Pro-life advocate Bevelyn Williams turned herself into a federal prison in Alabama earlier this month. Williams was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for allegedly violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act during a June 2020 protest outside a New York City Planned Parenthood facility. Williams is a Christian wife, a devoted mother, and a woman who has experienced the pain of abortion. She should be pardoned and reunited with her family, and the FACE Act must be repealed.
In 2019, Williams watched in horror as then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law the Reproductive Health Act. That decision to legalize abortion up to birth was disturbing to her, even as someone who’d had multiple abortions. During her sentencing hearing, she made a statement before the judge. In it, she said:
After I got my first abortion, it took a toll on me. … The next thing I know, I am waiting in the room and it’s time. I go to sleep, I wake up, it’s done. But it wasn’t done. You can’t just pull something out, you can’t cut something out of you without the emotional consequences that people have to face every day. And for me, that led me down a very, very dark road of depression.
That emotional turmoil continued as Williams had two more abortions. Yet amid a chaotic life, Williams gave her heart to Christ. Her empathy for those considering abortion led her into pro-life activism. Williams never imagined she’d stand in front of an abortion facility in protest. Once her life was surrendered to Christ, she began to feel deeply for other black women considering abortion. Knowing the pain that comes with abortion, she wanted to reach these women to share her story and to help them choose life.
Now, Bevelyn Williams is facing the second longest sentencing in a series of recent FACE Act-related convictions. Lauren Handy was unjustly convicted in a FACE Act trial in Washington, D.C., in August of 2023 and was sentenced to 57 months, the only defendant to have received a longer sentence than Williams.
Williams, a married mother of a young daughter, was blindsided by the length of the sentence. When her legal team requested, she remain at home with her family during the appeal process, the judge refused, saying, in Williams’ words, that she was a danger to the “streets” and “society.” In her statement before the judge Williams said, “I am loud. I am passionate. But am I violent? No.”
During Williams’ sentencing hearing, prosecuting attorneys referred to Handy’s case, saying that both involved alleged injuries to abortion facility employees. In Willams’ case, at the New York City Planned Parenthood protest, a staffer’s hand was allegedly caught in a door — which government prosecutors presented as Williams doing intentionally. Williams’ attorney disagreed; in his opinion, it was relatively minor.
Bevelyn told the judge, “I didn’t go there with intentions to hurt that woman or anybody else. … I wanted to preach the gospel, and I wanted to use the message that God gave me because I lived it. I’m not judging those girls who go in there ready to get an abortion. I know exactly what it’s like.”
Willams was charged with violating the FACE Act in June 2020 in connection with her interference with individuals seeking to obtain an abortion. The official designation of the offense given to her was “unlawful assembly.”
A three-plus-year sentence for unlawful assembly is egregious. The Biden-Harris administration continues to inflict unjust prosecution against pro-lifers by invoking the FACE Act. The FACE Act was supposedly created to protect pregnancy centers and churches, along with abortion facilities. Yet the FACE Act has been weaponized and used to make an example out of pro-life activists. As Republican lawmakers Mike Lee and Chip Roy wrote earlier this year, “Since its passage, the FACE Act has been used approximately 130 times against pro-lifers — but has only been leveled in defense of churches and pregnancy centers five times, even though churches and pro-life centers are 22 times more likely to be attacked than abortion clinics.”
Kamala Harris, specifically, has leveraged the legal system to jail Americans who engage in efforts to protect preborn children for the majority of her political career. As California’s attorney general, she went after pregnancy resource centers and pro-life journalists, describing peaceful attempts such as Williams’ protest as “outrageous and immoral.”
In her own words, Bevelyn shared her thoughts on Facebook saying, “My family and I remain hopeful and are trusting God through this challenging time. The Bible is clear that persecution will happen, but ministry continues, even in prison. Our job as Christians is to be a light, especially in dark places.”
Pray for our ally in this mission for life, as she sacrificially suffers imprisonment for this cause. We must push back on this persecution and repeal the FACE Act, as Lee and Roy are leading the effort to do in Congress. Not only do our human rights depend on it, but the rights of the innocent babies in the womb as well.
Christina Bennett is a pro-life missionary and activist whose powerful personal story — she was moments away from being aborted — ignited her passion for advocating for life. Currently serving as a Live Action news correspondent, Christina is also a sought-after pro-life speaker, all while living in Connecticut with her husband and son.
Vice President Kamala Harris will use her short appearance in Atlanta Friday afternoon to falsely blame Georgia’s lifesaving pro-life law for the deaths of at least two women. The untimely passings of Amber Thurman, Candi Miller, and their babies, however, had nothing to do with the Peach State’s protections and everything to do with Democrats and corporate media’s dangerous abortion rhetoric.
Shortly after the articles’ publication, Harris posted a four-part statement to X falsely claiming, “Trump Abortion Bans prevent doctors from providing basic medical care.”
“Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again,” she wrote. “Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.”
States that limit when life in the womb can be ended do not criminalize treatments for spontaneous loss or complications like those experienced by Thurman and Miller. In fact, every single pro-life law — including the one in Georgia — contains carveouts for abortion procedures like dilation and curettage when they are deemed necessary to save the life of the woman.
Yet, Democrats, with the help of their media allies like ProPublica, routinely assert that doctors are no longer permitted to treat complications, ectopic pregnancies, or miscarriages.
As SBA Pro-Life America’s State Policy Director Katie Danielnoted in a press conference Friday before Harris’ speech, the exceptions built into red-state legislation limiting abortion “rarely changed from the laws pre-Dobbs to the laws post-Dobbs.”
“The test used — reasonable medical judgment in most states, good faith judgment in others — is the test that was used before and is the test that’s used in many others,” she said, noting that physicians had no problems interpreting those exceptions for years, but “somehow, mysteriously two years ago, they stopped being familiar with that test.”
Harris, like many Democrats in recent years, has made abortion a hallmark of her 2024 campaign. She’s tried multiple times on her short time on the campaign trail to claim that Trump has deceived voters by, as ABC News put it, “flip-flopping” on signing federal abortion limits into law, even though the Republican’s 2024 abortion platform explicitly states decisions about ending life in the womb should be left “up to the states.”
It’s Harris’ extremism disguised as ambiguity, however, that is deceiving voters, who are more pro-life than politicians and the media credit them for. She’s refused numerous times to say whether she supports abortion through all nine months of pregnancy and lied about the prevalence of late-term abortions. Harris has long lamented life-saving laws and even co-sponsored the original version of the “Women’s Health Protection Act,” which seeks to codify abortion through birth. She’s even called the pills that caused Thurman and Miller’s deaths “safe and effective.”
Harris’ radical abortion rhetoric is tricking women everywhere into believing pro-lifers are gatekeeping maternal care. Because of her lies, women like Thurman and Miller believe the abortion pills made even more readily available to them under the Biden administration’s expansions will do them no harm. In reality, the pills can cost them their lives.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to hound pro-life activists who go to abortion businesses and try to convince pregnant women not to kill their babies.
A Detroit, Michigan, jury found seven pro-lifers guilty Tuesday of engaging in a civil rights conspiracy and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for standing and sitting in front of the door of the Northland Family Planning Clinic in Sterling Heights, Michigan, Aug. 27, 2020.
The 1994 Clinton-era FACE Act makes it a federal crime to intimidate or interfere with someone getting an abortion. Combined with the conspiracy charge the DOJ has added to recent FACE charges, the combined convictions carry a penalty of up to 11 years and up to $250,000 in fines. In this case, the conspiracy was about posting and live-streaming the group’s actions on social media.
According to the DOJ indictment, those convicted in this case sat in front of the abortion business’ door and refused to move when women tried to get inside. Later, the police asked them to move and they did not move until they were arrested.
Guided by faith, those convicted in this case say the Bible specifically tells them to act on behalf of voiceless babies scheduled for abortion, citing Proverbs 24:11, “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.”
The convicted include Calvin Zastrow, a Michigan preacher, and his daughter Eva Zastrow, 26, a missionary worker; and Chester Gallagher of Tennessee, a former police officer who left his job and joined the pro-life movement when he realized they were trying to stop a “murder in progress,” as he often says.
Gallagher presented defense arguments on his own behalf but was aided by Thomas More Society attorneys.
“Yet again, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice has decided to characterize the actions of peaceful pro-lifers as a felony ‘Conspiracy Against Rights,’ punishable by over a decade in federal prison. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we believe the FACE Act to be unconstitutional, and we will continue to advocate on behalf of peaceful pro-life citizens like Chet Gallagher, Lauren Handy, and Paul Vaughn, who have been targeted with harsh prosecution by this Department of Justice,” Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Steve Crampton said in a statement. “We also believe that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Fischer v. United States confirms that the Department of Justice’s novel strategy to inflict maximize pain upon peaceful pro-lifers by adding a charge of felony Conspiracy Against Rights cannot be squared with the law and we stand ready to make that case.”
Also found guilty were Justin Phillips, a missionary, and Joel Curry, 31, an evangelist, both of Michigan.
“Apparently there were 40 babies scheduled to die that day, at least six to nine women came back. That means at least 30 women had reconsidered,” Curry told The Federalist in a phone interview after the guilty verdict. He was grateful they were not taken immediately to prison, as has happened in previous FACE cases. The convicted will be sentenced at a later date.
Heather Idoni, 59, a mother of 15, including 10 adopted from Ukraine, was also found guilty. Idoni, a former Christian bookstore owner, is currently held in federal prison for a previous FACE Act conviction in Washington, D.C.
Also convicted was Eva Edl, 89, of South Carolina.
Both Edl and Idoni believe they may die before being released from prison. If they are sentenced to the full 11 years, Edl would be 100 at the end of the sentence. These two have another FACE violation for blocking a door at a Saginaw, Michigan, abortion mill on April 16, 2021.
As a child, Edl was taken by train cattle car as a prisoner to the Gakova concentration camp in Yugoslavia, where she faced starvation and was surrounded by death, but ultimately was able to escape.
If people in her town would have stood on the train tracks to block the train and spoken up about the children being taken to the camp, Edl has said in interviews, the government might have stopped sooner. Today she considers sitting in front of the doors of abortion businesses her way of sitting on the train tracks.
Cracking Down on FACE
Most of the pro-life activists in this case have been going to abortion businesses for years and have often been successful at persuading women to save their babies’ lives. Many offer women continued help after they decide to continue their pregnancy.
None had been charged with FACE in previous years, but charges started coming after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe. v. Wade. Soon President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing his administration to address possible “heightened safety and security risks related to the provision of reproductive healthcare services.”
In July 2022, the DOJ announced it was forming the Reproductive Rights Task Force, listing enforcement of the FACE Act as one of its goals.
Since the formation of the task force, the DOJ has reached back in time and charged pro-lifers with the FACE Act multiple times. Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, Heather Idoni, Eva Edl, and Chester Gallagher were previously found guilty in January for praying, singing church hymns, blocking the door, and talking to women at a Tennessee abortion mill in March 2021. They were not charged until October 2022. By the time they were charged, Tennessee had outlawed abortion except in rare cases, and the abortion mill where they prayed has suspended its operations.
Earlier this week U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray questioning the DOJ’s weaponization of the FACE Act against pro-life Americans.
“Since January 2021, the Civil Rights Division has charged 24 FACE Act cases against 55 defendants, with only two of these cases — consisting of five defendants — originating from attacks on pregnancy resource centers. This data is particularly troubling in light of the fact that there have been at least 90 individual cases of attacks on pro-life organizations and pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion for the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case.”
But at a recent hearing, Wray testified it was the opposite: that more abortion-related violent extremism investigations focused on violence against pro-life facilities.
Roy’s letter requests that documents proving Wray’s claim be provided to the Committee on the Judiciary by Sept. 2.
Former President Donald Trump said in June that if elected, he would let those charged with the FACE Act out of prison.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
Kourtney Kardashian Barker’s fourth child is still snuggled safely in utero after doctors performed an emergency fetal surgery that saved his life.
“I will be forever grateful to my incredible doctors for saving our baby’s life,” the “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” star wrote in an emotional Instagram post on Sept. 6. “I am eternally grateful to my husband who rushed to my side from tour to be with me in the hospital and take care of me afterwards, my rock. And to my mom, thank you for holding my hand through this.”
It’s unclear exactly which condition doctors treated Barker’s son for. What is clear is that undergoing “urgent” early intervention, which may have involved cutting open Barker’s uterus to operate on the baby inside, bettered her baby’s chances of life outside of the womb.
“I don’t think anyone who hasn’t been through a similar situation can begin to understand that feeling of fear. I have a whole new understanding and respect for the mamas who have had to fight for their babies while pregnant,” Barker continued. “Praise be to God. Walking out of the hospital with my baby boy in my tummy and safe was the truest blessing. 🙏🏼🤍.”
Barker’s latest pregnancy and fetal surgery success story is “the truest blessing” — but sadly, it’s not common enough. Nearly 3 percent of babies born in the U.S. gestated with “a complex birth defect,” some of which are potentially life-threatening. Abortion activists all over the country believe that parents who receive scary diagnoses for their preborn children should have the choice to put those babies to death.
Medical professionals, similarly, have recommended hundreds if not thousands of “fetal abnormality” abortions to grieving parents, even for babies with nonfatal complications. Oftentimes, these recommendations are based on the results of prenatal tests that are, unbelievably, “usually wrong” about the existence or extent of disorders and syndromes.
Overall, around 800 U.S. abortion facilities willfully execute babies — with or without diagnoses of potential physical challenges — on any given day.
Invasive prenatal procedures can vary depending on how “complex and challenging” the unborn baby’s condition is. In some devastating cases, surgeries may not be successful. Even so, thousands of childrenare alive today thanks to this early intervention technology.
Barker may not realize it but overcoming her many fears to undergo a surgery that would keep her preborn son alive is one of the most pro-life decisions she ever could have made.
There is a long-held double standard of care applied to children in the womb in the United States. An unborn baby who was intentionally conceived and actively wanted, like the Barkers’ son, gets showered with love, attention, and top-of-the-line prenatal treatment. A child in the womb who was conceived unexpectedly or unwanted by his parents due to a “defect,” however, is removed from the womb like a parasite and taken out with the trash in a biohazard bag.
The striking difference in the value assigned to unborn babies’ lives is something Barker personally struggled with when she conceived her oldest child Mason Disick in 2009.
“I definitely thought about it long and hard, about if I wanted to keep the baby or not, and I wasn’t thinking about adoption,” Kardashian told PEOPLE shortly before Mason’s birth. “I do think every woman should have the right to do what they want, but I don’t think it’s talked through enough. I can’t even tell you how many people just say, ‘Oh, get an abortion.’ Like it’s not a big deal.”
Kardashian ultimately decided to keep gestating her firstborn after she read online testimonials of “people who felt so guilty from having an abortion.”
“I was reading these things of how many people are traumatized by it afterwards,” Barker explained.
Thanks to Barker’s bravery and her doctors’ willingness to prioritize life, no matter how small, another living and breathing baby boy can keep growing in the womb and soon, Lord willing, make his way into his mother’s arms.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
FBI Director Christopher Wray sat for nearly four hours of questioning on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee. Here are the top takeaways from the hearing.
1. Wray Indicates Foreign Intel Agencies Worked with Big Tech to Silence Speech
The FBI director faced fierce questioning from Republican committee members on the FBI’s efforts to induce Big Tech to censor American speech. Several representatives specifically challenged Wray to justify the FBI passing along requests from the Ukrainian intelligence agency, SBU, to social media companies. The FBI’s role as a conduit for SBU was just revealed on Monday in a report from the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
That report revealed that following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the SBU enlisted the FBI to forward to American social media companies lists of accounts that allegedly “spread Russian disinformation.” The FBI obliged, sending a flurry of requests for accounts to be removed, including many American accounts, to multiple social media platforms. In fact, the House report highlighted the inclusion of the official, verified, Russian-language account of the U.S. State Department. The House Judiciary Committee queried Wray on how this could happen, while also inquiring why the FBI would assist the SBU in this endeavor, especially in light of Russia’s known infiltration of SBU.
In explaining the FBI’s involvement, Wray stressed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had cut off Ukraine’s communications, causing SBU to ask the FBI to contact U.S. companies on their behalf with the list of accounts supposedly spreading Russian disinformation. But as Republicans on the committee highlighted, the account lists in question included American accounts. Thus, the FBI’s involvement triggered the same First Amendment problems as those litigated in Missouri v. Biden.
This testimony also raised a second area of concern, namely the apparent coordination between U.S. social media companies and foreign governments. Wray said he served as an intermediary because Ukraine’s communications system was down. But in that case, it appears SBU would have contacted the American companies on its own behalf, seeking the silencing of Americans’ speech.
So the question for American social media companies is this: Do they accept requests to remove accounts or posts from foreign countries? And do they censor Americans’ speech based on foreign claims of disinformation?
2. Private Corporations Present a Bigger Concern Than Wray
Social media companies are not the only ones who have some explaining to do following Wray’s testimony. Americans should also demand answers from private businesses with access to consumer information, especially those in the financial sector.
This concern flows from Wray’s response to questioning about Bank of America handing the FBI financial records of customers who had purchased firearms within the six months before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Wray defended the FBI’s receipt of this information by noting that “a number of business community partners, all the time, including financial institutions, share information with us about possible criminal activity.” Such activity is entirely lawful, the FBI director maintained, although he added that the FBI opted not to use the Bank of America data to avoid concerns over the bureau obtaining that data.
That the FBI decided not to use the data, however, provides no comfort because Bank of America obviously had no qualms about sharing the information. Further, Wray framed Bank of America’s data sharing as consistent with “business partners” who “all the time” share information about possible criminal activity.
But financial data showing a customer had previously purchased a gun does not represent evidence of “possible criminal activity.” Yet that didn’t stop Bank of America from giving the information to the FBI. So what other financial information is Bank of America providing? And what about other “business partners”?
3. Wray Needs to Read the Court’s Opinion in Missouri v. Biden
The partnership that took main billing during Wednesday’s hearing was that forged between the FBI and social media companies, and Republicans drilled Wray on the coordinated efforts to censor American speech. Throughout the entire hearing, though, Wray unwaveringly maintained the bureau was not responsible for the censorship because the FBI was merely making suggestions that posts involving foreign malign influence be removed.
No one who read the district court’s opinion in Missouri v. Biden could reasonably reach that conclusion. And since the FBI played such a heavy role in the censorship enterprise summarized in that case, the FBI director owes it to the public to actually study that opinion.
DOJ lawyers may be telling Wray the FBI is in the clear, but a federal judge disagreed,
and since the court has ordered the FBI to abandon its unconstitutional conduct, Wray needs to understand precisely what that means. Reading the court’s unfiltered opinion is the only way to see the many ways the FBI violated the First Amendment.
4. So Much Ignorance, So Little Time
Wray was not only ignorant of the facts underlying Missouri v. Biden, but he also revealed several other blind spots. For instance, during the hearing, Wray acknowledged he had previously testified that the FBI had not used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government to collect communications of foreign individuals, in its investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That ended up not being accurate, however, but Wray was “blissfully ignorant” of that fact when he testified to the contrary to Congress.
Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell also put on a display of ignorance Wednesday, although in his case it was a feigned ignorance, with the California congressman framing the Hunter Biden laptop as concerning the nudes of a private citizen. While Swalwell may still be fixated on the nudes on the laptop, Republicans’ concern has always been of the evidence of a pay-to-play scandal implicating now-President Biden.
Then there’s Rep. Zoe Lofgren who claimed the GOP majority was engaging in “conspiracy theories” to discredit “one of the premier law enforcement agencies in the United States,” and “without any evidence” trying to “make the case that the FBI is somehow opposed to conservative views.”These20 examples tell a different story.
5. Why Was Auten Anywhere Near Biden Evidence?
Wray and the Democrats weren’t the only ignorant ones, however. Republicans were clueless when it came to understanding why FBI analyst Brian Auten was anywhere near evidence implicating Hunter Biden. After all, Auten had been under internal investigation since 2019 for his role in Crossfire Hurricane. Given the partisan witch hunt that investigation proved to be, why would the bureau allow Auten to play a part in the highly political investigation of Hunter Biden?
Yet it apparently did. A whistleblower has told Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that Auten opened an assessment in August 2020 and that assessment provided other FBI agents the ability to falsely brand derogatory information about Hunter Biden as disinformation.
Wednesday’s testimony by the FBI director shed no light on the question of Auten’s involvement.
6. AG Garland’s the Real Hack Targeting Parents
While Wray was unable to explain Auten’s involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation, he made clear that when it came to the parents-are-terrorists memorandum, that was all Attorney General Merrick Garland’s doing. That testimony proved enlightening by showing that for all of the FBI’s deficiencies, even its director sees the attorney general as more of a hack for targeting parents at school board meetings.
7. Orange Man Bad, FBI Good
Also enlightening were the Democrats’ main lines of questioning. Here, there were two. The leftist lawmakers spent most of their time rehabilitating the FBI, reciting the many important bureau missions, showcasing hero agents, highlighting horrible attacks on FBI offices, and rejoicing in the FBI’s family days. Then the far-left faction merely attacked Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.
Together these lines of questioning exposed the Democrats as unconcerned by the many abuses Americans have witnessed over the last half-dozen years. And what was unserious appeared downright absurd when Democrat Pramila Jayapal used her allotted time to challenge the FBI director over the bureau’s purchase of citizens’ data, including location data, from various data brokers. Pre-Trump, every Democrat would have been drilling Wray on such abuses of civil liberties, but this week it was only Jayapal.
8. The Speech or Debate Clause Does Some Heavy Lifting
In addition to the Democrats’ two main lines of questioning, a sub-theme of many of the comments concerned the whistleblowers, with Democrats attempting to discredit their testimony. One way they sought to do that was by presenting the whistleblowers as hired tongues. But beginning with Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and continuing through Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, they made this point by slandering the whistleblowers, falsely stating they had been paid for their testimony.
Of course, the speech or debate clause prevents the whistleblowers from suing the committee members who lied about them, which is precisely why they had no qualms about doing so.
REMEMBER WHAT THE DEMS WERE SAYING ABOUT THE SO-CALLED WHISTLEBLOWER THAT CAME OUT ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP? I guess it’s the accused that makes their speech different.
9. Schiff Can’t Stop Lying
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is proof of this point because he can’t stop lying. He lied about the Carter Page FISA warrants. And on Wednesday, he lied again about President Donald Trump’s telephone call with the Georgia secretary of state following the November 2020 election.
Unfortunately, “as I’ve been forced to detail time and again because the corrupt media continue to lie about the conversation, the transcript of the call established that Trump did not request that Raffensperger ‘find 11,780 votes.’” As I wrote in February, “It never happened.” Instead, during that “telephone conversation between Trump’s legal team and the secretary of state’s office, Trump’s lawyer explained to Raffensperger that ‘the court is not acting on our petition. They haven’t even assigned a judge.’” Thus the legal team wanted the secretary of state’s office to investigate the violations of Georgia election law because the court refused to do its duty.
Schiff knows this, but he also knows there are no consequences for lying. On the contrary, he might just convince Californians to send him to the Senate so he can follow in Harry “He Didn’t Win, Did He?” Reid’s footsteps.
10. A Mixed Bag on the Pro-Life Question
The final takeaway topic from Wray’s testimony concerned the pro-life question, and Wray presented a mixed bag. On the one hand, he outrageously refused to condemn the FBI agents who decided to use a SWAT-like display of force to arrest a pro-life sidewalk counselor at his family home when the man’s attorney had agreed to arrange for his client to voluntarily appear to face the charges — of which he was later acquitted.
On the other hand, when Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., attempted to frame abortionists and abortion facilities as being increasingly targeted in the wake of Dobbs, Wray corrected the narrative, noting that the uptick in violence has been to pro-life centers, with 70 percent of the cases involving such organizations.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Pro-life activist Abby Johnson addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2, 2023, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington, D.C. | The Christian Post/Nicole Alcindor
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — A women-centered panel at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference focused on defending human dignity and how the panelists believe the culture has lost sight of God’s intended vision for humankind.
The panel, “Some Tuff Mutha,” featured pro-life advocate Abby Johnson, founder of And Then There Were None; Penny Nance, CEO and president of the conservative group Concerned Women for America; and Kimberly Fletcher of Moms for America. Radio host Sandy Rios served as the moderator for the panel.
One of the ways the panelists believe human dignity has been lost is through the practice of abortion, which has killed 63.5 million Americans since it was legalized in 1973.
Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director (read more about her here and here), drew attention to the Food and Drug Administration modifying restrictions on abortion pills and enabling women to obtain prescriptions for the drugs at major retail pharmacies. Under the Biden administration, the FDA “greenlit abortion into the home of every woman across the country,” she said.
“We have created abortion facilities in every woman’s home across the country,” Johnson added, lamenting the risk this imposes on women.
The former abortion clinic director noted that the full extent of the ramifications of the FDA’s decision is still unknown, highlighting the lack of medical supervision surrounding at-home chemical abortions. According to a 2009 study, the complication rate for chemical abortions is four times higher than for surgical abortions.
Johnson cited several concerns she has with the modified regulations, such as women potentially hemorrhaging to death in their bathroom. She also emphasized that women will be looking into the toilet to see the remains of their “fully-formed baby.”
“And then they’re going to have to make a decision,” she said. “‘What do I do with this fully-formed baby? What do I do with this child? Do I scoop the child out of the toilet? Do I take the child to be buried? Do I flush my child down the toilet?’”
The pro-life advocate raised further concerns about the psychological impact of seeing their child’s remains.
Nance added that abortion is the “ultimate disrespect of human dignity,” but stressed that God still loves and can redeem women who have had abortions.
The conservative leader pointed to another loss of human dignity, criticizing the Biden administration’s treatment of women. She asserted that the Administration seemingly believes “men can do everything better than women, including being women,” highlighting the appointment of Rachel (Richard) Levine, a man who identifies as a woman, to the position of U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health. In 2022, USA Today listed Levine, a man who identifies as a woman, as its Woman of the Year.
Nance said CWA intends to “stand up for the unique dignity of American women” and encourages other Americans to do the same.
“We are fearfully and wonderfully made as male and female,” she said. “That is the ultimate disrespect, to deny who we are and how God created us in that unique, dignified position as American women.”
Speaking about public education, Fletcher shared how, when she talks to mothers, she tells them how “parental rights are fundamental and supreme.”
“We as parents have got to stand up,” she said. “First of all, we have to know what’s coming our way.”
Fletcher noted that mothers are attending school board meetings, reading the sexual content in books made accessible to their children, and being lectured for sharing such things out loud. She also pointed to incidents involving comprehensive sex education being taught to early elementary school students or schools instructing young children about changing their sex.
The parental advocate asserted that conservative Christian women haven’t been voting or paying enough attention to what’s happening at their school boards. This demographic of women, she added, can “repair” what’s wrong in the education system.
In terms of fixing what they see as negatively impacting the culture, Johnson said God wants His people to participate in “daily victories,” imploring those gathered to use their “voice” and “speak boldly” on these issues.
Nance seconded Johnson’s challenge, adding that the “Holy Spirit is alive and well,” and whether it be at school board meetings or outside abortion facilities, she called on everyone to speak the “truth” and fulfill God’s command to “care for the least of these.”
On Monday a federal jury acquitted Mark Houck, the Christian pro-life activist whose house was swarmed by FBI agents last fall in front of his wife and children. The not-guilty verdict comes more than four months after the Biden administration accused Houck of violating federal law for protecting his son from an angry abortion activist across the street from a Planned Parenthood in 2021.
After leaving the courtroom in a deadlock on Friday, on Monday a federal jury agreed Houck was not guilty of violating federal law, contrary to the Biden Department of Justice’s position.
The early-morning FBI raid on Houck’s home in front of his children and wife included battering rams and ballistic shields at the ready and was committed even after Houck’s attorney had told the U.S. Department of Justice Houck would turn himself in if they asked. Since his arrest in September 2022, Houck and his lawyers maintained“This case is being brought solely to intimidate people of faith and pro-life Americans.”
“We are, of course, thrilled with the outcome,” stated Peter Breen, head of litigation for the Thomas More Society, which defended Houck in court. “We took on Goliath – the full might of the United States government – and won. The jury saw through and rejected the prosecution’s discriminatory case, which was harassment from day one. This is a win for Mark and the entire pro-life movement. The Biden Department of Justice’s intimidation against pro-life people and people of faith has been put in its place.”
Houck is now freed from the threat of “a maximum possible sentence of 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines of up to $350,000.” He also thanked Americans and pro-lifers for their support after the FBI raid and subsequent federal prosecution.
After weeks of ignoring pro-abortion violence and threats against pro-life pregnancy support centers across the nation, dozens of FBI agents arrested Houck in front of his wife and seven children in a raid at his home in September. When Houck’s wife recounted that “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” the FBI defended their “guns out and ready” positions as necessary.
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice alleged Houck violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law barring the physical obstruction of abortion facilities, by “attacking a patient escort” more than 100 feet away and across the street from a Planned Parenthood in Philadelphia during one of his regular trips to peacefully protest abortion.
The “patient escort,” Bruce Love, repeatedly initiated profanity-laced verbal confrontations with Houck and his son, Mark Houck Jr., said court documents. The documents also say Houck asked Love to stop multiple times to no avail. On Oct. 13, 2021, when Love escalated by invading Mark Jr.’s personal space, Houck Sr. shoved him away.
Love fell and claimed he “required medical attention,” an allegation the DOJ indictment took as fact. Brian Middleton, a spokesman for the Houck family, said the “medical attention” Love spoke of was “a Band-Aid on his finger.”
During his testimony to the jury, Houck gave his side of the story.
“You consider it to be a battle, don’t you?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ashley Nicole Martin asked Houck during the trial.
“A spiritual battle,” the father of seven replied.
Houck also disclosed that Love instigated the incident that later was used to sic federal investigators on the Houck family.
“All of this was set in motion by the escort, and that’s not a FACE violation,” Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Michael McHale said in a trial recap video on Friday. “FACE is about access to clinics. And what happened here was an escort interfering with Mark and Mark’s son.”
Houck’s son Mark Jr. also testified on Friday. In his testimony, Mark Jr. explained that Love initiated a conversation with him.
“That directly contradicted Bruce Love’s testimony,” McHale said. “Mr. Love testified that he never, has ever, talked to Mark Jr. And to have Mark Jr. on the stand today and just testify confidently and clearly that Bruce Love talked to him and said ‘Your dad’s a bad person and your dad’s harassing women.’ I really think that went a long way, at least with some people on the jury.”
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
While House Democrats’ first act of the 118th Congress was to demand a vote on their unsuccessful abortion up-until-birth in all 50 states legislation, House Republicans, keen to defend the nation’s most vulnerable, committed to using their newfound majority to pass two pro-life measures.
Neither of the legislative acts limits abortion in any way as the GOP’s previously proposed 15-week abortion ban would have done. Yet, Democrats and their allies in the corrupt corporate media, still reeling from the end of Roe v. Wade, shunned the legislation and smeared Republicans for daring to use their congressional power to curb Democrats’ abortion for all agenda.
“House Republicans turn their attention to restricting abortion rights,” the Washington Post wrote.
“Republican-controlled House pushes for new abortion restrictions,” the Guardian reported.
“House Republicans Are Already Voting On Anti-Abortion Bills As GOP Eyes Even More Restrictions,” one Forbes headline blared.
The first, a bill dubbed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, doesn’t just seek to mandate life-saving medical care and legal protection for babies who survive botched abortions. The legislation also criminalizes abortionists’ failure to administer proper care and treatment for infants who are born alive.
The GOP’s belief that “Every baby is a precious life that must be protected,” however, was not shared by their Democrat colleagues. Instead of agreeing with Republicans’ attempts to give newborns who survive abortions proper care, Democrats defended the gruesome act of dismembering a delivered baby. Despite claiming the bill is unwarranted because infanticide is illegal, talking heads and leftist mouthpieces smeared the legislation as “extremist, dangerous, and unnecessary” and committed to obeying Democrat leadership’s orders to vote against it.
Democrat Sheila Jackson defends partial birth abortions, in which the abortionist “deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until…the entire fetal head is outside the mother’s body” before snipping the baby’s neck.
The second GOP-led action is a resolution designed to condemn the more than 100 attacks, firebombings, and violent acts of vandalism that plagued pregnancy centers, churches, and other pro-life organizations following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision.
Additionally, the resolution urges the Biden administration, the FBI, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and the politicized Department of Justice, which focused on targeting peaceful pro-life protestors instead of violent pro-abortion vandalists, to “take action now to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
“Who could be opposed to that?” the resolution’s proponent Rep. Mike Johnson asked from the House floor on Wednesday.
My @HouseGOP resolution on the floor today is simple and important.
Congress must condemn the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches following the Dobbs decision. pic.twitter.com/brCe2l7JJE
Yet, Democrats were more than willing to brush off the history of political violence against pro-lifers in exchange for pushing more support for abortion.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D), arguing against a resolution condemning attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers:
"We have to make sure that people who are pro-life and pro-people who support abortion rights, and we support life, are included in opposing violence." pic.twitter.com/9uwhISGUlJ
Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe last summer, pro-life laws all around the nation have saved more than 10,000 lives. Despite House Republicans’ best efforts to pass pro-life legislation on the national level to expand life-saving measures, the Democrat-controlled Senate does not plan to advance the legislation.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
In a direct rebuke to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s radical abortion agenda, the City Council of Hobbs, New Mexico, unanimously voted last week to become a sanctuary city for the unborn. Overwhelming support for and passage of the ordinance mean abortion is now classified as murder and outlawed within Hobbs city limits. It also means that any blue politicians or abortion facilities that try to go against the city’s wishes could face an uphill legal battle.
The vote was vehemently opposed by Lujan Grisham, who called the architects of the ordinance “out-of-state extremists.” The governor’s reaction is no surprise considering her own history of abortion extremism.
Shortly after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, Lujan Grisham signed an executive order designating $10 million in taxpayer funds toward the development of an abortion facility in Doña Ana County, an area that shares a border with El Paso, Texas. That was just a couple of months after Lujan Grisham signedan executive order “protecting medical providers from attempts at legal retribution” for granting abortions and refusing to comply with other states’ abortion extradition laws.
“As more states move to restrict and prohibit access to reproductive care, New Mexico will continue to not only protect access to abortion, but to expand and strengthen reproductive health care throughout the state,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement. “Today, I reaffirm my resolve to make sure that women and families in New Mexico — and beyond — are supported at every step of the way.”
Since then, abortion dominated the state’s political scene and even became a focal point in Lujan Grisham’s re-election race against Republican challenger Mark Ronchetti.
Amy Hagstrom Miller, the CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, one of the nation’s largest dealers of abortion, previously told Reuters that Lujan Grisham’s friendliness toward abortion led her to consider relocating some of their Texas facilities closer to the border with New Mexico.
The goal was to offer abortion to women in neighboring Texas cities such as Lubbock, which voted to become a sanctuary city for the unborn in May of 2021, following the Lone Star State’s ban on abortion via the Texas Heartbeat Act.
Residents of Hobbs, a nearly 40,000-person town, however, weren’t taking any chances on getting swept up in Lujan Grisham’s pro-abortion executive spree. The pro-life community in Hobbs as well as the nearby city of Clovis revolted with the introduction of ordinances designed to protect unborn babies.
The threat of legal challenges thanks to widespread support for those sanctuary city ordinances, Hagstrom Miller confessed, “has given her pause about operating in eastern New Mexico.”
“In this post-Dobbs era, where anti-abortion folks are emboldened, I want to be sure we’re in a place where our patients can be safe, where our doctors and our staff can be safe,” she said.
The Clovis City Commission postponed its vote on the ordinance allegedly so it can “perfect the language to better protect against litigation.” “We hope this sends the message to our state legislature that there are pro-life cities out there and we want to self-determine on this issue,” Clovis Mayor Mike Morris said shortly after a vote to advance the ban.
If Clovis passes the ordinance, it will join Hobbs and a myriad of other towns that all recently decided to push back against Democrats’ abortion extremism.
“Between Governor Abbott’s resounding defeat of Robert Francis O’Rourke to four more municipalities joining over fifty towns with existing sanctuary city for the unborn ordinances, this is an exciting time for Texans as we work to end abortion,” Texas Right to Life President Dr. John Seago told The Federalist. “Additionally, as the abortion industry looks to target Texas women from just outside our borders, it is equally exciting that Hobbs, New Mexico has joined the fight and passed the ordinance to keep the desperate abortion industry out of their city limits.”
The pro-life movements in Texas and New Mexico have been so effective recently that they’ve even earned the wrath of the Biden White House.
“We have been very clear about what MAGA extreme Republicans are trying to do when it comes to a woman’s rights to choose,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a recent trip to New Mexico with President Joe Biden. “They’re trying to take that away, clearly, and in the most extreme ways. What it’s doing is it’s putting women — women and girls’ lives at risk.”
This article was updated on 11/16 to reflect that members of the Clovis City Commission are no longer unanimously “expected to vote in favor of the ban.”
“The Ordinance, as it stands now, is ready. The commission, however, is unready and unwilling,” Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative, told The Federalist.
Dickson also said that Clovis Mayor Mike Morris is facing backlash after he was “pressured by several Republicans to push things past the election and even past the legislative session.”
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Google-owned YouTube has been flexing its censorship muscles against conservative voices for a while, but the Big Tech company’s tactics just got even worse: Now, tacked onto the posts of pro-lifers, YouTube is directing users to pro-abortion information.
This means that life-affirming videos — such as those that tell the truth about the grisly details of abortion, share deeply held Catholic beliefs on the sanctity of life, and discuss alternatives to abortion, such as the life-saving pregnancy centers Democrats have slandered — will now have links slapped onto their videos that direct viewers to the pro-abortion talking points they’re advocating against. YouTube is following its predictable partisan pattern, using the cover of “misinformation” and “context” to dehumanize unborn human lives.
YouTube’s purported “context” accompanying the videos reads “abortion health information,” with a definition from the National Library of Medicine (NLM): “An abortion is a procedure to end a pregnancy. It uses medicine or surgery to remove the embryo or fetus and placenta from the uterus. The procedure is done by a licensed healthcare professional.” And though YouTube hides behind the cover of medical “experts” at the NLM, like it did when it censored Covid-19 dissenters, it’s notable that NLM is just another hub of progressive federal government bureaucrats within the National Institutes of Health that plugs abortion and has reportedly published thousands of papers on “racism and medicine.”
YouTube’s “context” disclaimer also includes a link to the NLM’s abortion informational page, which suggests ways to abort a child: “medication abortion” or “procedural abortion.” The former is a chemically induced abortion in the first trimester, during which time babies’ limbs, skeletons, and major organs are fully developing, their hearts are beating strong, and they can taste and feel pain. In this type of abortion, the mother takes a pill that blocks nourishment and blood from the unborn baby, which kills it. The mother then takes a second pill to cause contractions and severe cramping and bleeding, leading to the delivery of her dead child.
“Procedural abortion” after the first trimester entails a dilation and evacuation abortion (D&E), in which an abortionist dilates the mother’s cervix and then uses a suction tube and sopher clamp to kill the unborn child by ripping its body apart limb by limb. The National Library of Medicine page linked by YouTube describes this in wholly dehumanizing terms, describing the dismemberment abortion as “a procedure to remove the pregnancy from the uterus.”
Under the “Learn More” section of this NLM abortion information webpage, it includes links to pages such as “Abortion Care,” “Ending a Pregnancy,” and “Know Your Rights: Reproductive Health Care,” but no pro-life pages or post-abortion testimonies discussing the horrific realities of abortion, such as this Live Action video to which YouTube attached its abortion-sanitizing “context.”
Live Action
“Adding these disclaimers is clear political bias on the part of YouTube against pro-life groups and messaging,” policy analyst Clare Morell told the Catholic News Agency. “Rather than allowing for free speech and debate in today’s modern public square, YouTube is preferring one side and position over the other by adding these disclaimers. And attempting to prejudice viewers against the pro-life position.”
This is certainly not the first time Big Tech has attempted to choke out pro-life perspectives. In August, after pressure from House Democrats, Google announced it would change its search results “to distinguish pro-life pregnancy centers from abortion clinics in search results for people dealing with crisis pregnancies.” In other words, Google would ensure that women exploring abortion online wouldn’t stumble on a wholistic women’s pregnancy center that would give them a different choice.
Google’s YouTube is not new to putting disclaimers on videos in the name of fighting misinformation, either. The tech giant has added so-called context to videos discussing Covid-19 too, and it even went so far as to suspend people from its platform — including Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. — for purportedly “spreading misinformation” on the topic.
Sophia is an intern at The Federalist and a student at Le Moyne College. She majors in English and intends to pursue a career in journalism.
A three-year battle in Vermont is coming to a head over Proposal 5, an amendment to the state constitution that would enshrine existing Vermont abortion “liberties” to terminate pregnancies up until birth.
Roe v. Wade established “viability” as the determinant of when state governments hold a “compelling” interest to protect children. The current challenge to Roe in the Supreme Court concerns a Mississippi law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks. Vermont’s Proposal 5 essentially defines fetal viability at 40 weeks (birth), ignoring both Roe and the science of human development.
The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wadesought to balance not just competing moral and political views, but the two lives at issue:
The pregnant woman cannot be isolated in her privacy. She carries an embryo and, later, a fetus, if one accepts the medical definitions of the developing young in the human uterus… Each grows in substantiality as the woman approaches term and, at a point during pregnancy, each becomes ‘compelling.’ With respect to the state’s important and legitimate interest in potential life, the ‘compelling’ point is at viability.
Modern medicine has revealed the miracle of human development, increasing public awareness of that second person even acknowledged by Roe. This reality drives increased public opposition to late-term abortions: recent polls show 80 percent of Americans oppose them. Medical science is also clear about what the Supreme Court described as viability:
Periviability, also referred to as borderline viability, is defined as the earliest stage of fetal maturity (i.e., between 22 and 26 weeks gestation) when there is a reasonable chance, although not a high likelihood, of extrauterine survival.
The current Mississippi dispute, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, seeks to protect unborn children from abortion prior to current scientific consensus on viability, at 15 weeks. Abortion proponents portray that as restrictive, and indeed treat any objection to late-term abortions as moralizing religiosity, yet secular France is currently embroiled in a parliamentary dispute over whether to expand long-standing restrictions on abortions there from 12 weeks to 14.
Vermont’s Abortion Law
Vermont established “abortion protections” through delivery in 2019, in its “no-limits” H.57, overcoming Republican efforts to impose a 24-week limitation, or to exempt minor girls. Proposal 5 now seeks to cement those same horrors into the Vermont constitution, and compel conservative elected representatives to swear an oath to its abhorrent provisions.
Women and young girls around the nation and world (Vermont provides free abortions to unlawful entrants) who make last-minute decisions to terminate their pregnancies may have no place to turn for “rescue” except the ghoulish Green Mountain State.
Vermont has long embraced this barbaric extremism with regard to the unborn. Its leftist legislature has steadfastly avoided acknowledging fetal personhood at any age, which leaves pregnant women gravely unprotected from domestic abusers who murder their unborn children — there is no Vermont recognition of these as homicides, even if the child is viable.
In one heartbreaking case, a young mother lost her twins at six months’ gestation when she was struck by an impaired driver. The Vermont legislature has repeatedly refused to honor her loss, or protect other mothers whose children are similarly murdered. Instead of acknowledging Roe’s “compelling” interest to protect the constitutional rights of viable children, Vermont uses its laws to deny the acknowledgment such children ever lived.
Proposal 5 Is Even Worse
Proposal 5 tightens that noose: unborn children in Vermont are not safe from murder by abortion when viable, only when they pass their mother’s cervix and breath air on their own. Vermont’s Proposal 5 will legally deny the recognition of the existence of that person Roe federally acknowledged in its “viability” rule. Thus Vermont has scorned even Roe’s political, moral, and scientific balancing efforts.
The Vermont progressive minority that has belched forth this abominable legislation is hell-bent on “preserving” its obscene accomplishments in constitutional cement. Planned Parenthood has even improperly cooperated with the Vermont attorney general’s office. Progressives invoke the eugenics horrors and the 15-week Mississippi attack on Roe as justification for Proposal 5. Vermont also offers sterilizing transgender hormone therapies to minor children without parental consent, in the same hospital that performs the majority of the late-term “procedures” in the state.
Supreme Court Must Address this Inequity
Vermont progressives are inviting the fall of Roe they fear. If states refuse to protect that second life acknowledged by Roe, and public sentiment continues to escalate in revulsion to abortion because of growing scientific awareness of the miraculousness of fetal development, is it not appropriate for the U.S. Supreme Court to take the required next step? Certainly there is no state constitutional recourse in Vermont on behalf of tortured viable children if its Constitution is amended to preempt that very possibility.
Roe v. Wade concerned the constitutional right to privacy of women while acknowledging a constitutional right to human personhood in the unborn at viability. It established federal preemptive boundaries to protect the first class, but left it to states to protect the second — and Vermont isn’t.
It is illogical for the U.S. Supreme Court not to address this glaring jurisprudential inequity. Does the U.S. Constitution contain a “right” for women to privately murder viable children? Roe specifically held they do not. But Roe did not articulate federal boundaries of constitutional protection for that child. As Justice Potter Stewart noted in his concurrence:
….the protection of a person’s general right to privacy – his right to be let alone by other people – is like the protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States.
Many speculate that Mississippi’s law may be affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The New York Times proclaims“If the justices were to approve the law, Roe’s viability standard would no longer be the law of the land.” That does not bode well for Vermont’s extremist left minority.
The Supreme Court must declare that there is a gestation date beyond which women cannot constitutionally exterminate their young in the womb, and acknowledge what science proves: there is a separate human at issue, who must not be marginalized. Even if at a post-viable stage of 30 weeks, once federal fetal personhood is rightly acknowledged (much like when women and racial minorities were included in the Constitution’s protections), unconscionable laws like Proposal 5 will collapse under federal preemption.
Extremism such as Vermont’s demands federal rescue.
John Klar is an attorney, writer, pastor, and farmer who lives off-grid in Vermont. John blogs for Mother Earth News on agriculture issues, and maintains a weekly commentary in The Newport Daily Express.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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