Week in Review – Preborn children losing at FDA; the White House; Congress; and Hawaii
A major loss for the babies! This past Monday, the Food and Drug Administration officially approved the sending of abortion pills through the mail during the pandemic. This was one of the major demands by Planned Parenthood. The FDA rules, prior to this, required that abortion pills must be picked up by the woman at a medical facility—a hospital or clinic—so that she could be fully informed of the life-threatening danger if she has an ectopic pregnancy and of the major complications that can occur when committing an at-home (self-managed) abortion. Planned Parenthood got a judge to lift that restriction last year, but the Trump administration went to the Supreme Court in January and got the restrictions put back in place. Now, less than four weeks after the Senate confirmed Xavier Becerra as the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services by a single vote, the FDA gives Planned Parenthood exactly what it wanted! The FDA is part of DHHS. The result is that more babies will be killed, and Planned Parenthood income will increase.
Last Friday, Biden announced that he established the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. According to the White House statement,
“The Commission’s purpose is to provide an analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals. The topics it will examine include: the genesis of the reform debate; the Court’s role in the Constitutional system; the length of service and turnover of justices on the Court; the membership and size of the Court; and the Court’s case selection, rules, and practices.”
In reality, the purpose of this commission is to provide arguments why the number of Supreme Court justices needs to be increased. This strategy of “court packing” (getting more liberal justices on the court) was brought up during the presidential election and Biden refused to endorse the idea. Now, less than three months after he took office, Biden announces this Commission. The United States Constitution did not establish a specific number of justices, so the Congress can legally increase or decrease the number.
Not waiting for the new commission to even begin its work, yesterday House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler and three other Democratic senators introduced the Judiciary Act of 2021 to expand the United States Supreme Court by adding four seats, creating a 13-justice Supreme Court. The intent, obviously, is to act as quickly as possible to allow Biden to fill the four seats and counter the three justices appointed by Trump. The last attempt to “pack the Court” was made by President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940s; it was defeated by the Congress. Let us pray that our current Congress is smart enough to defeat the Judiciary Act of 2021 and any other similar bills that are introduced.
In this particularly deadly week for preborn children, as of Tuesday, Hawaii nurses are now allowed to commit abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy. Hawaii joins 12 other states that allow abortions to be committed by advanced-practice registered nurses. The other states are California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
Please take a moment right now and say a prayer for the babies and for our nation.
ALL in the News – ALL Responds Immediately to Biden’s FDA Giving Mail-Order Abortion the Green Light
On Monday of this week, the FDA announced it would be reversing Trump’s ban on mailing abortion pills during the pandemic. This decision was approved by President Biden’s FDA. Biden is a self-proclaimed “practicing” Catholic. American Life League immediately released a statement calling on the bishop of Washington, DC, Wilton Gregory, to excommunicate Biden. As of today, Bishop Gregory has remained silent.
Every Friday afternoon, the American Life League social media team, Dwain Currier and Katie Brown, host the Friday Live Show on Instagram Live. The show regularly discusses current events and provides young adults a platform where they can have their culture of life questions answered. Replays of the show can be found on Facebook.
This week, American Life League vice president Hugh Brown self-hosted Alan Keyes’s segment on IAMTV. Hugh interviewed STOPP founder and ALL executive director Jim Sedlak. The pair discussed Jim’s long history with the movement and his work to close down Planned Parenthood. The full interview will appear on the show “Let’s Talk America with Alan Keyes”. Clips of the show can be found on ALL’s Facebook page.
Twice a week, Judie Brown’s commentaries are distributed to an expansive media list. The list contains over 100 media outlets such as Fox News, The Federalist, Breitbart, and The Daily Caller, among others. Judie’s Tuesday commentary, The Real Presence and Misguided Catholics, was featured on the front page of ALL.org. Each commentary is also featured as a part of Judie’s recurring column on Renew America.
Jim Sedlak’s Pro-Life Activism from Creation to Death is a weekly talk-radio program on the Radio Maria USA network. The show can be heard live every Friday at noon (Eastern Time) and is repeated on Saturdays (10 PM).
Video of the Week – Classroom Sex Education is Dangerous
The problem with classroom sex education is that it ignores the impact on the mental well-being of the child. Not all children mature at the same age. So how can a one-size-fits-all curriculum be expected to educate without consequences?
Action Item of the Week – Fight assisted-suicide bills
There have been increasing efforts over the last few years to convince old, handicapped, and/or confused individuals to end their lives. Many individuals balk at doing this, so the purveyors of death decided decades ago that people would kill themselves more readily if they got help from a medical professional. Thus, the concept of Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) was created.
Judging from some of the calls we’ve received just this year here at American Life League, the pro-death crowd is making inroads. Among those calls was a man from California wanting to know how he could end his life and make sure his body was donated for medical research. Another said that he was suffering from all sorts of physical problems and wanted to end his life. He claimed he had talked to a Catholic cardinal in Canada and the cardinal said it was okay. He would not give us the name of the cardinal. The third individual claimed he lived in New York and wanted to know what state he could move to so he could have himself killed by a doctor.
Then, just last week, we received a call for help from pro-lifers in Nevada who are fighting against a bill that would legalize physician-assisted suicide in that state. Checking on the legislation, there are actually two bills in Nevada, one in the Assembly and one in the Senate. Senate bill SB105 was introduced on February 9, 2021, by Senator Dallas Harris and Assembly bill AB351 was introduced on March 22, 2021, by Assembly member Edgar Flores. There are some differences in wording between the two bills, but both direct the physician and coroner not to mention on the death certificate that the death was caused by self-administered drugs.
URGENT: We encourage everyone in Nevada to fight against these bills. The Assembly bill was already voted out of committee and can be voted on by the full Assembly at any time. It is urgent you contact Assembly leadership and tell them to not schedule a vote on this bill and to Vote NO if there is a vote.
Across the country, one of the major pushers of PAS is the Death with Dignity organization. Since PAS is illegal in the overwhelming majority of states, the major push of that organization is to get laws passed in every state making PAS legal. We encourage you to visit their website and find out about the 10 states (and Washington, DC) that already have legal PAS, the 13 states that are trying to legalize it in 2021, and the status in the other 27 states.
American Life League has recently published two articles on PAS on our website:
Assisting a Suicide by Judie Brown
The Assisted Suicide Juggernaut Continues in the U.S. by Nancy Valko
We encourage all of you to read them.
Pro-life Social Media – New life springs forth during the season of Easter.
New life springs forth during the season of Easter. Trees turn green, flowers open for the bees to make honey, and babies hatch from their eggs. Okay, maybe not that last one, but babies ARE new human beings. So we tiptoed through Instagram for our favorite Easter newborns.