Life Line - Supreme Stakes in Louisiana
A Ruling Down South: Louisiana’s Crucial Abortion Case
It is an undeniable certainty that two of the most influential and politically repercussive acts of Donald Trump’s presidency were his appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the bench of the Supreme Court. These monumental decisions restored a conservative majority to the highest court in the land, and they will impact our nation’s politics, society, and culture for decades to come. But despite the staunch pro-life worldview held by both these rookie judges and the president himself, the Supreme Court has yet to provide a ruling on any major abortion-related case since Donald Trump’s election.
That is all about to change.
The court is expected to soon deliberate on an incredibly pivotal case, June Medical Services LLC vs. Russo, which threatens to challenge Louisiana’s Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, otherwise known as Act 620. This law, which lies at the heart of the current abortion debate in the southern United States, requires abortion doctors to hold admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic. Act 620 passed with bipartisan support in 2014 and effectively ensured that any medical admitting privilege restrictions applying to doctors applied to abortionists as well. Should the Supreme Court uphold this law, it would essentially force the majority of the state’s clinics to close, thereby compelling all women seeking an abortion in Louisiana to visit one clinic. Even now, the largely Republican state contains just three abortion practices.
In all honesty, the rhetoric surrounding this case might as well have been regurgitated from every single abortion-related talking point found online. The pro-choice community claims that this measure is a backward, illicit attempt to prevent women from accessing their full reproductive rights and a violation of a woman’s personal choice. In contrast, the pro-life community contends that this regulation is vital in protecting the health and safety of women during an abortion.
The issue that lies at the forefront of this debate, however, is the poverty problem in Louisiana. Roughly half of all women who obtain abortions in the state live in poverty, and a quarter of a million women of childbearing age there live below the federal poverty level. For many, the cost of an abortion is a major obstacle. While the price varies across the nation, Louisiana abortions cost about $500, and nearly half of the state’s population cannot afford to shell out that much money for an unexpected pregnancy. Additionally, marginalized communities face barriers such as distance, childcare, longer wait times, and difficulty taking time off from work when it comes to reproductive rights, and many women in Louisiana would be forced to leave the state to obtain an abortion if Act 620 is upheld. Steffani Bangel, executive director of the New Orleans Abortion Fund, summarized the problems she perceives with this law. "If this law is upheld and it closes one or two, or even all three of our clinics, it's just going to deepen the inequities that already exist.”
However, we must be careful not to become easily influenced by this deceptive verbiage. In truth, those opposing Act 620 are clearly willing to sacrifice the safety of women for the revenue that abortion procedures bring in. Under the guise of unnecessary obstacles and needless restrictions, they claim that the law interferes with reproductive rights. They are willing to sacrifice safety for convenience all for the sake of money and the opportunity to terminate the lives of innocent children. In their greed, they are willing to put women at risk in order to keep the cash coming in. Let’s not fool ourselves; this is far from any sort of attempt to shut down abortion clinics in Louisiana. It isn’t even an ‘anti-abortion’ measure! The state’s solicitor general, Liz Murrill, was quick to dispel that notion. "It's absurd to suggest that this was simply just to shut down clinics,” she told NBC in an interview. “This has always been bipartisan legislation that was led by women.”
Furthermore, the irony of the racial argument surrounding Act 620 must not be lost in the shuffle. Nia Weeks, a reproductive justice attorney from New Orleans, attempted to use racial equality as a reason to oppose the ruling: “the reality is that anything that has a detrimental impact on the general community has a more detrimental impact on communities of color.” The hypocrisy of this statement is sickening. Abortion is a movement rooted in eugenics, white supremacy, and racism. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and the birth control movement, was herself a blatant racist. The organization began in hatred for African Americans and stemmed from a desire to discriminate and eliminate. Even today, abortion clinics are disproportionately located in impoverished, African American communities. More black children are aborted in New York City than born alive, and roughly 300,000 black babies are aborted annually. If anything, Act 620 is a necessary measure for furthering racial equality, not the other way around.
Perhaps the most damning piece of information in this case is that the plaintiffs have an incredibly questionable and suspicious history regarding reproductive activity. Bossier Medical Suite had its license suspended and its doors closed in 2017 after performing abortions on minors and failing to report statutory rape. Delta Clinic in Baton Rouge was shut down after a patient suffered severe bleeding and the practice did not have the means to assist them. Despite these grievous failures, an entirely unethical law in Louisiana actually allows for these clinics to represent the women they have personally harmed!
The crux of the matter is evident. Louisiana’s Act 620 is a necessary measure because it seeks to protect women and ensure a level of safety during abortions. Let’s be clear; we condemn abortion as the cruel, unjust killing of innocent human beings, and we recognize that it is never a safe procedure for either party. It should ultimately be abolished, but meanwhile, we have a responsibility to provide safety for those we can. What’s more, the plaintiffs in June Medical Services LLC vs. Russo have no business opposing Act 620 because of their corrupt history. Hopefully, the justices will see through the empty argument for ‘reproductive rights’ and recognize that Act 620 is in the best interests of women everywhere, and I’m confident that the conservative majority will hand down the morally right decision. Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain; this decision will reverberate through the corridors of America’s future, and it could be the first of many pro-life dominoes to fall. We may yet see the beginning of the end of abortion in our country.
Missouri: The Show Me the Abortion State
Since the monumental Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the landscape of abortion clinics was permanently altered for the next fifty years. From 1974 onward, every single state in the country has had at least one abortion clinic, and many states contain dozens of these baby-killing factories. While the abortion industry has seemed impenetrable over the years, the walls appeared to begin crumbling down in 2019. Missouri was on the cusp of making history last summer. A Planned Parenthood clinic located in the city of St. Louis was threatened with permanent closure after the state failed to renew its license following an investigation that exposed four failed abortions. This would have left the Show-Me State with a total of zero abortion clinics, and they would have become the first state since Roe v. Wade with this achievement. However, the state government stepped in last month and determined that the health department was wrong to strip the clinic of its license, thereby ensuring that Missouri would temporarily continue to provide abortions.
Missouri Administrative Hearing Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi’s provided a more thorough explanation for why the clinic was permitted to remain open. “In over 4,000 abortions provided since 2018, the Department has only identified two causes to deny its license. Therefore, Planned Parenthood is entitled to renewal of its abortion facility license.” A Planned Parenthood spokeswoman added that the license renewal would be effective through May 2021. It is presently uncertain whether or not Missouri will request that a court review the decision, although such a request is assuredly still on the table. In truth, an appeal to the Supreme Court is not entirely out of the question given the potential magnitude of the ruling. Numerous pro-life organizations such as the Susan B. Anthony List spoke out vehemently against the decision. “Unborn children and their mothers face dire health risks – especially during a pandemic – so long as the St. Louis Planned Parenthood is permitted to remain open,” claimed the SBA’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser. She argued that the safety of women across Missouri would be threatened and compromised if the clinic did not shut down.
The history of the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic is certainly not squeaky clean. In March of 2019, an investigation exposed numerous health complications at this particular clinic that went unreported. The investigation revealed numerous abortions that required multiple procedures, one that took five attempts to complete, and even one in which the physician failed to realize that a woman was pregnant with twins. The safety and health risks that this abortion clinic has posed to women are significant causes for concern. Even by abortion standards, this is clearly a dangerous practice, and while all abortions are heinous practices, this clinic in particular has performed deeds that should lead to its license suspension.
However, if this abortion clinic had indeed been forced to close, it would have been more than just a minor victory. It would have been symbolic - a sign of progress, emblematic of the pro-life movement. Having a state in America with zero abortion clinics would have been a monumental achievement, something not seen since the days of Roe v. Wade. Even though it appears that the clinic will remain open, this is truly a sign of the coming era. It should give us cause to hope that we may indeed see the day where one of our states is void of abortions. The fact that this is even a possibility is reflective of a growing belief in America: all life matters, from the womb to the tomb. It is a symbol of the turning of the tide in our nation’s legacy.
Exposing Planned Parenthood's Racial Genocide
These are divisive times.
Our nation is being torn apart by racism, violence, riots, and emotional turmoil. Because this is an abortion-related column, it is my desire to shed a light on the link between racism and so-called reproductive rights and to point out the twisted history tying them together. I also want to provide you with meaningful, insightful resources that are helpful in addressing this issue.
Over the past several weeks, Planned Parenthood’s social media (@PPFA) has published countless racism-related material, calling for the end of discrimination, racial injustice, and inequality in America. They post articles, photos, and calls to action aligning themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement and attempting to expose systemic racism and oppression in the USA. In truth, this would be an admirable and worthy attempt to foster unity, justice, and reconciliation in our country; if only abortion wasn’t the leading killer of African-Americans.
“Racism is a public health crisis!” cries the nation’s largest abortion provider in the above graphic. But what about the racial crisis they have created? Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s glorified yet wicked founder, was herself a eugenicist and a blatant racist. She was a Ku Klux Klan sympathizer and a presenter at several KKK speaking engagements, and she vehemently promoted the use of reproductive eugenics repeatedly in books, articles, and speeches. Sanger deviously and illicitly sought to “exterminate the Negro population,” evidenced by her numerous private letters to friends and colleagues. This is the woman who acted as a foundational figurehead for the pro-choice movement.
Furthermore, Planned Parenthood hasn’t changed its identity after all these years. They kill more black babies every TWO WEEKS than the Ku Klux Klan murdered in an entire century. As the nation’s leading abortion provider, they promote a practice that takes the lives of nearly 300,000 African-American children every year. That’s more than the top fifteen causes of death COMBINED. Planned Parenthood makes its home in New York City, and it is no coincidence that every year, more black children are killed than born alive in the Big Apple. They use social media as a way to remind people that “if you’re a black woman in America, it is statistically safer to have an abortion than to carry a pregnancy to term or give birth.” This, my friends, is racism at its cruelest.
Despite this damning evidence, Planned Parenthood, the abortion industry, and the pro-choice community are constantly attempting to deflect blame and accuse the pro-life movement of hatred and bigotry. Legislators call pro-lifers anti-Semitic, pro-choicers condemn Republicans as racist, and Planned Parenthood backs Democratic candidates despite the party’s history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the KKK. Now, in the wake of the tragic, senseless death of George Floyd, Planned Parenthood has risen from the ashes once again in an effort to use their social media platform to decry racism and disguise their true history of wickedness and corruption.
In this extremely sensitive social environment that we live in today, it can be rather intimidating to address these touchy topics. But we have a responsibility to shed a light on this violence and racism that is being perpetrated right under our noses. Today, I want to recommend a website that I’ve found to be incredibly helpful in navigating modern cultural waters. The Radiance Foundation is a life-affirming education nonprofit that illuminates and promotes the intrinsic value of each person, and they spread awareness for many topics including racism and abortion through ad campaigns, multimedia presentations, journalism, and community outreaches. Radiance’s founder Ryan Bomberger knows his stuff, and he is never afraid to share his perspective. Let’s educate ourselves about the undeniable, hypocritical link between abortion and racism. The Radiance Foundation can help each and every one of us do that.
VISIT THE RADIANCE FOUNDATION - www.theradiancefoundation.org
RACISM & ABORTION - http://www.theradiancefoundation.org/abortionisracism/
TEN REASONS NOT TO SUPPORT BLACK LIVES MATTER - https://www.theradiancefoundation.org/blm/