CNA Staff, May 30, 2024 / 17:30 pm (CNA).
Here’s a look at abortion-related and pro-life developments that took place in Washington and various U.S. states recently.
Environmental fallout from chemical abortion
Lawmakers are calling for the Biden administration to embark on a study of the environmental impact of abortion medications given the increasingly widespread use of the abortion pill.
In a May 29 letter to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, and Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Oklahoma, and others highlighted concern about the impact of the abortion drug mifepristone on the water.
Mifepristone is the first of two drugs taken to induce a chemical abortion. Mifepristone blocks progesterone, which is necessary to support the unborn child, while the second drug expels the dead unborn baby.
Chemical abortions are primarily self-induced at home, meaning that “the blood and placental tissue containing mifepristone’s active metabolites are flushed into wastewater systems along with the fetal remains of the unborn child,” the senators noted in the letter.
The letter emphasized the “dramatic rise” of chemical abortion, noting that 63% of U.S. abortions last year were medication-induced, compared with 24% in 2011, according to a Guttmacher study.
The authors further argued that the drug “has never been sufficiently studied.” The drug, which was approved in 2000 by the Food and Drug Administration, “relied on a 1996 environmental assessment” that didn’t consider the potential environmental impact of human fetal remains and the drug, they alleged.
“Any studies that have been conducted in the past should be repeated and updated to reflect the fact that the drug is far more prevalent today than it was three decades ago,” the lawmakers insisted.
The authors asked for a response by July 15.
Florida to launch pregnancy and parenting website
Florida announced the launch of a website with resources for pregnancy and parenting following a law set to take effect on July 1.
HB 415 requires the Department of Health along with other departments “to maintain a website that provides information and links to certain pregnancy and parenting resources.”
These resources include educational materials on pregnancy and parenting, maternal health services, prenatal and postnatal services, financial assistance, and adoption services, among other things.
The website is set to be operational by Jan. 1, 2025, and Florida is appropriating more than $450,000 for the project.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis approved the bill on May 17, according to a May 19 press release from his office. The bill was first sponsored by Republican Erin Grall. The Florida Legislature approved the bill by an 83-33 vote in the House and a 27-12 vote in the Senate.
Tennessee passes bill criminalizing abortion trafficking
Tennessee passed a law on Tuesday that makes it illegal for non-parental adults to transport a pregnant minor out of state for abortion or to provide her with abortion-inducing drugs without the consent of the minor’s parent or guardian.
Tennessee will be the second state in the U.S. with a law of this nature, following the example of Idaho, which required parental consent last year.
Tennessee protects life at all stages of pregnancy with exceptions for abortion to save the life of the mother such as an ectopic pregnancy. However, abortion is legal in the neighboring state of North Carolina for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill, HB 1895, on May 28, and it is set to go into effect July 1. The bill makes exemptions for ambulance drivers, emergency transport, and common transportation services.
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Thank God someone is trying to give this serious public attention. Contamination of the environment by sexually related hormones and drugs has been the preverbal elephant in the living room for half a century. The abortion pill is just the tip of the iceberg. The effects of estrogen contamination in reducing the fertility of human males was discovered back in the seventies. Just a few weeks ago I saw an article pop up on MSN that cited recent scientific research that estrogen that found its way into nature was causing disastrous effects on some fish populations including feminization of males and large reductions of the population of some species. I continued my scan of morning news items and tried to go back to the story only to find that it had been dropped in that brief interval.
In the United States, around the year 2010, hormone-laced water runoff from the upstream Mississippi River Basin (due to hormone-fed herds) was suspected of possibly inflicting a rising trend downstream in male sterility, by ingesting tap water in areas served by even highly-treated water intakes.
My memory is that the science of detection levels (in parts per trillion) were so exacting that any real danger was almost infinitely overstated (American Water Works Association, AWWA). But, an interesting line of questioning under national environmental legislation…From other sources, the wide range of Endocrine Disruptive Chemicals (EDCs) is also on the research agenda.
However, beware the artfulness of how this line of questioning is framed! Soon appealing to miniaturized computer chips and infinite data-dumps available through morally-neutral [!] AI technology?
Might we be forced to ingest the projected benefit/cost consequences of the “no action” alternative—namely the cumulative carbon footprint of surviving children shielded from Mifepristone extermination, down to the fourth generation! Or, equally biblically, down to the thousandth generation! Or, maybe, retrospectively from the past, the altered present moment if Einstein’s mother had ingested mifepristone? Or Pasteur’s? Or Mother Teresa’s? Or, Hitler’s, Stalin’s, and Chairman Mao’s? Once we replace moral absolutes–as against abortion, et al–with digital data dumps and AI algorithms, we enter the randomness of multiple and truly inhuman universes.
Mifepristone = Auschwitz miniaturized into a home medicine cabinet.