be used as late as 10 weeks in pregnancy.”
“Additionally, women were no longer required to ingest the Chemical Abortion pills at the abortion facility dispensing the drugs. Instead, women were encouraged to take the drugs at home, essentially acting as an amateur abortionist and DIY-ing their own abortion. The FDA even removed the mandated complication report, leaving the abortion drug distributors accountable for only deaths, not harm,” she added.
After listing some of the complications caused by chemical abortions and the failure to examine women before they undergo them, including “life-threatening undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy and infertility due to lack of blood type screening,” Hawkins urged senators to “reject this blatantly partisan nomination.”
According to Hawkins, “Dr. Califf’s championing of Chemical Abortion without medical oversight–knowing the risks–proves he is motivated by political power, not the safety and wellbeing of the Americans he seeks to serve. Given the opportunity to lead the FDA once again, we fully expect Dr. Califf to continue his abuse of power and act as a radical abortion activist, disregarding the wellbeing of the American people.”
Pro-life concerns about Califf’s nomination to serve as FDA commissioner come as the debate about chemical abortion has reached a new level of intensity during the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, pro-abortion groups sued to allow women to obtain chemical abortions without visiting a doctor first, citing concerns about their health in light of the pandemic.
A federal judge lifted the requirement that a woman see a doctor in person before taking the abortion pill, which the U.S. Supreme Court later reimposed. After Biden took office earlier this year, the FDA temporarily lifted the ban on women obtaining abortion pills by mail. A group of House Democrats later called on the FDA to allow women to take the abortion pill without seeing a doctor first permanently.
In 2016, Califf received near-unanimous confirmation from the U.S. Senate, with all but four senators voting to approve his appointment. Three of the four senators who opposed his confirmation, all Democrats, remain in the Senate. The lone Republican to oppose Califf’s confirmation, then-Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., no longer serves in the chamber.
This time, senators on the Democratic side of the aisle have once again expressed the most concern about Califf, albeit for reasons other than his position on chemical abortions. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who caucuses with Democrats, announced in a statement Tuesday that “Dr. Califf is not the leader Americans need at the FDA and I will oppose his nomination.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., one of the four senators who opposed Califf in 2016, indicated his opposition this time as well, stating that “We need a leader who is ready for reform in pursuit of improving public health outcomes and Dr. Califf is not the candidate.” On the other hand, several Republicans told Politico they planned on supporting Califf, including Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Susan Collins, R-Me., Roger Marshall, R-Kan. and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.
Demonstrators stand outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. during the oral arguments for Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health on Dec. 1, 2021. | Christian Post/Nicole Alcindor
What’s really at stake in the Supreme Court’s Mississippi abortion case?
Christian Post reporter Ryan Foley breaks down the details behind the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s HealthOrganization Supreme Court legal battle and reveals what could happen when the high court unveils its ruling next year.
From throwing out Roe entirely to leaving it in place without additional restrictions, there’s quite a lot that could take place. Foley offers a quick, helpful and concise explainer.
Listen to this episode of “The Christian Post Podcast” below:
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U.S. State Department Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback speaks during a press event at the State Department on May 29, 2018, in Washington, DC. | Photo: Getty Images/Alex Wong
As Friday marks United Nations Human Rights Day 2021, the former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom has warned that push by progressives to make abortion an international human right is “part of the reason the human rights project globally is in decline.”
Former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, who served as the Trump State Department’s top international religious freedom official, spoke with The Christian Post this week about the state of human rights globally as the world honors the day in 1948 when the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
He addressed a variety of human rights issues — spanning from the upcoming Beijing Olympics to the religious persecution in places like Nigeria and Europe. He also spoke on abortion, a practice many liberals consider a human right and many conservatives believe to be an atrocity.
This year has seen intense debate nationally around the issue as the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments last month in a case many believe could alter legal precedent on abortion in the U.S. As conservative states have passed laws that test the limit of Supreme Court precedent, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in September to establish a federal right to abortion.
“I think it’s wrong and I think it’s part of the reason the human rights project globally is in decline,” Brownback said.
In September, United Nations human rights experts spoke out against a Texas law passed earlier this year to ban abortion in most cases once a heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks, saying it will violate “women’s fundamental human rights” and have a “devastating” impact on marginalized communities.
Brownback contends that “we’re not taking care of the foundation of human rights, with things like religious freedom and freedom of assembly and freedom of speech” and “instead we add human rights that people don’t agree are a human right.”
“Declaring abortion is a human right; it’s not a human right,” the former U.S. Senator said. “Ask the child that’s being aborted if that’s a human right.”
Brownback described the push to classify abortion as a human right as “one of the big problems with the overall human rights project.”
No ‘global agreement on abortion’
He lamented that “things have been added or tried to be added to it that aren’t human rights.”
“Meanwhile, we don’t care of the foundations and the … basic human rights issues that we need, where there’s global agreement,” he said.
“There’s global agreement that you’re entitled to do with your own soul what you choose to and that government’s role is to protect that right. There’s not global agreement on abortion as a human right.”
On Friday, the National Right to Life Committee sent a letter to U.N. officials expressing profound disagreement with their assessment that the U.S. is violating international law because of the implementation of laws restricting abortion access in several states.
In the letter to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and U.N. Human Rights Council President Ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan, NRLC President Carol Tobias lambasted the idea that the passage of the six-week abortion ban in Texas and the 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi violated “the United States’ obligations under the human rights treaties it has signed and ratified” as “absolutely false.”
“No United Nations treaty can plausibly be interpreted to require the legality of elective abortion,” she wrote. “No right to abortion has ever been established in international law.”
In the letter, Tobias quoted from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The covenant states: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”
She asserted that the document undermines the claim that international laws and treaties mandate “unlimited abortion.”
Noting that “human rights belong to everyone,” Tobias contends that they also belong to unborn children.
“Human embryos and fetuses are living members of the species Homo sapiens at the earliest stages of their lives,” she wrote. “They are human beings like us.”
“If all human beings have human rights, then unborn human beings have human rights,” Tobias added. “If everyone matters, they matter too.”
Religious freedom is a ‘core foundational right’
In addition to abortion, Brownback spoke with CP about other developments in the Western world that he sees as troubling.
He described the prosecution faced by an Evangelical Lutheran bishop and member of Parliament in Finland for publishing a booklet promoting traditional teachings about gender and sexuality as “troubling.”
“You may not agree with people’s views on something, but if they hold to a traditional set of moral values that are based on their … reading of their sacred text, we should honor that and we should find ways to accommodate people’s religious freedom as this core foundational right,” he said. “It’s the key to a pluralistic society.”
Brownback warned that “when the West puts limitations on religious freedom, it exacerbates … the religious persecution in places around the world that aren’t as interested in religious freedom.”
He said the U.S. is “the standard the world holds to,” emphasizing that “if we limit it, they say ‘Why can’t we?’”
Beijing boycott
Brownback praised the Biden administration’s recently announced diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics over China’s human rights violations. But he maintained that he doesn’t think it’s enough.
He called for an “advertiser’s boycott of the Olympics,” where “the Western advertisers pull their money out from advertising these Olympics if the Chinese won’t announce a date that they’re going to close the … Uyghur concentration camps down.”
The Chinese government has been accused of imprisoning over 1 million Uighur and other ethnic Muslims in Western China in concentration camps. They are said to be brainwashed to be more culturally Han Chinese and not question the Communist Party. Some Uighurs have been subject to forced labor. The U.S. government declared China’s actions a “genocide” earlier this year.
Brownback believes that Western advertisers “shouldn’t be lining the pockets of a … government that’s conducting a genocide.”
He expressed gratitude that the World Tennis Association pulled their tennis tournaments from China.
“That cost them money and yet they were standing up for one of their own that was sexually abused, and they took a strong stance,” he said. “And I hope many of the rest of us can learn from that, that that’s the way to respond to the bully that’s an abuser.”
“I was really proud of them doing that, standing up,” he continued. “I hope the [National Basketball Association] would do something like that.”
Brownback repeatedly brought up the threat posed by China throughout the interview, labeling the nation “front and center on my view screen for religious persecution because of their reach.”
“They’re inventing the future of oppression,” he stressed, referring to China’s surveillance technology. He predicted that “the high tech systems that they’re deploying now, we’re going to see in a lot of other places around the world.”
“Wrong move”
Brownback condemned the removal of Nigeria from the U.S. State Department’s list of countries of particular concern, reserved for the worst countries that tolerate or engage in the violation of religious freedom.
Nigeria was placed on the last in 2020 as human rights groups and advocates sounded alarms about the violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt that has led to the killings of thousands of people from predominantly Christian farming communities. Although some activists have claimed that violence against Nigerian Christians has “genocidal” implications, the Nigerian government has refuted claims that a religious “genocide” is taking place, calling it part of decades-old farmer-herder conflicts.
Brownback said the State Department’s recent removal of Nigeria from the list after it was added to the list in 2020 was the “wrong move.”
He alleged that “the bureaucracy won” because it does not want the violence in Nigeria “to be seen as associated with religion in any way, shape or form.”
“There is a religious component to it, and we need to call it out,” Brownback said.
Addressing one of the major stories of the year, the U.S. military pullout of Afghanistan and the resulting takeover by the Taliban, Brownback told CP that “we need to get the religious minorities out of Afghanistan and we need third countries to … take them on a permanent basis.”
He called on the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, Hungary and other countries to “take these religious minorities.”
In addition to Christians, he pointed to certain Muslim groups as religious minorities in danger due to the Taliban’s resurgence.
“I think really right now, we need to really try to get them out of harm’s way and permanently relocated somewhere else,” he explained. “There will be a genocide of religious minorities otherwise.”
Brownback also offered his thoughts on the exponential increase in arrests of political dissidents in Cuba this year.
“I’m not surprised. And often when a more liberal administration comes in, regimes around the world will step up their abuses of their own people,” he argued. “They … don’t think the U.S. will necessarily respond strongly. … It’s better if the U.S. has strong responses and not just diplomatic.”
The former ambassador spoke in favor of “real action” involving “real money and taking real security actions too.” He contended that those kinds of moves are necessary because “they keep the world a safer place.”
An overcast sky hangs above the U.S. Supreme Court on December 16, 2019, in Washington, D.C. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images
The United States Supreme Court has released a decision allowing some lawsuits against Texas’ heartbeat abortion ban to move forward, but has not blocked the law that prohibits abortion once a baby’s heartbeat can be detected.
In a ruling released Friday morning in the case of Whole Woman’s Health et al. v. Jackson et al., the high court examined whether certain abortion providers could “pursue a pre-enforcement challenge.”
“We conclude that such an action is permissible against some of the named defendants but not others,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch, who authored most of the majority opinion.
“This Court has never recognized an unqualified right to pre-enforcement review of constitutional claims in federal court. In fact, general federal question jurisdiction did not even exist for much of this Nation’s history.”
The Supreme Court also rejected an appeal by the Biden administration against Texas’ law, labeling it “improvidently granted,” or something that shouldn’t have been brought before the justices.
Planned Parenthood denounced the Supreme Court decision in a post on its Twitter account and promised to “keep fighting” against the heartbeat abortion ban.
“The Supreme Court has once again failed to put an end to Texas’ bounty hunting scheme and protect our constitutional rights,” tweeted Planned Parenthood. “They have failed to bring relief to Texas patients and providers who’ve suffered for 100 days under this unconstitutional law.”
Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out during arguments in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Dec. 1 that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t include the right to abortion, despite what Planned Parenthood and pro-choice activists have long claimed.
Thomas noted: “If we were talking about the Second Amendment, I know exactly what we’re talking about. If we’re talking about the Fourth Amendment, I know what we’re talking about, because it’s written. It’s there. What, specifically, is the right here that we’re talking about?”
Texas Right to Life Director of Media and Communication Kimberlyn Schwartz emailed a statement to supporters celebrating the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Biden administration’s challenge.
“We are grateful that the Supreme Court practiced judicial restraint today and stopped the Biden administration’s pro-abortion campaign against the strongest pro-life law being enforced today,” stated Schwartz.
“While we continue to fight for this policy in the lower courts, Texas Right to Life celebrates that the Texas Heartbeat Act will continue saving between 75-100 preborn children from abortion per day.”
In May, Texas’ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the ban into law, which prohibits most abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, generally around six weeks into a pregnancy.
The law is not enforced through state officials but rather through private citizens who are given financial incentives to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps a woman obtain an illegal abortion.
Despite multiple pre-enforcement legal challenges, including one from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Supreme Court allowed the law to take effect on Sept. 1.
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard an abortion case out of Mississippi, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Itwould appear to be the most serious challenge to Roe v. Wade in three decades.
An interesting aspect of this story is this: How do the American people feel about this case?
Conflicting reports have provided conflicting opinions.
Yahoo News claims that only 24% of Americans want to see Roe overturned. They write: “As the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority seems poised to uphold a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, more than twice as many Americans (55%) say they want the court to reaffirm its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision as say they want it overturned (24%), according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.”
However, they add the caveat, “when asked about the specifics of the Mississippi case, respondents are far more divided — a sign that America’s views on abortion are not quite as clear-cut and polarized as many assume.”
Meanwhile, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, has a different take on where Americans stand on abortion and this challenge to Roe.
Perkins says of the notion that the public does not want to see Roe overturned that the corporate media confuses “the public’s support for legal abortion with the Left’s agenda: Unlimited, taxpayer-funded destruction of an unborn child for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy. Roe may have condoned that. The American people — almost every poll agrees — will not.”
He adds: “Ask the AP. Ask Gallup. Ask YouGov. Ask Harvard. Ask Marist. There isn’t a majority anywhere in the country in favor of the kind of barbarism that Democrats want to make permanent law. Only 8% of Americans can bring themselves to support abortion through nine months of pregnancy.”
When it comes to polling on abortion, I think the wisdom of the late George Gallup Jr. applies here. I had the privilege of interviewing him in his Princeton, New Jersey office in the late 1990s.
Gallup told me that we should never forget these basic facts: Twenty percent of Americans are strongly pro-choice. Twenty percent of Americans are strongly pro-life. Sixty percent are in what he called “the mushy middle,” and polls could get them to sound pro-abortion or anti-abortion depending on what you ask.
How important is public opinion anyway? In his End of Day, Gary Bauer writes: “Liberal justices have never cared about public opinion. They have never hesitated to use the Supreme Court to force radical change on the American people, whether it was expelling God from our public schools, finding a right to abortion that was mysteriously hidden for 200 years or redefining the meaning of marriage — another right that never existed until five liberals invented it.”
And that points sums up one of the conservative cases against Roe in the first place. It has nothing to do, really, with the U.S. Constitution. The left imposed their will on the American people through judicial fiat.
Last week in the oral arguments before the high court, Justice Clarence Thomas said as much.
He noted, “If we were talking about the Second Amendment, I know exactly what we’re talking about. If we’re talking about the Fourth Amendment, I know what we’re talking about, because it’s written. It’s there. What, specifically, is the right here that we’re talking about?”
In short, where exactly in the Constitution do we find the right to abortion? Or even the right to privacy?
Pro-abortion Justice Sonia Sotomayor likened a fetus to a brain dead person, arguing: “Virtually every state defines a brain death as death … so I don’t think that a response to [stimulus] by a fetus necessarily proves that there‘s a sensation of pain or that there’s consciousness.”
Of course, many medical doctors don’t agree with her view on that. The fetus (which is derived from the Latin word meaning unborn child) is far more alive than someone who is brain dead.
Meanwhile, pro-life Justice Samuel Alito posed a question to Biden’s pro-abortion solicitor general, who is relying heavily on maintaining decades of Supreme Court precedent rather than the Constitution itself. He asked her: “Is it your argument that a case can never be overruled simply because it was egregiously wrong?”
Just because we’ve lived with Roe all these years doesn’t make it right. Sixty-three million dead babies in the wake of Roe v. Wade would agree, if somehow they could be polled.
As Ronald Reagan once put it, “[T]he Court’s decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.”
We pray that the Supreme Court will reconsider the grievous error their predecessors made in 1973, and turn abortion regulation back into the hands of the states, which is much closer to “we the people.”
Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an outreach of D. James Kennedy Ministries, where Jerry also serves as senior producer and an on-air host. He has written/co-written 33 books, including George Washington’s Sacred Fire (with Providence Forum founder Peter Lillback, Ph.D.) and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (with D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.). www.djkm.org? @newcombejerry www.jerrynewcombe.com
Every single person, including those who struggle deeply with who they are, are made in the image and likeness of God. However much someone can be mistaken in their self-understanding, whatever they’ve done to add to their own confusion, they’re still infinitely valuable and worthy of the fullest expressions of our love and care. This includes every person within the growing population of people who identify as transgender.
Because of this, it is important to say, definitively, that radical transgender ideology is destructive, harmful, and disconnected from reality.
We are told, of course, that anything less than fully embracing radical transgender ideology is actually what is harmful. We frequently hear, for example, that people who identify as transgender are the most vulnerable group in the world and that critiquing transgender ideology is committing violent discrimination.
But how true are these claims? In October, Madison Smith, with the UK Critic, wrote about the claim that those who identify as transgender are the most “marginalized, abused, and vulnerable group in the world.” After reviewing the data, Smith concluded, “… even though we’ve seen a sharp rise in the number of people who identify as transgender in the last few years, a trans person hasn’t been murdered in the U.K. for nearly three years.” Furthermore, “there are no reports ever of a trans person in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland being murdered.”
Journalist Anna Slatz elaborates further: “According to Human Rights Campaign’s running list of trans deaths [in the U.S.], only two [are] being investigated as potential hate crimes.” Despite this, the group categorizes all 44 of the deaths as hate crimes, “even when they had nothing to do with being transgender at all.”
Any death is tragic because every human being has inherent value. Any act of violence against transgender people, including an act committed against someone for being transgender, is unacceptable. But that’s precisely the point Smith and Slatz are making: the reports of widespread trans-phobic violence simply don’t add up.
Instead, the claim is used as a bludgeon to silence anyone who criticizes transgender ideology, the view that one’s inner sense of self is so definitive that people must change their bodies to accommodate their dysphoria. Assumed by those who advance this ideology is that anything less than encouraging people to embrace gender confusion is violence against them.
The awful truth and tragic irony are that, in reality, it is the current practices of transgender treatment in medicine that causes harm. In his book When Harry Became Sally, Ryan T. Anderson argues that between 80% and 90% of children who say they are transgender eventually abandon those feelings by late adolescence. However, many adolescents are immediately encouraged by the cultural voices and even trusted adults to do real, irreversible damage to their minds and bodies.
This is why Christians must remember that love for our neighbors, especially the most vulnerable ones, demands telling the truth. As more and more stories of de-transitioners emerge, we hear from people who regret the invasive procedures of so-called “gender transition.” They report long-term physical side effects from testosterone injections and surgical mutilations, as well as mental side effects such as anxiety, depression and suicidal intention. Even if many in the larger culture wish that these people did not exist, they do, and their inherent dignity and value demand that they be heard.
For the love of God and these neighbors, Christians must have the courage to speak the truth, even about this very difficult and socially risky issue. We do so not because we want to be right, but because the Gospel is a message of hope. It’s a message that says we need not be victims of bad ideas, and our minds need not be captive to destructive ideologies which tell us our bodies are secondary, malleable or irrelevant. The Gospel offers what we need: forgiveness, holiness, a new identity and a clean start.
The swelling numbers of young people identifying as LGBT should tell us that captivity to great confusion is a culture-wide phenomenon today. At the same time, we must never lose sight that the victims of the bad ideas are individuals, often children. They must know what Christ has to offer them.
Consider the late Sy Rogers, who, after beginning what was at the time avant-garde hormone therapy through Johns Hopkins medicine, de-transitioned and found new life in Christ. He died two years ago, a married father and grandfather, faithfully walking out the Christian ethic of sexuality, even as he called LGBT people to a new encounter with the God who made them and loves them.
That message of the possibilities of grace, grounded in steadfast truth and Christ’s love, is needed now more than ever, especially as people deal with the fallout of destructive trans-narratives around us. For the sake of God and neighbor, we, of all people, must not live by lies.”
John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He’s a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetics.
Kasey Leander is a Fellow with the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (OCCA). Prior to his time at OCCA, Kasey earned an undergraduate degree in history and PPE (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics) from Taylor University. While at Taylor, Kasey served in various ministry roles on campus and was active in student government. He has also worked briefly in politics, serving as an intern in the US Senate in Washington, DC.
