Americans United for Life Vice President of Legal Affairs Denise Burke noted that the anti-life media once again got their facts wrong in reporting on AUL’s “Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act.”  AUL’s groundbreaking model legislation seeks to ensure that a pregnant woman and her unborn child are protected from criminal violence and that her decision to carry her child to term is respected.  Specifically, the model legislation was drafted in direct response to the well-documented and growing problem of pregnancy-related violence against women.

“Leave it to the anti-life lobby to claim that model legislation that shows respect for the choice a woman makes to keep her baby is flawed,” said Burke. “Research shows that pregnant women are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse. It is tragic that the pro-abortion lobby maligns efforts to protect these women. AUL’s expertly drafted model legislation does not legalize violence against abortion providers, and in keeping with its pro-life convictions,  AUL has always condemned such violence.”

As detailed in the legislative findings section of the “Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act,” evidence has shown that violence and abuse are often higher during pregnancy than during any other period in a woman’s lifetime.  For example, according to the March of Dimes, one in six pregnant women have been abused by a partner.  A 1998 household survey determined that pregnant women are 60.6 percent more likely to be beaten than women who are not pregnant.

In fact, a pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause.   And case after case has demonstrated that husbands or boyfriends are often the perpetrators of pregnancy-associated violence and that this violence is often directed at the unborn child or intended to end or jeopardize the pregnancy.

AUL’s “Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act” expressly provides that a pregnant woman may use force to protect her unborn child when she reasonably believes that unlawful force is threatening her unborn child and that her use of force is immediately necessary to protect her unborn child. The language explicitly limits the permitted use of force to a pregnant woman and does not expand it to third parties.  Thus, under the express terms of AUL’s carefully crafted and narrow language, the “Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act” could not be used to justify criminal violence against abortion providers or anyone else.

Burke said, “Pro-abortion groups and their allies in the media, including Mother Jones and the Huffington Post, appeared to have intentionally distorted their reporting on the express language and purpose of AUL’s “Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act” in an attempt to further their own political agendas.  Their actions are not only dishonest, but they do a grave disservice to the hundreds of thousands of pregnant woman who are assaulted or killed every year in this country.”

For more information and to download a copy of AUL’s model legislation, click here.

“Telemed abortions” have made headlines in the last year, and with that attention AUL has received numerous requests from state legislators and policy groups seeking to curb the practice. While this issue is so “hot,” states have the perfect opportunity to protect women by regulating the provision of abortion-inducing drugs.

Abortion Providers Misuse Abortion Drugs

Planned Parenthood and abortion providers misuse RU-486, and they do not hide this misuse. In at least two courts and in multiple media outlets, abortion providers have admitted to providing RU-486 to women well outside the directions contained in the drug’s label.

For example, RU-486 is only to be used until 49 days gestation and has no other approved use during pregnancy.  Even at 49 days gestation, the drug has an 8 percent failure rate.  When the drug regimen fails, a woman is then forced to have a surgical abortion (and faces all the risks a surgical abortion entails). The farther along in gestation a woman is, the more likely it is that RU-486 will fail; it is generally understood that there is a 17 percent failure rate at 50-56 days, and a 23 percent failure rate at 57-63 days.

In addition to the heightened risk of failure (and subsequent surgical intervention), abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, and vaginal bleeding also increase with advancing gestational age.

But Planned Parenthood openly acknowledges on its website that it provides RU-486 to women up to 63 days gestation—i.e.,  Planned Parenthood admits to providing RU-486 in a way that fails 23 percent of the time.

Of course, if a woman is provided RU-486 at 63 days gestation and it fails, Planned Parenthood will then get her for the second (surgical) abortion. It’s an ingenious profit-making scheme—at the risk of women’s lives. Of course, recent video releases by Live Action confirm that protecting young women does not appear to be high on Planned Parenthood’s agenda.

ACOG Promotes Misuse of RU-486

The Mifeprex (RU-486) drug regimen consists of two rounds of oral drugs (mifepristone on day 1, and misoprostol on day 3). However, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)—in a clear deviation from the drug’s label—recommends that misoprostol be used vaginally instead of orally. ACOG promotes this misuse under the guise of effectiveness; arguably, the RU-486 regimen is more effective at terminating the pregnancy if misoprostol is taken vaginally.

However, vaginal use is dangerous, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stated that vaginal use has not been proven to be safe and effective. Instead, in many of the complications reported to the FDA, misoprostol was administered vaginally. In fact, of the 8 known RU-486 deaths reported in the United States, 7 of those women had used the ACOG-promoted vaginal use of misoprostol.

Regulating according to the “FDA Protocol”

AUL has drafted model legislation that not only ensures that physicians are present and examine a woman before providing abortion drugs, but also requires abortion providers to abide by the protocol tested and approved by the FDA. In addition, all abortion-inducing drugs (and not just RU-486) are regulated.

Specifically, AUL’s model requires physicians administering “abortion-inducing drugs” (including RU-486) provide such drugs only in the way approved by the FDA and outlined in the drug’s label.

First, such a regulation provides specific guidance to abortion providers on how a drug is to be used. By pointing to a drug label, there is no reason for an abortion provider to not know what is expected of him or her. In the case of RU-486, it will ensure that the drug regimen is only provided until 49 days gestation and administered orally.

Second, requiring that physicians follow the procedure outlined in a drug label ensures that states are regulating to the maximum potential. While a state cannot provide more restrictions on an abortion drug than the FDA has outlined, it can at least ensure that an abortion provider follows the FDA’s approved regimen—and as outlined above, there is court-documented evidence proving that abortion providers are not abiding by that protocol.

Third, it is important to address the difference between an “FDA standard” and a drug’s label. “FDA standard” is a rather vague term and can mean any number of things; but by requiring abortion providers to refer to the drug’s actual label, they are being directed to a specific set of guidelines that have been tested in a clinical setting.

The bottom line is that the abortion industry is putting women’s lives at risk every day with their “evidence-based protocol.” We need to ensure a physician’s physical presence and put an end to telemed abortions; but it is also necessary to ensure that the physician is not endangering the woman’s life with quack medicine.

Remarks of William L. Saunders at the Annual Briefing of the DIIFSD during the 49^th session of the CSD in New York (United Nations), February 11, 2011:

Ladies and Gentlemen –

I am pleased to be here today as a representative of those members of civil society who participated in the conference on “Empowerment of the Family in the modern world: challenges and promises ahead”, which was sponsored by the Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development, and was held in Doha, Qatar, in January 2010.

The conference drew upon distinguished scholars, governmental officials, and representatives of NGO’s from around the world who are seeking to empower the family in a time of increasing challenges for, and stresses upon, the family. Speakers and participants came from Slovakia, Australia, Russia, Kuwait, and many others.  And, of course, the health of the family as an institution must be of concern for every country and land.  As Sheika Moza Bint Nasser al-Missned said in welcoming the conference participants: “Without healthy family structures, the health of the entire society is at risk.”

There were a wide range of issues considered during the conference, as you can see in the report provided to you today and which is being submitted today to the United Nations. In my presentation, I considered the topic of “collective rights vs. individual rights.”

I suggested individual rights, properly understood, contribute to the common, or “group” or “societal,” good.  In other words, “collective rights” and “individual rights” are not, ultimately, opposed to one another; rather they may usefully be understood to work in concert for the good of all.  Of course, one must acknowledge that either “collective rights” or “individual rights” taken to extremes are counterproductive.  In other words, collective interests might, improperly in my view, be understood so as to render individual “rights” a toothless concept.  Likewise, an understanding of individual rights that exalts individual choice to the disadvantage of all other values is counter-productive – it breaks society – and the family – apart.  In other words, there is a sort of reciprocity between the two concepts, as is recognized, if underdeveloped, in several human rights documents.

I discussed how subjective desires, no matter how deeply felt, are not equivalent to “rights.”  Rather, a sound understanding of “rights” should spring from an understanding of human nature, and of what is good for the human person.  Likewise, it must be kept in mind, when claims of new “rights” are asserted, that the human being does not exist alone, in a vacuum; rather, the human person exists in relationship to other human beings, in society.  The first society, of course, is the family, as all of the foundational human rights documents recognize.

Thus, “human rights” properly understood contains both individual and collective aspects.  It is not simply equivalent to “individual rights” or to “collective rights.”

As an example of the misunderstanding of “individual rights” to the detriment of both the society and the individual, I considered the alleged “right to die,” a term usually meant in the contemporary Western world to mean a right to assisted suicide or euthanasia.

The corpus of international human rights law does not recognize such a right.   No treaty articulates such a right, nor does customary international law.  Further, as, for example, the United States Supreme Court recognized a right to euthanasia or assisted suicide cannot properly be implied from a right to “privacy” or “liberty” or “dignity”. I reviewed the various reasons that the court, as well as task forces in both the United Kingdom and the United States, found decisively against recognizing such a right.

To sum up these reasons all too briefly: nearly every request for assisted suicide is prompted by clinical depression; in other words, it is prompted by psychic or emotional pain; when the depression is treated, the requests are withdrawn.  Likewise, physical pain can be ameliorated through palliative care; of great interest is the fact that legalizing assisted suicide actually leads to a decline in the standards of palliative care.  Why?  Because legalizing assisted suicide shifts society in profound and subtle ways away from an orientation of caring for the sick.  It diminishes our understanding that each one of us is a member of a society of mutual obligation.  In a time of economic troubles, as health care costs rise, the temptation is to look upon the chronically or terminally ill or the severely handicapped as a drain upon society, and perhaps, as lives not worth living.  We must resist that temptation, even if it is couched in the language of “individual rights”, for it diminishes the noblest instincts of every civilization to lend a helping hand to those in need.

At the conference, as with all the various presentations, my reflections were offered to stimulate further thinking and exchange, and, I believe, the conference was successful in this respect.  Dialogue among participants continued well beyond the time of the actual sessions, leading to a deeper appreciation of the important issues involved, and of the important role NGO’s play in bringing these matters to the attention of the wider society and in advocating for implementation of public policies concerned with the health of the family.

In closing, on behalf of the civil society participants, I would like to thank Sheika Moza and the Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development for holding this important conference. I would also like to thank its director, Dr Richard Wilkins, and all those who worked so hard to make this important conference a great success.

We all know the family in the modern world is undergoing many stresses and strains.  However, the family is the foundation stone of society.  If cracks develop in that foundation, the societal structure built upon it is in danger of collapse.

The photographs below are from the Washington, D.C. Vigil for Victims held in conjunction with vigils nationally on February 14, 2011. To see the individual photographs, click here.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.