In summer 2022 as Tim Walz was steaming toward reelection as Minnesota governor, his state health agency published a required abortion-statistics report with little fanfare.
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A Tennessee judge ruled Tuesday that pro-life activist Paul Vaughn will not serve time in prison for trying to stop abortions from taking place at a Tennessee abortion clinic.
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A recent report from Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) shows that more women across the nation are getting abortions, an increase that continues despite the efforts of pro-lifers to prevent it.
The 2022–2023 Annual Report the nation’s largest abortion provider claims that the organization performed almost 400,000 abortions for that time period. That’s a 5 percent increase from the 380,000 reported for 2020 to 2021.
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Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Thursday allowing Arizona doctors to become temporarily licensed in California to perform abortions should their state’s near-total ban on the procedure ever take effect.
California Senate Bill 233 passed the state legislature on May 23 in response to a recent Arizona Supreme Court ruling effectively banning abortion in the state. The Arizona ruling went into effect on April 9, but was quickly overturned by the state legislature.
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A federal appeals court on Tuesday sided with a coalition of Christian medical professionals who had objected to guidance from the Biden administration requiring that emergency room doctors perform abortions.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, as well as the state of Texas, had challenged the Department of Health and Human Services guidance and secured an initial win at the lower court, blocking the guidance.
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You know there’s something to celebrate when The New York Times is forced to report in its headline: “The first estimate of births since Dobbs found that almost a quarter of women who would have gotten abortions carried their pregnancies to term.”
The number of infant lives saved by last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision is estimated at 32,000, according to a report by researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Middlebury College, and the German Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
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Idaho is asking the Supreme Court to intervene and allow the state to enforce its pro-life law despite the Biden Administration’s efforts to block it by allowing abortions in emergency rooms, according to court documents.
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act is meant to ensure that all patients who request emergency room treatment are examined, but Idaho argued in its court filing Monday that the law turns “protection for the uninsured into a federal super-statute on the issue of abortion, one that strips Idaho of its sovereign interest in protecting innocent human life and turns emergency rooms into a federal enclave where state standards of care do not apply.”
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Pro-life advocates sued the city of San Antonio Tuesday over its “Reproductive Justice Fund,” which they allege violates Texas law by using taxpayer dollars to aid women getting abortions out of state, according to court documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The city council approved a $500,000 fund in September as a part of its 2024 budget to assist reproductive health organizations and one member of the city council expressed hopes that it would help women get abortions “where they are legal,” according to KENS 5, a CBS News affiliate. The lawsuit filed by Texas Right to Life (TRL), as well as the Texas Leadership Coalition and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, argues that pro-abortion groups will use the fund to pay for a woman to go outside the state to get an abortion in violation of Texas law, according to court documents.
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A new proposal from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) could require paid time off for women to get abortions and may even require employers to pay for travel related to the procedure, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The EEOC proposed new guidelines in August to enforce the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) that was signed into law in December 2022, with the new guidelines classifying abortion as a related medical condition, according to the proposal from the EEOC. While the rule can’t require employers to pay directly for an abortion, the classification could open the door for employers to be required to give paid time off for an abortion and possibly even for employers to pay for travel expenses if the woman’s state does not permit an abortion, experts told the DCNF.
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Planned Parenthood of Illinois (PPIL) announced Monday that it had seen an increase in abortions by over 50% since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to a press release.
The Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022 that abortion was not a constitutional right and left the decision up to the states to enact their own laws on the issue. Nearly a year later, PPIL announced that clinics reported an increase in abortions by 54% with almost a quarter of the patients traveling out-of-state to get the procedure, according to the press release.
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Former President Donald Trump says his remaking of the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v Wade and gave pro-life activists “the upper hand” in fighting abortion, and if he returns to the White House he will focus on reducing abortions by incentivizing adoptions.
“I think it’s very important that if I win, and I hope I’m going to win, we’re winning by a lot right now, we’ll be pressing the adoption option,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview Monday night with Just the News, No Noise television show on the opening night of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention in Orlando, Fla.
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Another day, another mass shooting.
The other week, it was a school in Nashville. This time, a killer launched on a bank in Louisville where he had been employed.
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The Department of Defense (DOD) will pay for troops to travel to states that allow abortions and obtain so-called “reproductive health care” at non-military facilities, according to a new policy released Thursday evening.
The landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision gave states the authority to determine localized abortion policies. The Hyde amendment bars DOD from administering abortions at military medical facilities, the new policy carves out provisions for expanded leave times and set-aside funding for servicemembers stationed in states that restrict abortions to cross state boundaries to obtain the procedure.
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New York City began offering free chemical abortions through a Bronx clinic Wednesday as part of a new program, which is slated to expand to several other boroughs this year, Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday. The city already offers abortion pills at some hospitals, but will be expanding the program to clinics in the Bronx, Queens, Harlem and Brooklyn in the coming year, according to Adams. The program will aim to provide 10,000 free abortions by pill each year, according to CNN.
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Most voters support banning abortions at 15 weeks or earlier, a poll from WPA Intelligence found.
The poll comes after Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced federal legislation that would ban abortions after 15 weeks with exceptions for for rape, incest and the life of the mother. A combined 62% of registered voters, including 48% of Democrats, believed abortion should only be allowed up to 15 weeks or earlier, the WPA Intelligence poll found.
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The Indiana legislature on Friday passed a ban on abortion in the state, allowing exceptions only for rape and incest.
The state House passed the measure on Friday after the Senate approved the legislation in late July, sending the ban to pro-life Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, CNN reported.
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Some Department of Justice (DOJ) workers want to be paid if they take leave and travel to more permissive states to have abortions, according to CNN.
The employee-run DOJ Gender Equality Network sent an Aug. 4 letter to Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other high-ranking officials calling for the Biden administration to provide paid time off and fully cover travel expenses for staff going across state lines for “abortion care,” the outlet reported.
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Idaho, Tennessee and Texas are moving to enact “trigger bans” restricting abortions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade June 24, ending the precedent which had banned states from restricting abortion throughout the first six months of pregnancy.
The bans in these three states will take effect 30 days after the Supreme Court officially transmitted its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association July 26, according to The Hill. Another 10 states had trigger bans go into effect after elected officials enacted them, and trigger abortion bans went into effect immediately after the court overturned Roe in three other states.
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Most U.S. companies aren’t making public statements about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade June 24 in its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Conference Board survey found.
Only 8% of U.S. companies have made public statements about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, and another 2% plan to make a statement, according to the survey. Most companies in the survey had made public statements about social issues since 2020, with 61% addressing racial equality, 44% addressing LGBT issues, 40% addressing COVID-19 and vaccines and 30% addressing gender equality.
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Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday urged the Biden administration to consider opening up military bases for abortions to women living in states that heavily restrict the procedure, ABC News reported.
Since military bases are considered federal lands, Hochul argued in a virtual meeting with President Joe Biden that federal law would allow them to override state bans, according to ABC. Her suggestion heeds widespread outcries from Democratic politicians about loss of women’s rights following the Supreme Court’s decision on June 24 overturning Roe V. Wade.
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Planned Parenthood is directing its patients to a service that guides women through the process of illegally importing abortion drugs into the United States. The information is communicated prominently on a landing page that links from the front page of the organization’s website. It’s all part of a broader plan by abortion activists to use the illegal trade of drugs like mifepristone and misoprostol to provide abortions in states where abortion will be banned if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
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A Yelp executive said women need access to abortions to be successful at work as the company announced it would fund travel expenses for employees traveling out of state for abortions.
“The ability to control your reproductive health, and whether or when you want to extend your family, is absolutely fundamental to being able to be successful in the workplace,” Miriam Warren, Yelp’s chief diversity officer, told The New York Times.
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On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill to ban almost all abortions in the state, a bill that would be even more restrictive than Texas’s six-week ban.
Axios reports that the Oklahoma House passed HB 4327 by a margin of 78-19. The bill would ban any and all abortions, with the sole exception of abortions that must be carried out in order to save the life of the mother. The bill would also provide incentives for private citizens to sue anyone who is suspected of providing abortions or helping people get abortions, with rewards of up to $10,000 for each abortion that a suspect has performed.
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Corporations, including Citigroup, Apple and Match, are helping their employees undergo abortions in light of new, state-level restrictions.
Citigroup announced a policy of covering travel costs for U.S.-based employees seeking abortions “in response to changes in reproductive healthcare laws in certain states” in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. The policy will cover airfare and lodging, according to Bloomberg.
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Medication-induced abortions accounted for 54% of all abortions in the U.S. in 2020, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Abortion pills have grown in popularity since they were first introduced in 2000, the Guttmacher Institute reported. And rules requiring women to receive their first two abortion pills at a clinic or doctor’s office were lifted during the pandemic, allowing women to speak with doctors via “telemedicine” and get the pills by mail, The New York Times reported.
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The United States is an outlier among established democracies in two respects: We face both falling social trust and rising polarization. I have argued that the two dynamics connect in a doom loop. Trust in others and institutions falls, leading to greater polarization, which drives trust down even more. That is why the two processes are getting worse at the same time. A nasty dynamic has taken hold in the country, and it regularly affects all of us.
Many issues polarize us, but we should prefer polarization on economics to polarization on culture. Polarization is least damaging on issues most amenable to “splitting the difference”—as many economic issues are.
Consider taxes. Progressives want higher taxes on the rich, while conservatives want lower taxes. The possibility of compromise always exists—and even if it is obscured beneath the surface of our political tempers, uncovering it is not hard. For example, we could average our preferred tax rates, and no one would come away emptyhanded. Granted, that’s not how we have handled this issue in the past, but it’s at least conceivable.
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Pro-life leaders anxiously awaiting decisions in major abortion cases reacted Friday to news that the Supreme Court had dismissed one challenge to Texas’ ban on abortions after an unborn baby has a heartbeat.
“Today, the Supreme Court refused to strike down the lifesaving and democratically popular Texas heartbeat law,” said Live Action founder and President Lila Rose. “While the court did give a road map for lower courts to put the law on hold, the opinion of the court was crystal clear that this case was not commenting on the constitutionality of the abortion restriction itself.”
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Several major tech companies spoke out against the Texas Heartbeat Act, taking down pro-life websites and funding out-of-state abortions.
The “Texas Heartbeat Act” enacted May 19, prohibits abortions after the unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable, with exceptions for medical emergencies. The law includes a provision providing a civil cause of action to sue a person who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion,” and may result in a plaintiff receiving $10,000 or more for each abortion found to be in violation of the law.
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Abortion advocates who insist Texas’ Heartbeat Act places bounties on pregnant women’s heads are misrepresenting the legislation, Republican Texas state Sen. Brian Hughes told the Daily Caller News Foundation Friday.
“I want to be very clear,” Hughes said. “There are no claims against the mother. We want to make sure folks realize that … I read a couple of places saying the mothers would receive criminal penalties. There are no criminal penalties in this bill at all. It’s driven by private civil enforcement against the doctor and against people who aid and abet the doctor and in doing illegal abortions.”
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This month, Planned Parenthood Federation of America quietly released its 2019-20 annual report to little fanfare.
Like previous years, both the total number of abortions as well as taxpayer funding increased. Meanwhile, the amount of private funding and active individual contributors decreased—the latter dramatically so.
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