Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 26, 2024 / 10:05 am (CNA).
Here’s a roundup of pro-life-related developments in the U.S. this week.
Harris pledges to codify Roe in federal law
Since replacing President Joe Biden as the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic party, Vice President Kamala Harris has already made abortion a major focus of her campaign, pledging in several speeches to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law.
In a Wednesday night speech in Indianapolis, Harris bashed former President Donald Trump for nominating three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe.
“When I am president of the United States and when Congress passes a law to restore those freedoms, I will sign it into law,” she said.
“We who believe in reproductive freedom will fight for a woman’s right to choose,” said Harris, “because one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government should not be telling her what to do.”
Harris has used this line repeatedly during her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms Tour” in which she slammed states with pro-life laws as “immoral” and advocated for a national pro-abortion law.
Iowa heartbeat law to take effect July 29
Iowa District Judge Jeffrey Farrell lifted a block on the state’s six-week pro-life law, clearing the path for the measure to finally take effect on July 29.
The Iowa “heartbeat” law was passed by the legislature in 2023. It protects unborn life from abortion once a baby’s heartbeat is detectable, which is typically around six weeks.
Planned Parenthood and several other abortion groups launched a lawsuit over the law and it was blocked by a district court shortly after passage. Polk County District Judge Joseph Seidlin ruled in 2023 that the law was likely invalid because it imposed an “undue burden” on abortion.
The Iowa Supreme Court, however, ruled on June 28 that the law is likely not unconstitutional because abortion is “not a fundamental right under the Iowa Constitution.” The high court returned the case to lower courts for further deliberation.
Commending the state supreme court’s ruling, Iowa’s Catholic bishops said: “For us, this is a question of the common good and human dignity. Human life is precious and should be protected in our laws to the greatest extent possible.”
Arkansas Supreme Court rules on abortion petition
The Arkansas Supreme Court ordered that signatures as part of an abortion ballot initiative be counted after Secretary of State John Thurston said the documentation was improperly submitted.
This comes after Thurston denied abortion advocates their petition to add a broad pro-abortion amendment to the November ballot. The prosecutor said the activists failed to identify their paid canvassers or to indicate that the canvassers had followed state law regarding gathering signatures.
The state high court’s decision issued on Tuesday ordered Thurston to resume counting petition signatures gathered by volunteers by July 29.
The group claimed to have gathered over 100,000 signatures — well over the 90,700 required to add an amendment proposal to the ballot. Thurston, however, said that after subtracting the signatures allegedly invalidly obtained by paid canvassers, the group only had 87,382 signatures, more than 3,000 short of the minimum required.
The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the petition’s signatures could be counted but only those not gathered by paid canvassers, meaning the petition may fail to reach the necessary threshold for the November ballot.
Currently, Arkansas protects unborn life beginning at conception, only allowing abortion in cases in which the mother’s life is in danger.
If successfully passed, the abortion amendment would mandate that the state not “prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict” abortion before 18 weeks of pregnancy. The amendment would further prohibit the state from restricting abortion at all stages in cases of rape, incest, fetal anomaly, or health of the mother.
Federal court denies effort to restrict abortion pill
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied an appeal by seven Republican-led states to challenge the federal government’s recent loosening of restrictions on mifepristone, the pill that accounts for over 60% of all U.S. abortions.
The seven Republican states — Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah — argued that the federal government’s loosening of mifepristone restrictions, such as allowing mail-order abortions and prescriptions via telemedicine, undermines their pro-life laws and harms women in their jurisdictions.
The states claimed they had standing to sue because the increase in women needing medical care after unsupervised chemical abortions would result in increased Medicaid expenses.
The 3-0 decision issued by a panel from the Ninth Circuit Court on Wednesday, however, denied the states had standing and dismissed their challenge.
The circuit court’s ruling cited the June 13 AHM v. FDA Supreme Court decision that unanimously rejected an attempt to impose stricter regulations on mifepristone because the doctors bringing the challenge lacked standing.
This comes as a coalition of seventeen Democrat-led states and the District of Columbia are suing to block any further efforts to restrict mifepristone.
Lawsuit by Texas woman wrongly imprisoned for abortion proceeds
U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton this week denied several requests to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a Texas woman who was wrongly imprisoned over her abortion.
The woman, Lizelle Gonzalez, was improperly jailed for murder by the county sheriff for three days in 2022. She was dismissed after the county found the charges were unfounded.
Texas law protects unborn life from conception. However, the law explicitly states that pregnant mothers cannot be prosecuted for their abortions.
Gonzalez is now seeking $1 million in damages from Starr County, which is in south Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Why do Harris’ hollow eyes remind us of the blank-stare eyes in Rupnik’s so-called artwork?
You know, wow. That is really true. They do, don’t they?
Trump is NOT like Abe Lincoln with ending slavery. Trump would keep slavery in the States on the grounds that Trump wanted to be the one-time top Jacksonian. “And when I’m through getting done with it, slavery will never be a Federal issue again.”
Harris is NOT like Abe Lincoln. “When I’m through getting done with the States slavery will forever be a Federal issue. Without it no-one can identify or seal the Union. If it stayed in the States some would secede and I would be strung out by the rest.”
No way no how.
Well I hope and pray that Trump is not like Lincoln. It took way over 600k American lives before slavery ended.
Britain had accomplished the same thing decades earlier without shedding a single drop of blood.
I’m voting for Trump and ending feticide one state at a time. That’s how abolition originally worked too.
My state is completely free of legally enshrined feticide following Dobbs . That should be the goal for prolife people in every US state.
Don’t cheer too quickly. Before Roe fell, Michigan had some “reasonable” pro-life protections. I remember an article that once touted Michigan RTL as being very effective. And once Roe fell, we had a law that prevented abortion.
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And then we quickly put abortion in the Constitution because abortion is super popular among the promiscuous. The real goal should be to get people to stop sleeping around and “getting pregnant accidentally.”
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That is going to be pretty tough, especially since I don’t think the religious hierarchy (Catholic or Protestant) is up to the task.
I find this pro-life feature depressing/dispiriting.
Just sayin’.
Typical Dem move to codify/ignore a flawed law.
Big Gretch did that in MI with her Draconian lockdowns, once she was found to be violating the law – just handed the torch to the state health dept; follow the science which to date has never been documented or codified
“Harris has used this line repeatedly during her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms Tour” in which she slammed states with pro-life laws as “immoral” and advocated for a national pro-abortion law.”
Right, because destroying a human life created in God’s image is somehow moral 🙄. Progressives are moral imbeciles.
“Right Here, Right Now”
My adaptation of the slavery question can’t be exact because abortion is more urgent -the oppression with slavery did mean that while it persisted you were at least alive and had means for remaining alive once you stayed inside the bounds.
There are further important details that need distinguishing.
Lincoln centered the abolition drive and focus. Today Trump and the Republican Party have thrown off the responsibility for doing this while proclaiming such with acceptance of types of abortion. Abortion has to be dealt with but doing abolition in parts ….. is abortion. The South was prepared to coexist with slavery alongside the North without slavery; and Lincoln made sure it would not stay so.
I feel sure Lincoln would recognize the “absolute” difference with abortion and give effect to it, that it is urgent and pressing unlike slavery because it is 1. killing outright the life in the womb and 2. positively adding to the mother’s problems. What the mother endures after abortion is the fault of the State as much as the abortionists; and is a fault at the level of criminal abetting.
Yes, Lincoln did get at slavery in stages, it was not all one-and-done. BUT, until the Civil War and the Proclamation of Emancipation, the slow, steady attrition against slavery was the opposite of 2, ACTUALLY. This attrition activity is what is attributed to Lincoln who coalesced it and made it the point of focus from before his inauguration. But you tell me, isn’t it the case today that the 13th Amendment is used precisely to fight “modern slaveries” like sex trafficking?
Consider again. The USA had to go into fratricidal war to achieve the 13th Amendment. But if it adopted an attitude “right here right now” to end abortion, it could avoid that route and all the abortion and harm that would be done by aiming to make it recede in steps. Lincoln already achieved that modality -of steps- in ending slavery. The USA has to improve on it and outmatch it.
From an argument standpoint the “right here right now” intervention argument uses notions that are designed to frustrate precisely the imperative from entering -that abortion must end. The notion that rebuts it is, there is nothing to prevent a leadership, right here, right now, from undertaking the task of criminalization of abortion and openly speaking about marking it out and that the guilty must lose.
Not to pass without being noticed: the Yankees brought the Emancipation Proclamation right in behind their opening onslaught, on the heels of raw force. The army were being truly heroic, right then, right there.
‘ July 1, 1854: Fragment on Slavery
Lincoln often encountered views supporting slavery. In this fragment, he countered the arguments that slavery was justified based on color and intellect.
If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. — why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?–
You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly?–You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you. ‘
https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery.htm