Pro-Life News

Pro-life activist Lauren Handy made headlines last Wednesday, when police and medical examiners removed the bodies of five unborn babies from her Washington, D.C. apartment. Handy had been arrested by federal investigators earlier that day, and is charged with violating a federal law that prohibits obstruction or interference with access to abortion clinics. Handy has pled not guilty. But while Handy, 28, could face more than a decade in prison for those charges, media attention has focused on the bodies removed from her apartment, as have questions from both her supporters and critics. The Pillar asked Handy to discuss the controversy in her own words, in a longform, substantive...

Colorado has become the 15th state in the union to enshrine the right to have an abortion into state law with a bill that pro-life activists say may legalize infanticide. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed the so-called Reproductive Health Equity Act into law, a law that affirms women in Colorado have the right to kill their unborn babies during pregnancy and blocks public entities from acting to deny or restrict that right. The law explicitly denies unborn children rights in the state of Colorado. "A fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under the laws of this state,” the law states. Read more......

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer filed a lawsuit challenging her state’s 1931 law banning abortion — the latest move in a flurry of state activity preparing for the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade in a few months. The Michigan law bans abortion at any stage of pregnancy, with an exception for the health of a woman but not for cases of rape or incest. It has remained on the books for decades despite the 1973 Roe decision rendering it unenforceable. By challenging the nearly century-old law, Whitmer hopes to establish a proactive right to an abortion under the state constitution, regardless of developments at the national level. Read more...  ...

Last month, researchers from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization (WHO) released a study on the incidence of abortion and unintended pregnancy worldwide. The study was published in in BMJ Global Health and presents data from 150 countries dating back to the early 1990s. Because the U.S. and many other countries are working on reduce abortion rates and the rates of unintended pregnancies, these new data could be a highly useful tool for policymakers and future researchers. But, unsurprisingly, in its presentation of the data, the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute has attempted to make it appear as though pro-life laws are totally ineffective. Specifically, the group cited...

By an overwhelming margin, the Kentucky legislature has overridden Democratic governor Andy Beshear's veto of a new pro-life law, with a 76–21 vote in the House and a 31–6 vote in the Senate. The law prohibits most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and requires women to visit a physician in person before obtaining chemical-abortion drugs. Chemical abortions account for about half of all abortions in Kentucky, similar to the national rate. Kentucky's prohibition on abortion after 15 weeks mirrors the Mississippi pro-life law at stake in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which the Court will decide this term. Read more......

Gov. Ron DeSantis has publicly signed into law a 15-week abortion ban that shortens by more than two months the current window available to legally terminate a pregnancy. Within minutes of his office announcing that he had received the bill (HB 5), approved by the Legislature in March, DeSantis held a bill signing ceremony and rally at an evangelical church in Kissimmee. The new law, which goes into effect July 1, significantly reduces access to late-term abortions in the southeast — North Carolina will become the only southern state to permit an abortion after 15 weeks. Read more......

Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker received an endorsement from a prominent anti-abortion organization. "National Right to Life is pleased to endorse Herschel Walker for the U.S. Senate," Carol Tobias, the organization's president, said in a statement. "Herschel Walker will be a most effective champion for unborn babies and their mothers in Washington and he has demonstrated the passion and perseverance it takes to win the critically important Georgia Senate race." The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) pointed to Walker's support for various anti-abortion issues in the statement endorsing him, including his opposition to using tax dollars to pay for...

Thousands of California pro-lifers rallied at the state capitol to protest what they call an extreme pro-abortion bill that removes all civil and criminal penalties in the deaths of newborn babies. The California Assembly Health Committee voted 11-3 to advance AB 2223 to the next step in the legislative process. It's a measure that opponents have labeled The Infanticide Bill. The pro-abortion lobby and their allies in the media have said the bill does not allow "infanticide." Of course, the bill doesn't mention that term, but it does remove all penalties and investigations that would result in the "perinatal death" of infants. Read more......

When Vicki Thorn was a Catholic teen in rural Minnesota, a close friend confided to her that she'd gotten pregnant a year earlier and that her mother had arranged for her to have an abortion. The encounter later inspired Thorn to found Project Rachel, a groundbreaking post-abortion healing ministry that started in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and has since spread to dioceses across the U.S. and around the world. The initiative's name comes from the Book of Jeremiah: (Jer. 31:15). A Catholic pro-life pioneer, international speaker, author, and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Life, Thorn died Tuesday, April 20. She was 72. Read more...  ...

A U.S. district judge has temporarily blocked a Kentucky law that prohibits most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and requires an in-person doctor's visit before obtaining a chemical abortion. Earlier this month, the Kentucky legislature overrode Democratic governor Andy Beshear's veto to enact the law. The judge didn't rule on the specifics of the law but focused rather on the fact that Kentucky's two abortion clinics claimed that the law's lack of guidelines made it impossible to comply with. She said her decision does not preclude Kentucky from developing those guidelines and then beginning to enforce the law again. Both clinics had temporarily halted abortion procedures because they...

A federal court ordered a lower court to dismiss all legal challenges brought against the enforcement mechanism of a Texas abortion law, a move which a pro-life group called a "substantial pro-life victory." The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on April 26 remanded the case, brought by a number of abortion providers and pro-abortion organizations, to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, with instructions to dismiss all challenges to the private enforcement provisions of the Texas Heartbeat Act. Texas Alliance for Life characterized the ruling as a victory, but noted that thousands of abortions are still performed each year in Texas because of the legal framework...