An ‘unfettered’ wrong

As the battle over unborn life heats up across the nation, states are taking clear sides through legislation. Governors in Illinois, Maine, and Vermont signed bills into law last week that erase all legal protections for unborn babies in their states. Pro-life advocates call those measures extreme.

While most states have laws stipulating that only licensed physicians perform abortions, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, signed a bill last Monday that allows physician assistants and advanced practice registered nurses to take the life of an unborn child in a mother’s womb. On Wednesday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, also a Democrat, signed what is known as the “Reproductive Health Act” in his state, which sweeps away all previous pro-life laws, establishes a “fundamental right” to abortion, removes nearly all regulation of abortion facilities, and requires insurance companies to cover abortions and contraception. And on Thursday, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, signed a bill barring all state government agencies from taking any measures to protect unborn babies.

Ingrid Duran, director of state legislation at National Right to Life, told me that the laws in these three states are all part of the same strategy. “This is a playbook by the abortion extremists to really undermine 20 years of pro-life gains in these states, where we have either partial-birth abortion bans, or reporting laws, or any kind of good pro-life common sense law,” she said, adding that the Illinois law is “just an unfettered right to abortion on demand.”

The new laws echo Delaware’s 2017 act, which allows abortion through all nine months of gestation, and New York’s own Reproductive Health Act, which in January erased pro-life laws and all legal rights for unborn babies. Democrats in Virginia introduced and then withdrew a similar bill in February. Rhode Island’s version is headed to the state Senate on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Maine also passed a law on Thursday that will force public and private insurance companies doing business in the state to cover abortion in their prenatal care packages. In another blow against the pro-life movement, the state also legalized assisted suicide on Wednesday, becoming the eighth state to do so.

Illinois’ 126-page law rolls back the state’s partial-birth abortion ban, a rule allowing courts to weigh the desires of a father to keep an unborn baby alive, and a regulation that ambulatory surgical centers must have a licensed physician on its board of directors in order to be licensed to perform abortions.

“The absurdity of stripping regulations and required licensure away from abortion facilities only helps the abortion business, not women,” said Patrina Mosley, director of life, culture, and women’s advocacy at the Family Research Council. “Nail salons and veterinary clinics will now get more regulation than places where you can legally kill your own child.”

Pro-life advocates worry that even more aggressive pro-abortion laws are on the way, and that could lead to more abortions, Duran noted.

These laws come after several states passed pro-life measures earlier this year. Last month, Alabama passed a swiftly challenged law that protected babies from abortion at any stage in pregnancy. Several more states have enacted laws requiring abortionists to tell women about a process to reverse the effects of abortion-inducing drugs, and others have passed “heartbeat” laws. And Indiana and North Dakota passed laws protecting the unborn from abortion by dismemberment.

Mosley also thinks that extreme abortion laws show the public how the pro-abortion movement really wants abortion affirmed as good, not just “safe, legal, and rare.” Similarly, Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s apparently pro-infanticide comments generated a firestorm and woke up “a lot of people to the pro-life issue,” she said. “What was meant for evil has actually turned around for good.”

AMA again rejects assisted suicide

In light of Maine becoming the eighth state to legalize assisted suicide last week, the American Medical Association’s reaffirmed opposition to the practice is welcome news.

In a 65-35 percent vote, the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs upheld the association’s current stance, following a three-year review of the policy.

“Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks,” the policy states.

Matt Valliere, director of the Patients Rights Action Fund, told LifeNews.com that he applauds the AMA for upholding its opposition to physician-assisted suicide: “In doing so, the AMA sides with patients and people with disabilities who would be at risk for deadly harm through mistakes, coercion, and abuse, all the while carefully guarding the trust upon which the patient-physician relationship is based.” —S.G.

Unpinned

Pinterest has labeled pro-life activist group Live Action as “pornography,” according to documents leaked by a now-fired employee. The social media platform blocked all of the group’s content, preventing users from pinning Live Action’s photos, videos, or other materials.

“We received a permanent ban without notice or previous contact from Pinterest, and they have not given us any clarification apart from our ban notice claiming that our content causes ‘immediate and detrimental effects on [a Pinterest user’s] health or on public safety,’” a representative from Live Action told BuzzFeed News.

Later, when Project Veritas posted a video to YouTube about the ban, the video hosting site deleted it. When Tim Pool, who hosts a news and commentary channel on YouTube, read from an article by Project Veritas about the story, YouTube deleted that video as well. —S.G.

Abortion ‘blanket ban’ struck down

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday ruled against the Trump administration’s “blanket ban” on providing abortions for migrant teens caught at the border. The federal appeals court said that the 2017 policy for teens in federal custody is at odds with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which led to the legalization of abortion nationwide. Last June, the Supreme Court upheld the U.S. government’s position in Garza v. Hargan, which was over whether the government had to facilitate an abortion for an unnamed 17-year old girl. —S.G.

Sanctuary city for unborn babies

The Waskom, Texas, City Council on Tuesday unanimously outlawed abortion, creating what it called a “sanctuary city of the unborn.” Council members voted never to allow an abortion facility to open its doors in its jurisdiction. “We decided to take things into our own hands,” said Mark Lee Dickson, director of Right to Life of East Texas. “We’ve got to do something to protect our cities and to protect the unborn children.” —S.G.