pro-life

Arkansas Allocates $2 Million to Pregnancy Help Organizations

Arkansas pro-life lawmakers allocated $2 million worth of grants to pregnancy help organizations in their appropriations process this legislative cycle.

The measure, H.B. 1202, was approved by Arkansas’s Joint Budget Committee, signed by the governor, and is now Act 1006.

The law describes a pregnancy help organization as an entity that “seeks to provide a range of services to individuals facing an unintended pregnancy to encourage pregnant women to give birth to their unborn children.”

The measure seeks to fund organizations that promote infant and maternal wellness through counseling, medical care options, social, emotional and/or material support and assistance with nutritional support.

The law also clearly prohibits any grants going to organizations that “perform, prescribe, provide referral for or encourage abortion.”

Arkansas’ Family Council praised the allocation of $2 million in grant money to pregnancy help organizations, reflecting, “We need to work to make abortion irrelevant and unthinkable as well. Supporting pregnancy resource centers is one way we can do that.”

The new grant allocations will be available to pregnancy resource centers, maternity homes, adoption agencies and entities that help provide material support to pregnant women.

According to Arkansas Right to Life, the state has over 50 pregnancy resource centers.

In Arkansas, preborn human life is protected from the moment of conception.

Last November, Arkansas beat back an effort to amend its state constitution to include the so-called right to abortion.

For the fifth year in a row, Arkansas was named the “most pro-life state” in the nation by Americans United for Life. States are ranked according to their policies, including “abortion law, legal recognition of preborn children, bioethics, assisted suicide and end-of-life patient care, and healthcare rights of conscience.”

Click here to see some of the significant policies Arkansas is advancing to promote life-affirming policies in the state.

As reported by the Daily Citizen, there are approximately 2,750 pregnancy resource centers nationwide providing nearly $368 million in free services to clients every year.

The Choose Life Coalition tracks available grant money and tax credits for pregnancy help organizations at the state level. According to their website, 19 states now have funding opportunities available.

New Abortion Pill Study Confirms Danger to Mothers

A new study from the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) confirms what many have been warning about for years. The abortion pill doesn’t just take the life of innocent preborn babies but also injures and puts mother’s lives in jeopardy.

“The Abortion Pill Harms Women,” the largest ever study of its kind, found that nearly 11% of all women who abort their child with mifepristone suffer from life-threatening conditions, including sepsis, infection or hemorrhaging.

Authored by Jamie Bryan Hall, EPPC’s Director of Data Analysis and EPPC president Ryan T. Anderson, the findings come just as the use of chemical (and often mail order) abortions are skyrocketing.

“This study is the statistical equivalent of a category 5 hurricane hitting the prevailing narrative of the abortion industry,” reflected Ryan T. Anderson.

“It reveals, based on real-world data, the shocking number of women who suffer serious medical consequences because of the abortion pill. The Trump FDA should take immediate action to protect the safety of American women by reinstating the safety regulations that the Obama and Biden Administrations removed.”

The study, conducted between 2017 and 2023, found that women are 22 times more likely to be harmed than previously suggested by the Food and Drug Administration.

In the simplest of terms, this new study confirms that the public has been consistently lied to or deceived about the so-called safety of the abortion pill.

In releasing the study, the EPPC is wisely calling for the FDA to reinstate “patient safety protocols” that were first promised when mifepristone was first released. Additional requests include:

  • Prescribing mifepristone and misoprostol for the termination of pregnancy should require at least three in-person office visits by the patient — as originally required by the FDA.
  • Mifepristone should be prescribed only by physicians — as originally required by the FDA — who have read and understood the prescribing information.
  • Mifepristone should be administered only in a clinic, medical office, or hospital, by or under the supervision of a physician, able to assess the gestational age of an embryo and to diagnose ectopic pregnancies — all of which was originally required by the FDA.
  • Physicians must be able to provide surgical intervention in cases of incomplete abortion or severe bleeding, or have made plans to provide such care through others, and be able to assure patient access to medical facilities equipped to provide blood transfusions and resuscitation, if necessary.
  • Healthcare providers should be required once again to report to the FDA (and manufacturers of mifepristone) all serious adverse events resulting from the use of mifepristone.
  • Mifepristone should only be prescribed to a woman who is confirmed by a physician to be in the first seven weeks of pregnancy — as originally required by the FDA.

Abortion pill sycophants often dismiss warnings about the deadly pill as being hyperbole, but in releasing the new study, the EPPC even provides tragic testimonies from women who have suffered from its use.

Sadly, there are many no longer alive to talk.

Public policy impacts real people in real time and nowhere is this truer than when it comes to the reckless and tragic distribution of the abortion pill.

The FDA is long overdue to study and re-investigate the abortion pill’s so-called safety. This landmark new study will hopefully trigger and expedite that process.

U.S. Supreme Court Divided on Defunding Planned Parenthood

On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court appeared divided during oral argument over South Carolina’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood.

Ultimately, it comes down to if the people of South Carolina can determine they don’t want to fund activities that result in the killing of a human life.

Legally, the Court is asked to consider the statutory intent behind the Medicaid Act to determine, whether South Carolina can exclude Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid program.

Based on oral argument, it’s not clear where a majority of the Court stands at present.

Background

The case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, originated in 2018 when the South Carolina governor issued an executive order prohibiting abortion clinics from participating in the state’s Medicaid program.

Planned Parenthood immediately sued the state, and the case has been making its way through the court system.

In December 2024, with federal circuit courts split on how to interpret the underlying federal law, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

Oral Argument

During oral argument on Wednesday, the justices spent a majority of the time discussing whether Congress intended to confer a statutory “right” to choose “any qualified provider,” under the Medicaid Act. This would include a mechanism for individuals to sue the state when their choice of doctor is rejected.

As expected, Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson argued the language in the Medicaid Act confers a right to individuals; therefore, the state cannot exclude Planned Parenthood from the Medicaid program.

Counsel for South Carolina responded to their comments, contending that if Congress wanted to use clear rights language it could have. Unfortunately, Congress didn’t when it drafted the law.

The remaining six conservative justices all raised questions related to rights creating language, but didn’t seem to be advancing a united judicial theory.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch expressed concern in providing clarity to the lower courts regarding rights creating language.

Justice Clarence Thomas asked questions relating to the fact that the statute is not clear when it comes to rights-creating language.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett seemed to think past court precedent was enough guidance for the lower courts.

Pro-Life Allies

Alliance Defending Freedom partnered with South Carolina to defend the state’s position and held a rally with pro-life allies on the Supreme Court steps before and after oral argument.

South Carolina received an impressive amount of support in the form of friend-of-the-court briefs from the federal government, 18 states, Members of Congress, doctors in South Carolina and pro-life organizations.

Impact

The Supreme Court’s decision in this case could be far reaching. A ruling in favor of South Carolina could empower other states to exclude Planned Parenthood from Medicaid, potentially cutting a major funding stream to the abortion provider.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling in the case by June of this year.

The Daily Citizen will keep you updated on this developing story.

Image from Getty.

Youth Inspired to Lead the ‘Pro-Life Revolution’

The fifth annual National Pro-Life Summit was held on January 25, 2025, following the National March for Life in Washington, D.C. Over 1,000 attendees, primarily high school and college students, participated in this one-day training hosted by Students for Life of America.

This year’s theme, “Leading the Pro-Life Revolution,” represented the strategic shift from defense to offense following Roe’s reversal in 2022 and this year’s change in presidential leadership.

The summit emphasized the cultural and political change needed to protect human life at all stages.

Sessions and workshops focused specifically on learning how to lead in this new era, winning over those who are undecided on abortion, activating churches to be a voice for life, helping women choose life and using legislative opportunities to advance measures that protect human life.

The impressive lineup of pro-life speakers included:

  • Kristan Hawkins, President of Student for Life of America. Under her leadership, there are now 1,300 Students for Life chapters across the U.S. where students are taught about grassroots activism for the pro-life movement.
  • Charlie Kirk, Founder and President of Turning Point USA. Kirk was awarded the first Defender of Life award for his work advancing the sanctity of human life. He’s been instrumental in activating today’s youth into the conservative movement and promoting a culture of life.
  • Ben Carson, a gifted neurosurgeon, shared his insights into the sanctity of human life from a medical perspective.
  • Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press secretary and co-host of “Outnumbered” on Fox News, gave a keynote address highlighting the significance of faith and perseverance in the pro-life movement.
  • Bethany Hamilton, professional surfer and author, shared her personal story of overcoming adversity and the importance of compassion for women facing unexpected pregnancies.

Many of the speakers and participants celebrated the pro-life wins brought about by change in the Administration, including a commitment from President Trump and Vice President Vance to pro-life policies.

The National Pro-Life Summit underscored the importance of resilience and adaptability in this new chapter of the “pro-life revolution,” focusing specifically on education, activism and compassionate care.

Image credit: Students for Life

‘Mass Exodus’: Dr. Jay Richards on the Demise of Gender Ideology and What It Means for the Pro-Life Movement

What do gender and sexual ideology have to do with protecting preborn babies?

Dr. Jay Richards explained at this year’s National Pro-Life Summit, an annual event designed to help people, particularly students, defend and advance the pro-life cause.

Richards, who directs the DeVos Center for Life, Religion and Family at the Heritage Foundation, joined Kristen Hawkins, Charlie Kirk, Ben Carson, Kayleigh McEnany and dozens of other experts in Washington D.C. to help attendees understand the pro-life landscape in 2025.

“To protect [preborn babies], we need to think about them [within] the institution of the family, and the destruction of the family as a result of the sexual revolution,” he exhorted aspiring activists.

Hosted by Students for Life, the Summit drew energy and inspiration from pro-life wins in the White House. But Richards emphasized the pro-life movement’s unique opportunity to change hitherto inaccessible hearts and minds.

To take advantage of this opportunity, he argued, pro-lifers must understand the President’s actions in the context of a larger backlash against the ideology of the sexual revolution.

To do that, Richards explained the connection between abortion and gender ideology.

Killing children in the womb and abolishing the sexual binary might seem unrelated. But Richards contended both are distinct consequences of the sexual revolution, an ideology that “exploded” in the 1960s with the introduction of birth control.

Richards suggested picturing abortion and gender ideology as two stations on a train track.

Imagine the sexual revolution is a train trip. You’re on a track, so the train is moving you in a particular direction. And there’s different stations along the way to your destinations … At every stop, people can get off the train.

Contrary to popular belief, the sexual revolution isn’t moving passengers to a more sexually liberated society.

“If that’s what it is [doing], we wouldn’t be sterilizing children who are confused about their bodies in 2025,” Richards remarked.

Instead, the fundamental premise of the sexual revolution is the legal and social “fracturing” of marriage, sex and childbirth, or, “The idea that those things don’t have to go together, ought not to go together, might be better if they don’t always go together.”

Abortion and gender ideology should be understood as phenomena that contribute to the rupture of God’s design.

Abortion is one of the revolution’s earliest stops. It is what Richards calls an enabling technology — something that makes the ideas of the revolution feasible. The sexual revolution’s first enabling technology, and train stop, was the birth control pill.

“There’s been types of contraception or contraceptive behaviors for as long as there have been humans,” Richards acknowledged, continuing,

But it was not until the approved birth control pill that it seemed at least [plausible] to have sex, all you want, right in the middle of the most fertile years of your life without having to deal with the consequences, namely a baby.

But birth control didn’t sufficiently delink sex and childbirth. In fact, Richards noted, “It so greatly increased out-of-wedlock sexual activity that it vastly increased the numbers of out-of-wedlock births as well.”

The Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 made abortion the new stopgap — an enabling technology that stopped childbirth by killing the child.

Gender ideology comes quite a few stations down the line, after the Supreme Court detached sex and marriage in 2015.

Prior to the dissociation of sex and childbirth, Richards argued, the state had a compelling interest to recognize marriage as a productive partnership between a man and a woman:

Marriage is the institution that socially ratifies, recognizes, protects and reinforces a basic biological reality, that it takes a fertile male and a fertile female, one of each, to mate.
There’s a widespread assumption, now widely confirmed by social science, that, all things being equal, the well-being of a child is enhanced dramatically if that child is raised by his or her married mother and father.
So, there’s a state interest in recognizing and protecting and distinguishing this institution from, say, a rotary club, voluntary association, or a religious body, or a medical license or a real estate license.

But, by 2015, Americans had largely accepted the idea that sex, marriage and childbirth weren’t related — and didn’t need to be.

Richards decoded the logic behind Obergefell v. Hodges: If sex doesn’t have to take place within a marriage, and marriage doesn’t have anything to do with producing or raising children, then marriage need not be between a man and a woman.

Within a week of the Obergefell ruling, trans activists began appearing on the covers of magazines. The T, joked Richards, began jockeying for a place with the Ls, Gs, and Bs.

Where once all relationships — including homosexual ones — assumed a sexual binary, the introduction of gender ideology now made the sexual binary obsolete, and even discriminatory.

Richards explained the progression like this:

Obergefell decided that the sexual binary did not matter for the institution of marriage. Gender ideology just says the sexual binary does not matter, period.

A logical next step.

Until gender ideology, most people had passively accepted a ride on the sexual revolution express. But this stop struck passengers differently from its predecessors, Richards found:

We’re now far enough along that the victims [of gender ideology] are telling their stories. That makes this different from abortion. The primary victims of abortion very rarely live to tell about it. The detransitioners do. This is a different issue from every one before. This train station is different from every other train station before.

Confronted with the consequences of demolishing the sexual binary, Richards said people have gotten off the ride.

It’s a mass exit of people wanting off this train. People who were partisans in favor of same-sex marriage, people who had been pro-choice their whole lives, people who thought free sex was great, people who had never spent two seconds thinking about the sexual revolution saw Rachel Levine, and big ol’ Leah Thomas standing next to Riley Gaines, and said, “This is insane.”

This is the environment pro-lifers find themselves in, Richards concluded — on a train station with a bunch of confused, disillusioned people that “are open to conversations [they] were not open to five years ago.”

Richards urged pro-lifers to equip themselves to have these important, delicate conversations. His advice? Connect the systematic destruction of God’s design with bizarre ideology making them exit the crazy train in the first place — station by station.

To walk it back, you have to connect pre-born babies to the sexual revolution. You have to be able to situate the sexual revolution as responsible for the destruction of the family and categorize abortion as a weapon of that attack.

If we can convince people in the train station of that, Richards said he’s convinced we can end “the scourge of abortion.”

This author tends to agree.

Additional Articles and Resources

The Two-Parent Privilege: Understanding Contemporary Family Formation

The 4B Movement: Anti-Women, Accidentally Pro-Life

Different Family Forms Lead to Prison or College for Young Men

Important New Research on How Married Parents Improve Child Well-Being

Here’s What Happens When Good People Don’t Connect Gay and Trans Ideology

Sorry ‘Gays Against Groomers,’ But Gay Activists Helped Start This Transgender Fire

Sorry ‘Gays Against Groomers,’ But Gay Activists Helped Start This Transgender Fire — Part Two

WSJ is Wrong About Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Having No Dire Effects

How the Binary in ‘LGBTQ+’ Reveals Its Utter Incoherence

Why Christians Can’t Avoid the “Trans” and Gender Redefinition Issue

How the “Trans” and Gender Redefinition Issue Attacks the Family