On January 22, 1973, U.S. Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist and Bryon White rightly identified in their dissents that Roe v. Wade was a bad (to put it mildly) decision:

“The decision here … partakes more of judicial legislation than it does of a determination of the intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

“There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted [more than a century]. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter [prohibiting abortion].”

Among the numerous and grievous consequences of the unlawful decision in Roe, and in combination with improved medical technology, is the fact that the medical profession has overwhelmingly persuaded parents that the death of their unborn children known to have Down syndrome is preferable to the life they would otherwise lead, despite God’s command and overwhelming evidence to the contrary [1].

On April 2, 2019, to prevent this selective abortion from eradicating its population with Down syndrome [2], Arkansas enacted the Down Syndrome Discrimination by Abortion Prohibition Act.

On April 9, 2021, in perhaps the most persuasive case against Roe to date, the Arkansas Attorney General officially asked the U.S. Supreme Court (after defeat in the lower courts) to affirm this law. The case, known as Rutledge v. Little Rock Family Planning Services, is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

On May 13, 2021, the Illinois Family Institute joined a friend of the court brief in support of the prohibition [3], along with numerous other patriotic Americans, including the American Center for Law & Justice, the Jerome Lejeune Foundation (a Down syndrome advocacy group), Americans United for Life, 82 United States Senators and Representatives, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the State of Missouri and 21 other states.

IFI’s joining the brief is very important for three key reasons.

First, the name “Illinois Family Institute” prominently displayed in official proceedings, on the morally right side of the issue in this potentially landmark case, makes a very strong statement that the People of Illinois are not the extremist, Marxist, “blue state” ideologues most are led to believe by virtue of the lopsided Chicago control of our electoral votes and our state government.

Second, focusing precisely on the particular result of genocide of a particular group gives a tangible, rational, and emotionally-charged illustration of the truth of the tyranny resulting from Roe.

Roe v. Wade is a 54-page opinion which uses euphemisms and grand language to hide the fact that it writes entirely new law, which deprives a small and defenseless minority of unborn persons of their most important Constitutional right: life itself (known non-euphemistically as murder).

“Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death.” – Leviticus 24:17

American values protect minorities of human beings from tyranny of the majority and, even more, genocide, as is rapidly becoming the case with Down syndrome children.

These uncomfortable truths have been glossed over by the Court and the culture in addressing the euphemisms of “abortion” and “terminating her pregnancy,” rather than the truth of the matter of murdering [4] innocent persons in America according to the desire of others.

Rutledge begins to destroy these dishonest euphemisms by focusing on the almost complete genocide of a precise group of persons, those with Down syndrome, who are valuable and would otherwise lead happy and productive lives.

Selective abortion of babies with Down syndrome is the very sort of tyranny of the majority that led our founders to despise Democracy (rule by a majority) as a form of government, and rather create a Republic (rule by law) based only upon securing those inalienable rights given to us by our Creator. Rutledge presents this in a way that both the Court and common Americans can see and feel clearly.

Finally, this particular Court has the sound jurisprudence necessary to finally recognize and overturn the great injustice of Roe, redeeming the moral authority of the court from the judicial tyranny of its last five decades [5].

For approximately 34 of the years following Roe, either Rehnquist himself, or his former clerk and current Chief Justice John Roberts, have led the High Court.

Six of the current justices have expressed judicial understanding consistent with Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Roe.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett chose not to kill her unborn son (now 8) pre-diagnosed with Down syndrome.

Pray for all members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

For those who are believers and to whom God has given judicial wisdom, that they will be strong and courageous, leading the Court and the Nation from error into the path of righteousness and able to withstand Principalities and Powers, as well as the flesh and blood of the leftist culture that will attack them mercilessly.

For those who espouse foolish and unlawful judicial philosophies, that God would turn their hearts (the King’s heart is in the hand of the LORD) to righteousness and destroy their efforts to usurp His authority by promoting unrighteousness and tyranny.

Pray for God’s favor upon this case, that the Court would choose to hear it (grant “certiorari”), and seeing this illustration of judicial tyranny against a few (depriving these small, disabled, and helpless persons, within the jurisdiction of the United States of America, of their rights to life and liberty without ANY process of law or ANY protection of the laws), rule authoritatively that Roe was wrongly decided and must be overturned.

Pray that God would bring shame upon any Americans who would continue to promote this evil.

[1]   Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, Leslie Rutledge, in her official capacity as Attorney General of the State of Arkansas, et al., v. Little Rock Family Planning Services, pp. 2-9.

[2]    Box v. Planned Parenthood of Ind. & Ky., Inc., 9139 S. Ct. 1780, 1791 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring) (“In Iceland, the abortion rate for children diagnosed with Down syndrome in utero approaches 100%.”).

[3]    Brief Amici Curiae, Rutledge v. Little Rock Family Planning Services.

[4]   Historically, “anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death.”  According to the Indiana Code, 35-42-1-1, a person who knowingly or intentionally kills another human being commits murder, a felony.  States since Roe have added vague words to accommodate their legalization of murder, for example, Illinois Code 720 ILCS 5/9-1 specifies that a person who kills an individual without lawful justification commits first degree murder.

[5]    The three theories of constitutional interpretation taught in contemporary law schools: Natural Law (e.g., Clarence Thomas): there is an objective higher law (of the Creator in our case, though they don’t typically mention that source) which man can never supersede, and upon which the Constitution is based; Strict Construction (e.g., Scalia, Rehnquist): the Constitution can only be understood as what the document itself was understood to mean when passed; and Living Constitution (e.g., Oliver Wendell Holmes, Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor): the Constitution means what Justices believe it means based upon their own current understanding (a subterfuge to enable Judges to ignore the text of the Constitution and substitute their own opinions).  Holmes is the author of Buck v. Bell, saying that “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” while upholding forced sterilization of the intellectually disabled.)

Abortion pills are becoming more common among women seeking to abort their offspring, and the availability of these pills online is growing, allowing women to avoid going to an abortion clinic entirely.

Numerous news outlets have reported on the efforts of Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts to expand her 13-year-old internet abortion-pill business Women on Web into the U.S. Gomperts, who launched her U.S. push in April, has received awards from Planned Parenthood and various feminist groups and is also known for her environmental activism.

Reports in the mainstream media have portrayed Gomperts’ efforts as heroic or at least worthwhile, while the perspective of pro-life groups has been given only minimal attention. A story in the Atlantic noted that,

For American women who’ve wanted pills, though, there’s been one major problem: Women on Web wouldn’t ship to the United States. American women could (and do) instead search online for abortion pills, but some of the medicines and pharmacies they’ve found have been less than reliable. Now Women on Web’s founder, a doctor named Rebecca Gomperts, has launched a new service that she says is just as safe as Women on Web, and it does ship to the United States. The cost is $95, but the website says the service will try to help women who can’t pay.

Just like Women on Web, the new service, Aid Access, will screen women for their eligibility to take the pills—they should not be more than nine weeks pregnant—through an online process. (If the pills are taken later, they are less likely to work.) Gomperts will herself fill each woman’s prescription for misoprostol and mifepristone, which together are about 97 percent effective in causing an abortion within the first trimester and already account for a third of all abortions in the United States. She then sends the prescriptions to an Indian pharmacy she trusts, and it ships the pills to women at their homes in the United States.

The market for abortion pills and for buying them online is growing in the U.S. because of their low cost and convenience, because of tightening state restrictions on surgical abortions, and because of the belief that a Trump-era U.S. Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade.

Gomperts was previously hesitant to sell the pills to women in the U.S. because of the strong pro-life movement here. She has established the new, separate service Aid Access so as not to jeopardize Women on Web. In an interview with Mother Jones, Gomperts characterized what she is doing as “humanitarian aid.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of abortion pills in 2000, but selling them over the internet through unregulated channels might violate U.S. laws and the FDA has said it is evaluating whether any laws are being broken. Americans United for Life told CNN that Gomperts’ push to sell pills in the U.S. is “reckless and irresponsible.”

Abortion clinics have been providing pills for women up to 10 weeks along in their pregnancies, so they can have what’s called a medical, or chemical, abortion. Mifepristone, also known as RU-486 or Mifeprex, cuts off nutrition to the baby growing in a mother’s womb. The mother then takes misoprostol, typically within 48 hours, which causes intense contractions. Abortion activists misleadingly characterize what happens next as a miscarriage to mask the deliberate taking of a life.

Many women now prefer the idea of having an abortion in the comfort of their own homes as opposed to undergoing a procedure at a clinic, which they consider more invasive and less private. But pro-life groups say a growing number of women are emotionally traumatized by the process, especially if they are not prepared for the possibility of seeing what is clearly a developing baby get expelled from their bodies.

According to LifeSiteNews, chemical abortions put women at a greater risk of being traumatized: “At home, a woman may actually see the remains of her baby, sometimes while alone and in great physical pain…. ‘Those who do see more [by using the abortion pill] have more nightmares, more trauma symptoms.’”

Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said earlier this month, “It’s hard to imagine a society any more dangerous and any more deadly than a society that will kill unborn life in the womb by a pill.”

Mohler said Gomperts’ efforts to sell abortion pills online to women in the U.S. reflects “the desperation of the pro-abortion movement, so determined to make abortion available to as many as possible, as quickly as possible, in as uncomplicated a manner as possible, whether or not the law is on their side.”

Women having second thoughts after taking the first abortion pill, RU-486, can potentially get the effects reversed and continue their pregnancies, according to Heartbeat International. The success rate is 64 to 68 percent, according to the group’s Abortion Pill Reversal website. The website can be found at abortionpillreversal.com. There’s also a 24/7 helpline number, 877-558-0333.

Read more:

Yale Now Sells Abortion Drugs From A Vending Machine (The Daily Wire)

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Abortion pills are becoming more common among women seeking to abort their offspring, and the availability of these pills online is growing, allowing women to avoid going to an abortion clinic entirely.

Numerous news outlets have reported on the efforts of Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts to expand her 13-year-old internet abortion-pill business Women on Web into the U.S. Gomperts, who launched her U.S. push in April, has received awards from Planned Parenthood and various feminist groups and is also known for her environmental activism.

Reports in the mainstream media have portrayed Gomperts’ efforts as heroic or at least worthwhile, while the perspective of pro-life groups has been given only minimal attention. A story in the Atlantic noted that,

For American women who’ve wanted pills, though, there’s been one major problem: Women on Web wouldn’t ship to the United States. American women could (and do) instead search online for abortion pills, but some of the medicines and pharmacies they’ve found have been less than reliable. Now Women on Web’s founder, a doctor named Rebecca Gomperts, has launched a new service that she says is just as safe as Women on Web, and it does ship to the United States. The cost is $95, but the website says the service will try to help women who can’t pay.

Just like Women on Web, the new service, Aid Access, will screen women for their eligibility to take the pills—they should not be more than nine weeks pregnant—through an online process. (If the pills are taken later, they are less likely to work.) Gomperts will herself fill each woman’s prescription for misoprostol and mifepristone, which together are about 97 percent effective in causing an abortion within the first trimester and already account for a third of all abortions in the United States. She then sends the prescriptions to an Indian pharmacy she trusts, and it ships the pills to women at their homes in the United States.

The market for abortion pills and for buying them online is growing in the U.S. because of their low cost and convenience, because of tightening state restrictions on surgical abortions, and because of the belief that a Trump-era U.S. Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade.

Gomperts was previously hesitant to sell the pills to women in the U.S. because of the strong pro-life movement here. She has established the new, separate service Aid Access so as not to jeopardize Women on Web. In an interview with Mother Jones, Gomperts characterized what she is doing as “humanitarian aid.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of abortion pills in 2000, but selling them over the internet through unregulated channels might violate U.S. laws and the FDA has said it is evaluating whether any laws are being broken. Americans United for Life told CNN that Gomperts’ push to sell pills in the U.S. is “reckless and irresponsible.”

Abortion clinics have been providing pills for women up to 10 weeks along in their pregnancies, so they can have what’s called a medical, or chemical, abortion. Mifepristone, also known as RU-486 or Mifeprex, cuts off nutrition to the baby growing in a mother’s womb. The mother then takes misoprostol, typically within 48 hours, which causes intense contractions. Abortion activists misleadingly characterize what happens next as a miscarriage to mask the deliberate taking of a life.

Many women now prefer the idea of having an abortion in the comfort of their own homes as opposed to undergoing a procedure at a clinic, which they consider more invasive and less private. But pro-life groups say a growing number of women are emotionally traumatized by the process, especially if they are not prepared for the possibility of seeing what is clearly a developing baby get expelled from their bodies.

According to LifeSiteNews, chemical abortions put women at a greater risk of being traumatized: “At home, a woman may actually see the remains of her baby, sometimes while alone and in great physical pain…. ‘Those who do see more [by using the abortion pill] have more nightmares, more trauma symptoms.’”

Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said earlier this month ,“It’s hard to imagine a society any more dangerous and any more deadly than a society that will kill unborn life in the womb by a pill.”

Mohler said Gomperts’ efforts to sell abortion pills online to women in the U.S. reflects “the desperation of the pro-abortion movement, so determined to make abortion available to as many as possible, as quickly as possible, in as uncomplicated a manner as possible, whether or not the law is on their side.”

Women having second thoughts after taking the first abortion pill, RU-486, can potentially get the effects reversed and continue their pregnancies, according to Heartbeat International. The success rate is 64 to 68 percent, according to the group’s Abortion Pill Reversal website. The website can be found at abortionpillreversal.com. There’s also a 24/7 helpline number, 1-877-558-0333.

SB 1564 undermines the freedom
of conscience and invites intimidation and
legal action against pro-life healthcare providers.

Earlier this year, State Senator Daniel Biss (D-Skokie) introduced SB 1564 to radically alter the Illinois Healthcare Right of Conscience Act — an Act that allows medical personnel and health care facilities to avoid participating in morally dubious medical procedures such as abortion, sterilization, and certain end-of-life care.  Doctors, pharmacists, and other medical personnel have been protected from having to violate their beliefs and values for almost twenty years under this Act.

This week, State Senator Biss introduced Amendment No. 3 in hopes of  assuaging opponents of this bill. However, Amendment 3 does nothing to secure conscience rights.  According to the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, 95 percent of physicians in a national poll agreed, “I would rather stop practicing medicine altogether then be forced to violate my conscience.”

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your Illinois state senator to ask him/her to please uphold religious freedom and conscience rights for medical personnel in Illinois.  Ask them to reject SB 1564.

IFI, Americans United for Life, the Christian Medical and Dental Association, Illinois Citizens for Life, and Lake County Right to Life all agree: The changes to SB 1564 are woefully inadequate.  The bill would still require pro-life doctors to participate materially in actions that violate their deeply held beliefs, such as helping patients find abortion-providers or securing other similarly objectionable procedures.

Background

American’s United for Life Analysis of SB 1564
Detrimental to Both Healthcare Providers & Patients
Written by Anna Paprocki, AUL Staff Counsel

AUL RECOMMENDATION: Vote NO

SB 1564 as amended by Senate Amendment 3 erodes the freedom of conscience for healthcare providers—including the right not to counsel or refer for conscience-violating services—which has been statutorily protected in Illinois for nearly 20 years. Instead, it creates new obligations for healthcare providers to participate in conscience-violating activities.

Under current law, healthcare providers are protected against participating in any phase of a healthcare service that would violate their sincerely held moral convictions, including “counselling, referrals, or any other advice …” The law respects a healthcare provider’s conscientious determination of what constitutes his or her complicity.

That same existing law already ensures patient safety is not compromised by clarifying that physicians are not relieved from a duty to “inform his or her patient of the patient’s condition, prognosis, and risks…” The law also clearly provides that healthcare personnel are not relieved from “obligations under the law of providing emergency medical care.”

SB 1564 as amended by Senate Amendment 3 uses the force of government to impose new and unnecessary obligations that are contrary to this longstanding law that appropriately protects both the freedom of conscience and patient care.

Contrary to existing law, SB 1564 as amended by Senate Amendment 3 obligates a healthcare facility, physician, or healthcare provider to participate in potentially conscience-violating services by requiring the provider to refer or transfer a patient or provide information to the patient regarding other healthcare providers who the provider reasonably believes offer the objected-to healthcare service. While this may be the existing practice for many healthcare facilities and providers, mandating it as a legal obligation would eliminate the law’s respect for the sincerely held moral convictions of a healthcare provider for whom these actions constitute complicity with the objected-to service.

The bill further creates a duty to inform patients of “legal treatment options” and “benefits of treatment options.” This is an unnecessary and potentially dangerous new obligation that may later be used by abortion advocacy groups as the basis for a lawsuit against healthcare providers whose consciences are violated by suggesting abortion—a “legal treatment option” service—to pregnant patients.

The bill additionally requires that this information on “legal treatment options” be given in a “timely manner” without defining what constitutes “timely.” All abortions, whether accomplished by invasive surgery or potent chemicals, pose significant risks to women’s health. It is also undisputed that these risks increase with gestational age. Therefore, “timely” may be construed by abortion advocacy groups to mean “immediate” with regards to abortion information, as any delay would potentially increase abortion’s risks.

Although not expressly applied to the new duties regarding referral, transfer, and information, the bill does contain a definition of “undue delay” that is defined as “unreasonable delay that causes impairment of the patient’s health.” Problematically, it fails to define “health.” In the context of abortion, federal courts have defined “health” expansively. In Doe v. Bolton, decided the same day as Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court created an unlimited definition of maternal “health.” The Court wrote, “[T]he medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the well being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.” The Court held that the abortionist alone was allowed to make this judgment.

Abortion proponents such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), and Planned Parenthood already frequently file lawsuits aimed at intimidating and discriminating against pro-life healthcare providers and facilities. SB 1564 as amended by Senate Amendment 3 provides fodder for their coercive litigation and intimidation tactics, as well as their anti-conscience agenda.

SB 1564’s attack on the freedom of conscience advances a radical ideology and fails to meet any demonstrated need.

There is no demonstrated need for SB 1564’s erosion of the freedom of conscience that has been protected by Illinois law for decades. Rather, the bill fits a nation-wide pattern of ideological discrimination advanced by abortion proponents.

For example, the factual findings in Stormans v. Selecky, a challenge to anti-conscience Washington State Board of Pharmacy rules, document that purported “refusal stories” used to advance the coercive rules were not the result of natural encounters with access problems, but were “manufactured” by Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates. In fact, the court in Stormans found, “no Board witness, or any other witness, was able to identify any particular community in Washington—rural or otherwise—that lacked timely access to emergency contraceptives or any other time-sensitive medication.”

SB 1564’s attack on the freedom of conscience would be counterproductive for patient access to care in Illinois.

Protecting the freedom of conscience of healthcare providers and institutions is necessary to avoid added stress on an already overtaxed healthcare system.

Experts project that current shortages of physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals will worsen, failing to meet future requirements. There is an important public health interest in ensuring the protection of conscience rights; forcing healthcare professionals to choose between their consciences and their careers will only heighten the current healthcare provider shortage.

In a survey conducted in 2008, 91 percent of faith-based physicians agreed with the statement, “I would rather stop practicing medicine altogether than be forced to violate my conscience.”

Protecting the freedom is critical to slowing, not exacerbating, shortages of healthcare professionals and ensuring access to quality health care in Illinois.

(Click HERE for the PDF version.)

*SB 1564 is co-sponsored by State Senators Julie A. Morrison (D-Deerfield), Toi W. Hutchinson (D-Chicago Heights), Linda Holmes (D-Chicago), Kimberly A. Lightford (D-Chicago), Michael Noland(D-Elgin), Heather A. Steans (D-Chicago), William Delgado (D-Chicago), Iris Y. Martinez (D-Chicago), Jacqueline Collins (D-Chicago), and Emil Jones III (D-Chicago).

There is a new study out from Americans United for Life (AUL) that looks at the abortion policies in all 50 states.  It concludes that Illinois is the 27th on how well we protect life in law.  The good news is that in 2013 AUL listed Illinois as 36th in its ranking, and claims that Illinois is among the most improved states for 2014, saying:

…after eight years of litigation, a 2005 Executive Order forcing pharmacists and pharmacies to dispense so-called “emergency contraception” “without delay” was invalidated; and where, after decades of obstruction by abortion advocates, the state’s parental notice requirement for abortion finally went into effect.

The best state for pro-life policies was Louisiana — a distinction it has held for five years in a row — followed by Oklahoma, Arkansas, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

The worst state for pro-life polices was Washington — a distinction it has held for five years in a row — followed by California, Vermont, New York, and Connecticut. 

To see the entire 2014 Life List, click here.

“As the legal architects who, since the days immediately following the deadly Roe decision, have championed the strategy of using expertly crafted model legislation to protect life, AUL has tracked states’ progress toward achieving a nation in which everyone is welcomed in life and protected in law,” noted AUL President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest. “Real pro-life momentum is reshaping the country as legislators craft protections for both mother and child, the victims of an avaricious abortion industry. Common-sense pro-life legislation saves lives and has broad public support in light of what we’re learning about the health risks of abortion for women.”