Policy Issues / Healthy Communities

Lay of the Land in a Post Roe America:

by Edie Heipel

August 12, 2022

Immediate Issues Following the Overturning of Roe v. Wade

The monumental overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in the 6-3 Dobbs v. Jackson case is cause to rejoice and the most significant leap forward for the right to life in almost 50 years. The pro-life movement never assumed that the overturning of Roe would be the end of the fight to reclaim a national enthusiasm for life in America. As the SCOTUS decision marks the dawn of a new era, the battle to outlaw abortion in every state and a real public debate on the issue begins. Now, the focus must turn towards dismantling the hold of abortion on every level in our government, communities, and national ethos. To do so means preparing to dispel the coordinated myths of the abortion industry, equipping leaders and states to combat incoming federal attacks, and confronting challenges within the movement itself. Here is a look at some of the key fights ahead. 

Top Tier Issues: Immediate Threat 

Increased Access to Medical Abortion, or “Self-Administered” Abortions

The global push to chip away at even the most elementary restrictions on self-administered or “DIY abortions” (otherwise known as medical abortions) has emerged as one of the most time-sensitive fights following the overturning of Roe. Medical abortions now account for over 50% of all abortions. In the last six years, activist abortionists, so-called medical professionals, the abortion lobby, and government agencies have initiated a premeditated plan to roll back barriers to medical abortion and make “Plan C” as widespread and accessible to women as possible. 

Leading up to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, U.S. abortion clinics and overseas nonprofits prepared to ramp up the supply of medical abortion pills and surge them to states banning the procedure. One nonprofit in Mexico, for example, received over 400 requests for medical abortion pills in the month following Roe’s repeal from women living in states banning access to them. Around 20 groups in Mexico alone already send abortion pills through the mail to women in the United States for free. Top violators on this dirty laundry list include nonprofit organizations: Ipas, Austria-based Aid Access, Choix Inc., Hey Jane, and Just the Pill. 

Combatting medical abortion access neccessitates confronting the FDA’s role in dismantling regulations on medical abortion. Since 2019, the FDA has steadily manipulated the temporary relaxation of regulations during COVID-19 on Mifeprex (RU-486), or the abortion pill, with the aim of entrenching permanent access to self-administered abortions ahead of the Roe decision. 

• Prior to 2021, the FDA required that Mifeprex be prescribed and administered under the supervision of a licensed healthcare provider due to the high rates of dangerous complications for women who self-administer their own abortions (one study found an over 500% increase in ER visits related to medical abortions from 2002-2015 alone; and complication rates including death of the mother are significantly higher).
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA temporarily withdrew several regulations on Mifeprex, citing health safety concerns over the virus. This included obliterating the requirement that medical abortions be conducted in-person and with supervision, essential physical exams, ultrasounds, and labs. Women began ordering medical abortion pills online through websites like Plan C and Aid Access instead of getting them through their doctor, allowing them to abort their children at home. 
• In December 2021, the FDA permanently removed these restrictions. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson on December 1, 2021. As a result, women can now self-administer their own abortions at home without the supervision of a doctor, perpetuating on-demand abortion and posing severe risks to their lives and health.

The abortion lobby’s goal is to push abortions back into the hands of women so that they can murder their child in their own home without so much as a doctor’s oversight, normalizing a dangerous, “DIY” culture of death. Further, it is a method to circumvent pro-life laws and maintain the supply for abortion in a Post-Roe America, which places it high on the list of immediate issues to tackle over the next few years.  

Widespread Lies Conflating Treatment for Miscarriages and Ectopic Pregnancies with Abortions

The immediate respone of the abortion industry to Roe’s overturning has been to intentionally promote baseless lies and propaganda, spread fear, and incite rage among the American public. This tactic has amplified the absurd claim that abortion bans will prevent women from receiving treatment for miscarriages and life-saving procedures for conditions like ectopic pregnancy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

The images below demonstrate the lies that have been widely circulated by activist abortionists and on social media in posts.

Found at:https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1540343666295848961

Found at: https://twitter.com/TinaPirlot/status/1549061454384566272

Or this from Planned Parenthood who changed the information on their website after the Dobbs decision. 

Found at: https://www.liveaction.org/news/planned-parenthood-erases-ectopic-pregnancy-abortion/

The abortion lobby’s purposeful distortion of legal and medical facts is intended to manipulate the public into believing abortions include miscarriage management and other medical treatments that have never been classified as abortions. It represents nothing more than a strategic false narrative to redefine reality. Combatting this narrative relies on a set of very basic facts, namely that:

• Abortion is the intentional destruction of a living, unborn child in the womb, induced to result in the death of the child. 
• Miscarriage is the uncontrolled and spontaneous loss of a child during pregnancy. Miscarriage is not, nor has it ever been viewed, as the equivalent of abortion, legally, medically, and morally. This is another example of the Left corrupting definitions to fit their coordinated agenda.

The abortion lobby claims, for example, that D&C (dilation & cutterage) is the same procedure used in both abortions and miscarriage treatment, therefore, there is no difference between abortion and miscarriage. This is patently false. D&C abortion tears the body of a living baby into pieces in the womb, intentionally causing the death of the unborn child. D&C as a miscarriage treatment removes the body of a baby who has already died from the womb to protect the mother from infection or other complications. 

Conflating losing one’s child through miscarriage as somehow the same thing as choosing to end the life of one’s child through abortion is both dishonest and cruel. It is a slap in the face to mothers who experience the painful loss of miscarriage and yet another way to justify and normalize the murder of children by abortion.

Likewise, the issue at hand with ectopic pregnancy relies on a distortion of fact. Treating ectopic pregnancy is neither philosophically nor medically equivalent to abortion; it does not directly attack or cause the death of the unborn child, and in the vast majority of cases, involves an already deceased embryo. Even Planned Parenthood admits that the treatment for ectopic pregnancy is not in any way equivalent to abortion: the medical procedures are simply not the same. (Note: A sound ethical framework and pathological analysis for ectopic pregnancy can be found here).

Additionally, not a single abortion ban prohibits treatment for miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy. The Mississippi law at question in the Dobbs case, for example, specifically excludes the use of medicine or procedures performed “to terminate an ectopic pregnancy, or to remove a dead unborn human being” from the definition of abortion. Of course, this is just common sense: there is no law on the books forbidding treatment for miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies, and pro-lifers universally reject such an idea.

The success of the abortion industry has been rooted in, and will always rely on, dangerous and despicable lies – the lie that the unborn child is not human, and now the lie twisting the definition of abortion to equate it with miscarriage instead of murder. The mainstream media at the behest of the abortion industry has thrust all its effort into circulating scare articles such as this one, highlighting stories of women who were “refused” miscarriage care or treatment for ectopic pregnancies due to “draconian” pro-life laws. If incidents such as these are happening, which is dubious given the media’s propensity to stretch the truth, it is due to the incompetence or malice of activist medical professionals who are searching for a reason to solidify their agenda. Every pro-life law in every state specifically protects medical care for miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. Such false alarmism over these laws protecting both women and children has no grounding in reality and should be resoundingly dispelled.  

Abortion “Sanctuary States” and Infanticidal Laws 

Liberals have long wanted to impose the most radical abortion policies possible on the entire country, and Roe was the vehicle through which they achieved that. Now, as the question of abortion law turns back to individual states, the pro-life movement will have to work with two different dynamics: states that move towards protecting life and states that move towards enshrining abortion into their laws, acting as self-professed “sanctuary states” that provide abortions to the rest of the country. 

Already, abortion extremist states like California are moving towards enshrining on-demand abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, and in some cases infanticide, into law. Recent examples include:

• Colorado passing HB 22-1279, the Reproductive Health Equality Act, which legalizes the state to provide abortions through all nine months of pregnancy as state law. 
• New York passing S240, their own version of the Reproductive Health Equality Act, legalizing “a woman’s fundamental right to safe, legal abortion” without restrictions as state law. 
• California liberals’ self-stated goal to make California an “abortion sanctuary,” in the words of Governor Newsom. This includes a recent push to amend a bill that gets rid of the requirement to investigate infant deaths “related to or following known or suspected self-induced or criminal abortion.” The bill’s wording and vague definitions validate serious concern that California is well on its way to sanction infanticide.  

As the battle to pass abortion bans and pro-life protections across America picks up, intense focus must be targeted on abortion-extremist states that want to act as interstate hubs for abortion access. It goes without saying that a national abortion ban which applies to every state, with the underlying recognition that the unborn child is a protected human person under the 14th Amendment, should be the ultimate resolution to this problem.  

Stemming the Tide of Corporate America’s Pro-Death Monopoly 

It’s one thing to legislate against abortion, and it is another to imbue U.S. culture with life, including loosening the bloodthirsty grip of Corporate America on families. For decades, corporations in the U.S. have stealthily incentivized policies disfavoring families, promoting abortion, and pushing women to reject motherhood. With the overturning of Roe, these companies have come out in full force to encourage the murder of children and their oppressive infiltration of stable family units and soulless, socialist aim to prioritize the workforce at all costs. 

This modus operandi hearkens back to Soviet Russia circa 1920, when it became the first country in the world to fully legalize abortion without restrictions, which coincided with its aim to increase production by making the workforce more accessible to women and separating inherent familial ties. This created a system which swindled men and women into abandoning their children in the act of abortion and becoming individual pawns for the regime – choosing to kill their offspring to further the Communist agenda. 

The parallels to corporate America are all too prescient following the overturning of Roe. Companies across America have completely unmasked their abortion-at-all-costs agenda through public statements and company policies paying for employees to get abortions.

For example: 

• Amazon will provide up to $4,000 per employee for abortion-related expenses, including reimbursing travel and lodging costs. 
• Dick’s Sporting Goods will provide up to $4,000 in travel costs for its employees, their spouses and dependents who seek abortions. 
• Patagonia will cover medical-insurance for both full and part-time employees to include abortions. It also will cover “training and bail for those who peacefully protest for reproductive justice.”
• Walt Disney will completely cover travel costs incurred by employees who choose abortion. 
• Bumble will not only reimburse employees for abortion costs but also donate to the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and Planned Parenthood Federation in support of abortion activism. 
• Uber and Lyft are among ride-sharing companies who will cover the cost of their employee’s abortions, in addition to covering any legal costs for drivers who transport clients to abortion clinics. 

This is just a handful of the companies who will willingly fund the murder of their employees’ children but conveniently not offer the same kind of benefit to support when their workers choose life, whether through extensive family leave policies or sending the same dollar amount families could put towards diapers or baby supplies – notwithstanding the fact that corporate America has made it nearly impossible for citizens with consciences to use services without indirectly funding abortions. Dismantling the abortion industry’s incestuous relationship with corporate America and the monopoly of death in our country – will be a key shift in the fight after Roe and will require creativity in utilizing existing laws and finding new solutions to combat it.

Potential Federal Actions to Watch 

The Abortion Industry’s Hold on the Executive Branch

All eyes were on the White House following the immediate aftermath of the Roe repeal. Abortion activists took to the streets urging President Biden to circumvent Roe with dubious actions like providing abortions on federal lands or creating “floating abortion clinics” in the Gulf of Mexico. Even White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre could not give credence to such ideas, as they lack a legal path forward. However, President Biden’s immediate reaction was to sign an Executive Order which is essentially a list of death warrants for unborn children and amped up calls on Congress to codify Roe into law. This order included: 

• Recruiting HHS to continue expanding access to “DIY” medical abortions.
• Enlisting HHS to secure contraception and “family planning” services. 
• Unleashing a deluge of abortion propaganda (i.e. “public education efforts”) courtesy of the federal government.
• Convening an activist force of pro-bono lawyers to represent women seeking abortions.  
• Establishing an inter-agency abortion taskforce.
• Ramping up millions in funding to abortion providers and clinics.  
• Launching a duplicitous website that purposefully misinforms the public about abortion and redirects women to companies who will send abortion pills to them through the mail.

To be sure, the Biden Administration at large poses a consistent threat to life in America, but it cannot challenge the legality and statutes decided by the Court. In this way, the Biden-Harris Administration’s threats to take action fall short. Faced with a wavering Congress that remains split on the question of abortion, Biden’s efforts to pull off any kind of codification of “abortion rights” executively is largely hamstrung. In Biden’s own words, “No executive action from the president can do that.”

However, it cannot be understated the extent to which the Executive Branch and Administrative State are intertwined with the abortion industry. Agencies like HHS, USAID, FDA, and NIH send multi-million dollar awards to radical abortion groups both domestically and abroad, fund grotesque research experiments using the organs of aborted children, and implement policies that incentivize abortion – circumventing the prohibiting laws and policies. It is imperative that the pro-life movement begin strategizing for how to dismantle the bureaucracy’s friendship with the abortion industry, and set forth a plan to march fully into the next conservative Administration with the aim to derail this partnership, cut all funding for abortion, strip existing loopholes in what are intended to be pro-life policies, and reorient the Executive Branch to incentivize life. 

Underlying Challenges: The Pro-Life Movement’s Future 

What is the Pro-Life Movement’s Strategy Moving Forward?

In Post-Roe America, the pro-life movement will not only have to navigate a shifting landscape and the other side’s attempts to circumvent efforts to protect life, but will also face significant strategic challenges. The debate over incrementalism (favoring incremental changes to law over time) vs. abolition (favoring an immediate and complete ban of abortion) has long posed a barrier to unity in the pro-life movement, and this divide will likely become more tangible after Roe. Other obstacles and barriers facing the pro-life movement’s future strategy will include: 

• Ensuring that state laws protecting life are not watered down or allow for loopholes. As the battle returns to individual states to implement abortion bans, movement leaders and legislators will have to keep an eagle eye out for attempts to weaken pro-life laws, allow for exceptions and create intentional loopholes by which to fund or permit abortions. A prime example of how this has worked on a federal level is the Mexico City Policy, which has historically been seen by many in the movement as a major win prohibiting overseas funding for abortion. Unfortunately, even with President Trump’s expansion and strengthening of the Mexico City Policy (renamed to Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance, or PLGHA), extensive loopholes and lack of oversight made the policy less effective. One glaring loophole, for example, was that the policy only applied to foreign NGOs and not domestic NGOs receiving foreign assistance who act as proxies. This loophole ushered in massive amounts of U.S. funding for abortions overseas, while the pro-life movement touted the policy as a major win. This case study should serve as a warning to the pro-life movement. Unified and intense scrutiny must laser in on the state lawmaking process to ensure that pro-life protections are enshrined into American law and do not act as vessels to sanction abortion via loopholes.
• Reaching a unified philosophy on the implications of a mother’s culpability in abortion. Pro-life groups and leaders have begun grappling with the question of whether or not a mother is culpable in an abortion. The vast majority of pro-life groups have already publicly denounced any form of criminal prosecution or penalty for mothers and urge for policies that only prosecute abortionists, with the viewpoint that a woman who chooses abortion is solely a victim, not a perpetrator of abortion. It is true that the circumstances surrounding each and every abortion are complex, making the issue of culpability multi-faceted. It is also because of this very reason that the question of culpability should not be approached by a one-size-fits-all methodology. There is a pressing need for the pro-life movement to more deeply develop a philosophy of culpability that incorporates mercy for women who are true victims of abortion, as in the case of coercion, bestows justice for unborn children who are brutally murdered, and hold those responsible for it accountable.
  
  A few hypotheticals to illustrate:
  • In the case that a mother is forced into an abortion by the father of her child, her family, or others, should only the abortionist be prosecuted or face penalties?
  • In the event that a mother willingly, electively chooses abortion for a reason other than vulnerability or coercion (i.e. a political agenda, such as the abortion activists who outside the Supreme Court after the Dobbs decision was leaked out of self-proclaimed spite), should she be held innocent? 
  • With the rapid increase of self-administered abortions, in which abortionists and medical professionals are not involved in conducting an abortion and the administration of the abortion is solely in the hands of the mother, what level of culpability, if any, is she responsible for?

The pro-life movement has labored for decades to ensure that the law no longer lies to women that choosing abortion is anything other than killing an unborn child and that those who have perpetuated such brutality among the least of us should be punished. It is essential that it continues to do so. Those who fight for life will have to grapple with these questions in the coming months; questions that may not have simple answers but are critical to ask. Since 1973, the pro-life movement has found unity in a common thread: to see a true end to abortion and see it enshrined in the nation’s laws and beating in the hearts of every American. This anthem is what will carry it through until this scar on our nation’s conscience is made both illegal and unthinkable.