Since our inception, The Daily Wire has taken a stand for pro-life causes. Written from a variety of perspectives &#8211; religious, scientific, first-person &#8211; here is a collection of articles that will educate, inform, and ultimately make the case for life through the kind of investigative journalism you won’t find anywhere else.

Fighting For Life Collection

I knew since high school that I wanted to go into medicine. I wanted to help and heal people. In 1966, I graduated from the University of Tennessee Memphis. I did my residency training at the Mayo Clinic, with an externship in Chicago at Cook County Hospital. That is where I learned about abortion. 
One of the rotations I did was on the Infected OB ward. I was in charge of the women coming in from the emergency room after incomplete abortions from the back-alley mills in the city. I would stabilize them, start IVs, give blood, and administer antibiotics. The next morning, I took them to a treatment room to do a Suction D&amp;C (dilation and curettage), to scrape out whatever tissue the abortionist had left inside. At that time, I became outraged. That’s when I decided to try to help women by offering safe abortions. What I didn’t realize at that time was that abortions are never safe for the woman or her child.
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At this point in my life, I was 27 and religiously agnostic. Then, in 1975, two years after Roe v. Wade mandated legal abortion nationwide, I moved to Mississippi. I was married and had three little boys. There were very few women OBGYNs at the time, and when I started teaching at the University of Mississippi medical center, I was approached by the organizers of the first freestanding abortion clinic in the state. They had everything lined up and needed a physician to be the abortionist. In the Fall of 1975, I opened up Family Health Services in Jackson, Mississippi.
Just one year into my time at the clinic, I had a crisis. My marriage wasn’t going well, depression had set in, and I even had thoughts of suicide. In my search for answers, I found the book “The Power of Positive Thinking,” and through reading it, I also found Christ. Although I continued to commit abortions for the next two years, I noticed that I was having more difficulty going to the clinic–something didn’t feel right anymore. 
The last abortion I ever did was a 12-week suction D&amp;C. After this type of procedure, I would have my patient remain on the table while I took the cloth trap from the suction bottle to the sink. That’s where I would pick through the parts that I had suctioned out &#8211; two arms, two legs, etc. This was to ensure I had successfully completed the abortion. That particular day, one of the workers asked if she could join me at the sink so she could learn more about the procedure.  
When I showed her, this terrible sadness came over me. For the first time, I saw a little boy. At 12 weeks old, we could see his perfectly formed little arm and tiny bicep. At that moment, I had a flashback; I could imagine my own son in my mind, with the same little arm, flexing his bicep, smiling at me. 
Zing. That’s how it felt. I shook myself. Five minutes ago, this was a perfectly beautiful little boy, and now he was in pieces. I never committed another abortion.
I resigned in the fall of 1978. 
Two years later, a statewide pro-life group in Mississippi was being organized, and I was invited to a lunch meeting. They wanted to gather pro-life professionals, especially in the medical and legal fields to help. When they found out I was a former abortionist, they encouraged me to begin speaking on behalf of the pro-life movement. I have spent the rest of my life fighting to end abortion. 
I first heard of <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/media/meet-lila-rose/">Lila Rose</a> when she started her undercover investigations. Now, I’m honored to be a part of <a href="http://whatisabortion.com/">Live Action’s “What Is Abortion?” video series</a>, where former abortionists, like myself, share the truth about what really happens during an abortion. 

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Recognizing the humanity of the preborn child is what ultimately got me out of this awful industry. I knew it, but I never truly saw it, until it just clicked. I saw that little boy, who could have grown up to be just like my beautiful son.
As we come upon the potential reversal of Roe v. Wade, with the Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs v. Jackson to release soon, I’m committed more than ever to sharing the truth about abortion. Although overturning Roe is necessary, it’s not what’s going to end abortion. It is convincing one person at a time that will finally end this national tragedy.
That’s what these videos can do. When people learn, they change.
Dr. Beverly McMillan is an Obstetrics &amp; Gynecology Specialist in Jackson, MS, with over 56 years of experience in the medical field. She is a vocal pro-life advocate.
 The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

McMillian – Former abortionist turned pro-life advocate

I Was An Abortionist. What I Saw Turned Me Into A Lifelong Pro-Life Activist

Abortion

Pro-Life Movement

Readers Pass

As we make the case for life, it’s important to remember that not everyone shares our presuppositions.
We may believe in God and affirm that the Bible is God’s Word, but others we speak with deny His existence and treat the Bible like any other book. How can we make the case for life to people of faith and to those who do not share our faith?
<h4 style="text-align: left;">Ultimately, both the secular and religious arguments intersect at one essential point: There is a tiny human being inside that womb, and its life should not be terminated. But how we present our arguments will differ based on our audience.</h4>
Religious Point of View
From the perspective of Bible-believing faith, we start with the recognition that it is God who gives life and that, at the moment of conception, life begins. 
From that split second, an intricate process of development begins, described vividly (and in non-scientific terms) in Psalm 139:13-16:
<blockquote>“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”</blockquote>
Digging deeper into the Scriptures, we note that Isaac’s wife Rebekah was told that two nations were in her womb, pointing to the personhood and potential of her unborn twins, both of whom would become the ancestors of whole nations (Genesis 25:21-23,). 
Similarly, John the Baptizer leapt in his mother’s womb when Miriam (Mary) arrived, with the baby Jesus in her womb (Luke 1:39-43; see also 1:15, where John would be filled with the Spirit even from his mother’s womb). A clump of cells does not jump with spiritual excitement, nor can a clump of cells be filled with the Spirit.
In the same way, God told the prophet Jeremiah that He had selected him as a prophet before he was even in his mother’s womb (which was his point of origin; Jeremiah 1:4-5), while Paul said that God set him apart from his mother’s womb (Galatians 1:15).
Put another way, when Jeremiah or Paul or John or even Jesus looked like a clump of cells in their mother’s womb (which is how and where all of us started), God had a purpose for their lives and there was divine destiny within them. To abort them would be to abort the divine purposes and unique destinies planned for their lives.
In keeping with this (although not in the context of abortion), there is a Jewish tradition that explains why.
When Cain killed Abel, the Hebrew speaks of Abel’s “bloods” (in the plural) crying out to God from the ground (Genesis 4:10). This, the tradition states, is because the text spoke of both Abel and his potential future descendants. All their blood cried out for justice from the ground.
In the same way, when a baby is killed in the womb, all its future is killed with it.
<h4>Secular Point of View</h4>
Coming from a non-religious point of view, the emphasis should be placed on science and humanity.
From the perspective of science, we demonstrate that there is a baby, not a growth, inside the mother. From the perspective of humanity, we tell the stories of those who survived abortion or were conceived in rape, along with the stories of the women (and men) who participated in abortions and were scarred for life because of it.
Recently, even non-religious people like <a href="https://askdrbrown.org/library/when-bill-maher-and-joe-rogan-make-pro-life-case">Bill Maher and Joe Rogan</a> have made statements recognizing the complexities of the abortion debate.
Rogan recently said, 

<blockquote>“I am 100% for a woman’s right to choose. But as a human being, just a person observing things, there’s a big difference between a little clump of cells and a fetus with the eyeball and a beating heart. And for anybody to pretend there’s not. . . .”</blockquote>
As for Maher, he opined, 

<blockquote>“It’s what you think, if you like babies, then you’re pro-life, and if you like women, you’re pro-choice. I like women. . . .
“I just — I feel like…abortion is unique. It is. Because people either — you just have this view that it’s murder — I could put the argument on a hat when people talk about a woman’s right, murder isn’t a right. If you think it’s murder — I don’t — again, crazy me.”</blockquote>
What can we do to help non-religious people recognize that there is a real human being inside that womb?
Many abortions take place when the baby is 8 weeks old, at which time the baby is just the size of a raspberry. But, according to the <a href="https://www.pampers.com/en-us/pregnancy/pregnancy-calendar/8-weeks-pregnant">Pampers.com</a> website (hardly a religious website), at this stage, 

<blockquote>“hands and feet are forming tiny fingers and toes, and those arms are able to flex at the elbows and wrists. 
“At this point, eyes begin to develop pigment, and genitals are forming too, although it&#8217;s still too soon to know whether you&#8217;re expecting a boy or a girl. 
“These external features aren’t the only things developing — the internal organs are making strides, too. As the intestines form, they start to take up space in the umbilical cord because there’s not enough room in your baby’s abdomen yet. Even at this early stage, the intestines are working to carry waste away from the body.”</blockquote>
This is a living, developing, human being, which is why this section of the Pampers website, which is designed to be read by expectant mothers, is so filled with wonder and excitement. This is about your little girl or boy!
Looking at ultrasound images of babies in the womb is also quite powerful, making late-term abortions in particular sound all the more barbaric (which <a href="https://twitter.com/LilaGraceRose/status/1509994640170172418?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1509994640170172418%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww1.cbn.com%2Fcbnnews%2F2022%2Fapril%2F5-fully-formed-aborted-babies-found-in-dc-confronting-the-horrors-of-abortion-head-on">they are</a>).
Our ministry even designed a <a href="https://stream.org/from-am-i-not-a-man-to-am-i-not-a-baby/">meme</a> comparing a powerful image that helped outlaw slavery in the British empire (with the chained slave asking, “Am I not a man and a brother?”) with an image we created (depicting a baby in the womb asking, “Am I not a baby and a sister?”).
That’s why expectant mothers grieve deeply over a miscarriage, even early in the pregnancy. They don’t need a doctor to tell them that they lost a child, not a tumor.
You can also ask a “pro-choice” friend if they’re familiar with the acronym POC, standing for “products of conception,” referring to the baby parts that get thrown away after abortion. Ask them if they’re willing to look at these babies and baby parts. Do they really support <a href="https://www.priestsforlife.org/resources/abortionimages/malachi.jpg">this</a>?
Or consider the story of Dr. Bernard Nathanson.
As <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31179669/">noted</a> by in a medical law journal,
<blockquote>“During his tenure as director of the largest abortion clinic in the Western World, Nathanson presided over 60,000 abortions, and he performed more than 1,500 in his own practice. His studies of embryology and evidence from emerging technologies to monitor and examine intrauterine fetal development led Nathanson to question the morality of voluntarily interrupting pregnancy, thence to rejecting abortion procedures from his own clinical practice altogether, and eventually to become involved in anti-abortion, pro-life activities.”</blockquote>
And he had this change of heart as a non-believer, only later becoming a Christian.
There are also the powerful stories of people like <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/02/12/she-survived-a-saline-abortion-heres-her-story/">Gianna Jessen</a>, who survived a saline abortion, or the internationally-known evangelist James Robison, who was conceived in rape. (A story about him <a href="https://stream.org/james-robison-unwanted-and-nearly-aborted-but-god-takes-him-beyond-his-dreams/">notes</a> that, “At least 20,000,000 have been saved because one doctor said ‘no’ to abortion.”)
And there are the <a href="https://askdrbrown.org/library/beyond-abortion-debate-there-are-hurting-men-and-women-we-must">stories</a> of those who had abortions, only to grieve deeply over the life (or lives) they had snuffed out. Abortion hurts everyone.
Let us, then, make the case for life. Let these children live!
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dr. Michael Brown (<a href="http://www.askdrbrown.org/">www.askdrbrown.org</a>) is the host of the nationally syndicated <a href="http://www.lineoffireradio.com/">Line of Fire</a> radio program. He holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries and is the author of 40 books. Connect with him on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AskDrBrown">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/DrMichaelLBrown">Twitter</a>, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbINn3x-intLp88Zrf8acpg">YouTube</a>.

jk brown

The Religious And Secular Arguments Against Abortion

Christianity

Joe Rogan

Since we live in a soundbite, meme-driven generation, here are some soundbite responses to standard pro-abortion talking points, followed by fuller answers for those who want to dig deeper.
<h4>“I’m pro-choice.”</h4>
Then why not encourage women to seriously consider all their choices and not just abortion?
If you are truly pro-choice, you should advocate that abortion clinics lay out all possible choices for pregnant women, encouraging them to take time and make the best decision for themselves and their baby. And if you are really pro-choice, you should be pro-intelligent choice, which means looking at ultrasounds and thinking through all your options. And you should actively support pregnancy crisis centers that exist to give women choices other than adoption. 
Women who used to work at Planned Parenthood clinics <a href="https://www.unplannedfilm.com/?msclkid=6f340d2bcf3611eca3829e61e0defa47">testify</a> that they were put under pressure to meet quotas, like salesmen closing a deal, since abortions bring in so much income. Do you think that is fair to the mother (and her baby)? 
<h4>“My body, my choice.”</h4>
What about the other person’s body inside of your body? Your choice is robbing them of having a chance.
And when it comes to our bodies, do we have the legal right to hire a doctor to cut off a perfectly healthy limb? A doctor could go to jail for amputating a healthy arm or leg. Why, then, should anyone have the legal right to terminate a perfectly healthy baby living inside the womb? (Abortions performed on babies believed to have serious health defects make up the <a href="https://clinicquotes.com/99-31-of-abortions-not-done-for-health-reasons/?msclkid=cb96c0e9cf3611ecb6cd5b51c947fc18">tiniest percentage</a> of abortions, meaning that nearly all abortions are performed on healthy babies.)
<h4>“What about rape and incest?”</h4>
That’s a great question, but can we focus on the 98+ percent of abortions that do not involve rape or incest?
In reality, abortions for rape or incest count for <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-rape-and-incest-exemption-would-still-ban-more-than-98-percent-of-abortions/">less than 2 percent</a> of all abortions (likely even less than 1 percent). So, do you agree with me that those should be illegal? And even in cases of rape and incest, if you agree that there is a human being inside your womb, whatever the cause, should that baby now be a victim too?
<h4>“I have a Constitutional right to abortion.”</h4>
I’ve got a Constitution handy. Could you show me where in the Constitution you have that right?
Even the pro-abortion Women’s Center website, which first <a href="https://www.womenscenter.com/2022/04/abortion-constitutional-right/?msclkid=738f3c20cf2211ecb1da720646b1643d">states</a> that “there is no clear answer when it comes to whether or not the right to an abortion is a constitutional right,” follows that sentence with this: “The right to an abortion is not mentioned anywhere in the US Constitution.” Precisely so.
As <a href="https://www.hli.org/resources/abortion-no-constitutional-human-right/?msclkid=738e5203cf2211ecb3566bacdb00e666">noted</a> on the pro-life Human Life International site, “Abortion is not a constitutional right according to a direct reading of the text of the Constitution, but it has been justified as such under the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy. In short, the constitutional right to abortion is found not in the Constitution itself, but in a loose reading of it as a ‘living document,’ as ‘progressives’ like to call it.” 
In the <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/no-right-abortion-constitution/?msclkid=4251b1f2cf2311ecbfac48171a8e89b1">words</a> of Brian Clowes, Ph.D., “the Supreme Court literally conjured [the right to abortion] out of thin air.”
<h4>“Abortion should be safe and legal.”</h4>
Safe and legal for whom? Abortion is a death sentence for the baby.
Since there is no Constitutional right to abortion, and since many legal experts, including liberal lawyers, recognized that Roe went too far, where is it written that abortion should be safe and legal? Just because people say this is true doesn’t make it so. 
And if you can make abortion safe for the baby, which is often ripped up alive in the womb before being sucked out, then let me know.
<h4>“This is all about male control.”</h4>
On the contrary, many pro-life leaders are women, while men pressure many women to get abortions.
Some of the best-known <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/15-pro-life-heroes-who-brought-us-the-overturn-of-roe-v-wade">pro-life leaders</a> have been (and are) women, like Phyllis Schafly, Abby Johnson, Vicki Thorn, Alveda King, and Lila Rose. And among the three Supreme Court justices appointed by President Trump, it is probably Amy Coney-Barrett who is the most staunchly pro-life. As Bill Maher recently <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-roe-v-wade-abortion-scotus">said</a>, “I learned most people who are pro-life are women.”
<h4>“This is yet another white attack on poor black women.”</h4>
Actually, we’re working to stop the black genocide since a disproportionate percentage of black babies are aborted.
The truth be told, the ones taking advantage of poor black women are the abortion clinics which stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars should they lose the business of poor black women, subsidized by the government.
The most dangerous place for a black female today is her mother&#8217;s womb. Do you feel that is right and good for <a href="https://www.maafa21.com/?msclkid=7630ac28cf3711eca8bcef98fa600829">black Americans</a>?
<h4>“Abortion is often an act of mercy to save a severely disabled fetus from terrible suffering.”</h4>
By your logic, wouldn’t it be an act of mercy to kill that baby after birth?
Doesn’t your argument also justify euthanizing severely disabled babies and children, especially those suffering terribly? And is it only the healthy and strong who get to live or have a purpose or meaning in their lives? As for the number of abortions performed because of health concerns for the baby, it is <a href="https://www.hli.org/resources/statistics-on-abortion/?msclkid=cb96977dcf3611ec920a19ff4fac2531">well under 1 percent</a>.
<h4>There’s a difference between a clump of cells and a baby. </h4>
A clump of cells does not have a beating heart or a detailed, totally personalized DNA coding.
Every human being, including you and me, began as what looks like a clump of cells. (The word “embryo,” describing the first stage of the baby’s life, speaks of the “embryonic” development of a human being.) But does a “clump of cells” have a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-science-has-won-the-abortion-debate-and-why-democrats-choose-to-ignore-it">detectable heartbeat</a>? A baby does, within several weeks of conception. As one pro-life website <a href="https://www.lifemattersww.org/Need-Help/Questions-about-abortion/When-Does-Life-Begin">pointed out</a>, “Between conception and birth, the heart beats approximately 54 million times!” And does a “clump of cells” have its own unique DNA? A baby does early in the first trimester. 
<h4>What if the mother’s life is in danger?</h4>
We are pro-life, which means that every effort is made to save both mother and child.
Today, there are <a href="http://thatmom.com/2011/07/19/pro-life-apologist-has-this-to-say-about-ectopic-pregnancies/?msclkid=49d7bc6ecf3a11ecbfb5642c006c4b9b">hardly any</a> medical situations where performing an abortion will <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/19/i-was-wrong-sometimes-its-necessary-to-remove-ectopic-babies-to-save-their-mothers-life/">save the mother’s life</a>. As <a href="https://www.nrlc.org/archive/abortion/pba/HowOftenAbortionNecessarySaveMother.pdf?msclkid=9a3146c5cf3811eca2d1c33e3307d6e6">noted</a> already in 1967 by pro-abortion leader Dr. Alan Guttmacher, “Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal illness such as cancer or leukemia, and, if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save, life.”
That’s why, in 1980, former Surgeon General Dr. Everett Koop could <a href="https://www.nrlc.org/archive/abortion/pba/HowOftenAbortionNecessarySaveMother.pdf?msclkid=9a3146c5cf3811eca2d1c33e3307d6e6">say</a>, “Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my 36 years in pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother’s life. . . . If, toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother’s health, he will take the child by inducing labor or performing a Caesarean section. His intention is still to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby will be premature and perhaps immature depending on the length of gestation. Because it has suddenly been taken out of the protective womb, it may encounter threats to its survival. The baby is never willfully destroyed because the mother’s life is in danger.”
<h4>This is a fetus, not a baby.</h4>
If you plan to abort the unborn child, you call it a fetus. If you plan to keep the unborn child, you call it a baby.
Be honest. If you welcomed or planned the pregnancy, wouldn’t you call the unborn child a baby as soon as you found out you were pregnant? Wouldn’t you say, “We’re having a girl” (or, boy)? Wouldn’t you tell your friends, “Look at my baby bump” rather than “my fetus bump”? Wouldn’t you say, “The baby just kicked!” rather than, “The fetus just kicked!”? And wouldn’t you talk to your baby – in the womb – and give it a name? Why is it that babies you want to keep are babies while babies you want to abort are fetuses?
<h4>The American people do not want Roe overturned. </h4>
Then let the people decide.
Overturning Roe puts the decision back in the hands of the people you and I elect to office in the states in which we live.
As for the polling data that indicates that most Americans do not want Roe overturned, is that data really accurate? Most Americans think that overturning Roe means outlawing all abortions nationwide. Once they understand that this would just push this decision back to the states, their attitudes are different.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

abortion

Here’s How To Respond To Pro-Abortion Talking Points

In the aftermath of a leaked Supreme Court draft majority decision prospectively overruling Roe v. Wade, the Left in the United States has gone into full-fledged panic mode. That outsized panic has manifested as a variety of unconvincing or blatantly immoral arguments: the argument that abortion is a necessary adjunct to women’s freedom – as though contraception doesn’t exist, and as though women are never responsible for their own sexual decisions and the consequences thereof; the argument that unless society provides for any number of government programs, abortion should not be prohibited – as though the solution to lack of universal child care is the death of the child; the argument that conservatives will next attempt to outlaw interracial marriage – an absurd slander on its face.
Underlying all of this is a perverse and inverted view of children’s role in society. To the Left, children in the womb are utterly disposable; at best, women may choose to preserve their lives, but if not, they have no separate interests to be considered. In fact, children are to be treated as potential obstacles: as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said this week, “access to reproductive health care, including abortion, helped lead to increased labor force participation; it enabled many women to finish school. That increased their earning potential.” This explains why the Left has now embraced the language of “forced birth” to describe laws protecting the unborn: pregnancy is no longer seen as the possible biological outgrowth of sexual activity, but as a dramatic foreign imposition on women. The default, for the Left, is childlessness; pregnancy is somehow unnatural. Thus, the entire Democratic Party apparatus now refuses to countenance even the mildest restrictions on abortion all the way to the point of birth. 
Once children are born, the Left then sees them as sources of grief and pain for their parents. This, too, cuts in favor of abortion. As former President Barack Obama once stated about his daughters, “if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.” Babies are life-sucking entities, depriving women of opportunity and freedom. Which explains why the Left has now embraced the argument that unless government somehow relieves parents of their responsibility to raise and care for their own children, abortion ought to be broadly available.
As children grow, the Left sees them as the center of recruitment efforts on behalf of their favored politics. Children should be indoctrinated in the ideas of racial essentialism and historic guilt, so as to turn them into political widgets on behalf of utopian social change; children should be confused about the nature of biological sex and gender, so as to justify the sexual attitudes of narcissistic adults. Hence the Left’s outsized rage at Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, which merely banned sexual orientation and gender theory indoctrination for children through third grade. As the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang in 2021, “You think that we’ll corrupt your kids, if our agenda goes unchecked. Funny, just this once, you’re correct. We’ll convert your children. Happens bit by bit.” No wonder Joe Biden told teachers two weeks ago, “They’re all our children…They’re not somebody else’s children, they’re like yours when they’re in the classroom.”
All of this is fundamentally indecent. Adulthood lies in one primary task: protecting and defending children. This means bearing children is a gift, not an obstacle; this means that children should not be treated as autonomous adults while adults escape responsibility for their own decisions. This means raising children in line with values that ensure their stability and happiness – even if that means a tougher life for adults. All of that begins with a basic supposition the Left refuses to countenance: that they are not the center of creation, but that their children ought to be.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Obstacles

For The Left, Children Are Either Obstacles Or Tools

In 1983, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor predicted that medical advances would soon eliminate the standard that was established in Roe v. Wade to determine when life begins in the womb. These technological improvements would wind up making the so-called right-to abortion obsolete if pro-choice advocates relied solely on science, she implied. 
Flash forward to 2022, in the wake of the leaked draft from the Supreme Court of the United States  showing that the court is poised to overturn Roe, it is abundantly clear that not only was O’Connor correct, but Democratic leaders have by and large abandoned all pretense of caring about the data regarding the child in the womb. Instead, Democratic officials now insist women have a “sacred” right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, regardless of the “viability standard.”
Yet, while Democratic leaders may not care about the science, polls, and personal anecdotes of both doctors and mothers, new technology — such as ultrasounds and in utero surgery — has shifted Americans’ understanding of when life begins in the womb, thereby changing the abortion debate.
In 1973, the court <a href="http://users.hist.umn.edu/~bywelke/Roe%20v%20Wade.htm">outlined</a> in Roe that the State had an “important and legitimate interest in potential life,” and that “the ‘compelling’ point is at viability. This is so because the fetus presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother&#8217;s womb.” It placed that viability around 24-28 weeks. 
The court also observed that “some…argue that the woman&#8217;s right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree.” 
In doing so, the court acknowledged that the standard of viability could change based on new data and that a woman does not have the right to abortion-on-demand throughout her pregnancy. 
In 1983, in a dissenting opinion in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1982/81-746">Akron v. Akron Center For Reproductive Health</a>, O&#8217;Connor <a href="https://edge.sagepub.com/conlaw/resources/a-short-course/16-the-right-to-privacy/cases/akron-v-akron-center-for-reproductive">argued</a> that &#8220;the Roe framework,” as she called it, “is clearly on a collision course with itself. As the medical risks of various abortion procedures decrease, the point at which the State may regulate for reasons of maternal health is moved forward to actual childbirth. As medical science becomes better able to provide for the separate existence of the fetus, the point of viability is moved further back toward conception.&#8221;
Indeed, medical advances have changed science’s understanding of life as well its potential to survive outside the womb. In 2021, columnist Chris Cunningham <a href="https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2021/8/2/22606009/the-science-has-changed-time-to-revisit-roe-v-wade-abortion-mississippi-law-contraception">observed</a> that at the time Roe was decided, “babies born younger than 28 weeks could not be expected to survive. Today, <a href="https://next.voxcreative.com/sponsored/9843472/we-re-much-better-at-keep-preterm-babies-alive-but-how-can-we-keep">babies born before that have a 79% chance of surviving</a>.” 
In terms of actually viewing the child in the womb, the use of ultrasound has perhaps been the most game-changing technology , according to  Dr. Tara Sander Lee, Senior Fellow and Director of Life Sciences at Charlotte Lozier Institute. Dr. Lee is also a Harvard trained scientist who previously directed a research laboratory investigating congenital heart disease in children. 
“The black and white dots of an ultrasound before Roe could barely identify the head of an unborn child in the womb, much less identify the heartbeat at six weeks, watch the child at 15 weeks suck his thumb, or even cry when receiving an anesthetic injection prior to life saving surgery in utero,” Dr. Lee told The Daily Wire. “All of that is possible today, and even routine. What expectant mothers now see is a living, moving child inside them with a face and behaviors that will last a lifetime.” 
Dr. Lee also provided a visual which illustrates how advanced this technology has become since 1973:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-379311 size-large" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Roe-861x576.png" alt="" width="861" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/05/Roe-861x576.png 861w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/05/Roe-300x201.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/05/Roe-768x514.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/05/Roe.png 960w" sizes="(max-width: 861px) 100vw, 861px" /> “Modern ultrasound technology lets us see with our eyes what both science and our hearts have long known, which is the undeniable humanity of the unborn child,” Dr. Lee explained. 
“Science confirms and ultrasound shows that unborn babies respond to touch and taste just like you and me,” she argued. “They feel excruciating pain. With fully formed noses and lips, eyes, and eyebrows, fingers and toes, they explore the world around them. And with advancements in surgical techniques, unborn babies are even treated inside the womb, like any other patient, from as early as 15 weeks.”
Indeed, activists like Ashley McGuire also concur with that line of reasoning. In 2018, McGuire <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/pro-life-pro-science/549308/">told</a> The Atlantic, “The pro-life message has been, for the last 40-something years, that the fetus … is a life, and it is a human life worthy of all the rights the rest of us have. That’s been more of an abstract concept until the last decade or so.”
She added, “when you’re seeing a baby sucking its thumb at 18 weeks, smiling, clapping, [it becomes] harder to square the idea that the 20-week-old, that unborn baby or fetus, is discardable.” 
Dr. Colleen Malloy, a neonatologist and faculty member at Northwestern University as well as a researcher at Charlotte Lozier, also <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/pro-life-pro-science/549308/">told</a> The Atlantic that her own career progression has helped clarify that a “fetus” in the womb is a human being. 
“The more I advanced in my field of neonatology, the more it just became the logical choice to recognize the developing fetus for what it is: a fetus, instead of some sort of sub-human form,” Dr. Malloy told the magazine. “It just became so obvious that these were just developing humans.”
An oft-repeated line from pro-choice advocates is that the baby is just a lump of cells and nothing more. However, the “ultrasound shows that the abortion lobby’s tired, old argument” is a lie, Dr. Lee told The Daily Wire.
 “Modern science reveals the humanity of the unborn child. The truth is now visible for all of America,” she added. “It’s time to give the unborn a voice in this matter of life.”
Many polls would indicate that most Americans agree with that sentiment to a certain extent. In 2019, Harvard Center for American Political Studies and The Harris Poll issued a <a href="https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/HHP_May19_vF.pdf">poll </a>among 1,295 registered voters which revealed that 54% supported overturning or modifying Roe and 46% percent supported affirming that decision.
The poll also found that 70% of voters supported making abortion legal only within the first trimester, or until 12 weeks. Additionally, a small margin of American voters, only 6%, supported making abortion legal until the moment of birth. 
Other polls also indicate that Americans want restrictions on abortion. In 2021, a poll <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/americans-support-abortion-restrictions-poll">conducted</a> by Marist and sponsored by the Knights of Columbus found that “most Americans (71%) said that abortion should be restricted to the first three months of pregnancy.”
Furthermore, data would seem to indicate that, as discussions increase about what late-term abortions actually entail, the public becomes more pro-life — not less. 
In 2019, a February poll also conducted by Marist and sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2019/02/25/abortion-rights-marist-poll-pro-life-pro-choice">found</a> that “Americans are now as likely to identify as pro-life (47%) as they are pro-choice (47%). In January of that year, a similar Marist survey found that Americans were more likely to identify as pro-choice than pro-life 55% to 38%, a 17-point gap.” 
What appeared to drive that change was the conversation in the media surrounding former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s (D) indication that he would allow a baby to die after undergoing a botched abortion, as it related to a bill being pushed by state Democrats which would make late-term abortion legal.
“This has been a measure that has been so stable over time. To see that kind of change was surprising,” Barbara Carvalho, who directed the poll <a href="https://www.axios.com/2019/02/25/abortion-rights-marist-poll-pro-life-pro-choice">said</a>. “And the increased discussion [of late-term abortion] in the public forum in the past month appears to have made the biggest difference in how people identify on the issue.”
Though, the question still remains: If the science shows that life begins earlier than the standard set in 1973, and polls indicate that Americans want some restrictions on abortions, then why are Democratic leaders pushing for abortion to remain legal through all nine months of labor? 
Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/schumer-will-hold-another-vote-on-radical-abortion-bill/">announced</a> this month that the Senate would hold a vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that “would establish a right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy in all 50 states,” the National Review noted. Around the same time, Ohio Senate candidate Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) <a href="https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1521986348235866112?s=20&amp;t=K0NxQv8yy8Hqt6dvzs8U5Q">also told </a>the media that abortion should remain legal for all 40 weeks. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1522330619618996225?s=20&amp;t=K0NxQv8yy8Hqt6dvzs8U5Q">even refused </a>to state whether President Joe Biden supported any limits on abortions on Thursday. 
The Democratic Party’s focus appears to have shifted solely to the woman’s right to choose, her bodily autonomy, and her supposed privacy. What is never mentioned in the Left’s defense of such stances is the baby, or their viability. 
Science has indisputably shown that Roe’s standard of viability is outdated. As the field of medicine improves, the ability for babies to survive earlier and earlier outside the womb will also increase. The risk to the mother will decrease. 
The simple fact is that if the Democrats did acknowledge that science has won, that the fetus is not just a lump of cells, then they would have to recognize the fetus for what it is — a human being with the inalienable right to life. That would settle the abortion question once and for all, though this doesn’t seem possible for the Left to accept.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

How Science Has Won The Abortion Debate (And Why Democrats Choose To Ignore It)

Almost 50 years ago, seven men spotted the word “abortion,” written in invisible ink in our nation’s founding Constitution, and in two decisions – Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton – they <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/15/roe-v-wade-fault-line/">destroyed</a> all abortion laws in the 50 states.
It created legal chaos.
They bullied their pro-abortion viewpoint into the law without evidence, a <a href="https://www.scstatehouse.gov/CommitteeInfo/SenateMedicalAffairsCommittee/The_Medical_Assumption_Roe_Clark_Forsythe.pdf">trial</a>, or even any national consensus. They also made possible the deaths of more than <a href="https://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/2022/01/factsheet-reported-annual-abortions-1973-2019/">63 million</a> preborn infants and counting. But according to a leaked <a href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000180-874f-dd36-a38c-c74f98520000">draft</a> of a Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson case that challenged Roe’s extremism, Roe and Doe may soon be historical footnotes.
Despite the frenzied <a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/planned-parenthood-on-supreme-court-leak-our-worst-fears-confirmed-supreme-court-appears-poised-to-overturn-roe">response</a> of the billion-dollar abortion franchise, the sky is not falling (although their profits might). In fact, what happens next is a return of the issue of abortion to the states for a discussion and a debate blocked by the courts for too long. The reason is simple. While abortion is not in the Constitution, states’ rights are.
Roe’s flaws in blocking engagement with people drew even the ire of pro-abortion Justice <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/15/roe-v-wade-fault-line/">Ruth Bader Ginsburg,</a> who, like many people, believed the Supreme Court was mistaken when it bypassed “we the people” and “invited no dialogue with legislators.” It also had no connection to logic or the law.
In 1973, in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/795536">Yale Law Journal</a>, legal luminary John Hart Ely wrote a devastating analysis of Roe’s flaws. Though he supported abortion, he knew Roe and Doe were nonsense.
Ely ridiculed the Supreme Court’s choice for viability as a “magic moment” that offers certain rights for humans without explaining the reasoning behind that unprecedented line in the gestational sand.
The state has a right to make laws, even when humans are not involved. Ely wrote that in fact, “It has never been held or even asserted that the state interest needed to justify forcing a person to refrain from an activity, whether or not that activity is constitutionally protected, must implicate either the life or the constitutional rights of another person. Dogs are not ‘persons in the whole sense’ nor have they constitutional rights, but that does not mean that the state cannot prohibit killing them.” 
 
And that’s an important point, can a state pass laws to protect preborn life? Before 1973, the answer was yes. And we’ve been trying to get back there ever since.
After Roe shut down most discussions of abortion, several cases challenged its iron rule. Not much happened. But in 1992, a case known as <a href="https://www.​inquirer.​com/news/planned-parenthood-v-casey-abortion-ruling-pennsylvania-alito-20220503.html">Planned Parenthood v. Casey</a> cracked open the door for more regulation of abortion.
It’s important to understand that prior to Roe, almost all <a href="https://www.​guttmacher.​org/gpr/2003/03/lessons-roe-will-past-be-prologue">states</a> severely prohibited abortion or limited it to saving a mother’s life. And that’s how it will be again, each state making a choice (and pro-choice is supposed to be good, right?)
Today, 26 <a href="https://nypost.​com/2022/05/03/26-states-where-abortion-will-be-illegal-if-roe-v-wade-falls/">states</a> are ready with limits on the deadly procedure. And Students for Life Action has been working to add even more.
Over the last two years, Students for Life Action has worked in 30 states, to rebuild protections for life with an emphasis on early abortion — as more than 9 in 10 abortions take place by 12 weeks, according to the <a href="https://www.​cdc.​gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/abortion.htm">CDC</a>. As we <a href="https://www.​washingtonpost.​com/nation/2022/05/02/abortion-ban-roe-supreme-court-mississippi/">said</a> to members of Congress just this week, “If we are not focusing on limiting early abortions, we are not really addressing the violence of abortion at all.”
One example is Heartbeat <a href="https://studentsforlife.​org/2022/02/07/life-is-up-in-texas-thanks-heartbeat-bill/">legislation</a> that protects humans with the universal sign of life. We’ve also worked to ban online, no test distribution of <a href="https://thisischemicalabortion.​com/">Chemical Abortion Pills</a> that can leave women injured, infertile, and even <a href="https://thefederalist.​com/2022/01/12/injury-infertility-and-death-from-chemical-abortions-are-a-ok-with-the-fda/">dead</a> – and that now are used to commit at least 54% of all <a href="https://www.​guttmacher.​org/article/2022/02/medication-abortion-now-accounts-more-half-all-us-abortions">abortion</a>. And we’ve championed a Protection at Conception <a href="https://www.​studentsforlifeaction.​org/protection-at-conception-pledge/">initiative</a>.
While we work to protect life in law, we also work to protect life in service. For SFLA, that means our Standing with You <a href="https://www.​standingwithyou.​org/">initiative</a> that connects women with vital resources. The pro-life movement has always prioritized caring for women and their children, born and preborn as our hallmark achievement. As noted at a pro-life coalition event on <a href="https://studentsforlife.​org/2022/02/14/the-pro-life-movement-to-women-happy-valentines-day/">Valentine’s Day</a>, “We live in a country with about 3,000 pregnancy resource centers and approximately 400 maternity homes, offering free services and tangible support to women and their families during pregnancy and motherhood.”
While the pro-life movement is making plans to expand legal protections for the preborn and their mothers, as well as adding supportive services for them, others prepare to bring abortion violence to the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/05/03/abortion-rights-protests-supreme-court-leak/9628280002/">streets</a>.
As I wrote in <a href="https://www.​newsweek.​com/roe-almost-50-whats-next-abortion-america-opinion-1669557">Newsweek</a>, pro-life work today means being ready for ugly confrontations.
Threats and acts of violence against pro-life activists are becoming increasingly common. Students for Life students and team members have endured everything from <a href="https://www.​youtube.​com/watch?v=qxtrYrwy6a8">physical</a> <a href="https://www.​studentsforlifeaction.​org/female-team-member-punched-at-supreme-court/">attacks</a> and <a href="https://www.​foxnews.​com/opinion/pro-choice-instigators-crossing-the-line-from-harassment-into-dehumanization">arson</a> to <a href="https://studentsforlife.​org/2019/09/19/horrible-pro-choicer-creates-bomb-scare/">bomb threats</a> and <a href="https://www.​campusreform.​org/?ID=10753">intimidation</a>, making security <a href="https://www.​wsj.​com/articles/campus-censorship-hits-pro-lifers-hard-1526942093">issues</a> a vital concern and expense for pro-life events. When Justice <a href="https://www.​newsweek.​com/topic/brett-kavanaugh">Brett Kavanaugh</a> — who was seen as a possible pro-life vote — was confirmed to the Supreme Court, protestors stormed the Court, <a href="https://www.​nbcnews.​com/politics/supreme-court/protests-build-capitol-hill-ahead-brett-kavanaugh-vote-n917351">banging</a> on the doors. Outside the <a>U.​S.​,</a> violent protests broke out in <a href="https://abcnews.​go.​com/Health/wireStory/polish-court-seals-divisive-ruling-tighten-abortion-law-75517953">Poland</a> and <a href="https://www.​cnn.​com/2021/09/29/americas/latin-american-abortion-rights-protests-intl/index.html">Latin America</a> when those countries contemplated pro-life policies. Black-clad demonstrators have protested my own speaking <a href="https://www.​christianpost.​com/news/antifa-protests-christian-fascist-students-for-life-president-kristen-hawkins.html">tours</a> and recently the Chicago <a href="https://www.​breitbart.​com/faith/2022/01/09/antifa-counter-protest-at-march-for-life-chicago/">March for Life</a>.
But as I travel across the country on behalf of an organization that operates in all 50 states, I find courageous Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Y ready to take their place on the front lines to make abortion unthinkable and unimaginable. Their love is fierce and focused, and they&#8217;re ready to vote pro-life first.
On the other side, all they have is the deliberate ending of innocent life – for profit &#8212; hidden behind talking points. But if your “healthcare” kills people on purpose, you’re doing it wrong.
Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America &amp; Students for Life Action with more than 1,250 groups on educational campuses in all 50 states. Follow her <a href="https://urldefense.​proofpoint.​com/v2/url?u=https-3A__twitter.com_kristanhawkins-3Flang-3Den&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=uw6TLu4hwhHdiGJOgwcWD4AjKQx6zvFcGEsbfiY9-EI&amp;r=WKaH1vFYj7fnFkioUplDf7eyhgA7RmadhwSCcSrc0RM&amp;m=dHI_zRo_S3dRh6O1egAGUHYM_18mGpBuGK8It87dRisKAAJrwoa3rFwiFjVpnjST&amp;s=myYGkzRy3aGLQAHFyLQS37EvikCgueFLdMXfbF_VAW8&amp;e=">@KristanHawkins</a> or subscribe to her podcast, Explicitly Pro-Life.

Roe v Wade

The Real Work Begins After Roe V Wade Is Overturned

Roe v. Wade's Long And Brutal Legacy

Supreme Court

Until just a few years ago, I was ambivalently pro-choice. I subscribed to the idea that if you truly want to encourage female empowerment and support limited government, promoting safe, legal, and rare abortions was the logical and philosophically consistent conclusion. 
However, due to the undeniable realities of what abortion actually is, I could never say that this conclusion was morally sound, so I took the easy way out and stayed above the fray, choosing to not touch the issue.
That choice became increasingly difficult when I enrolled as a student at one of the most left-leaning universities in the country: UCLA. Abortion and a “woman’s right to choose” were daily topics of passionate conversation, and I soon realized that the people I was surrounded by didn’t believe that legal abortion should be rare, as I had assumed. They were actively and unapologetically pro-abortion.
Young women on campus preached that abortion itself was an act of empowerment. My sorority sisters chose to use abortion as a casual form of birth control. Professors and students alike presented weak, biologically incorrect arguments on the dispensability of fetuses.
Everywhere I turned, I was faced with the fact that the pro-choice movement was not about limiting government and promoting individual choice. Instead, I saw that it was fueled by a false sense of empowerment and a blatant disregard for personal responsibility, and it was this realization that sparked the three-pronged process of dismantling my already vulnerable conviction. 
To begin, if there is anything that I value as much as individual freedom, it’s accountability. I hold myself to immeasurably high standards with an almost radical kind of responsibility for my life. Given this, I realized that there was no way I could logically hold these values while simultaneously excusing irresponsible sexual behavior that would lead to the murder of unborn children. 
Supporting this conclusion is the fact that over <a href="https://www.hli.org/resources/why-women-abort/">96% of abortions</a> take place due to social or economic reasons — also known as out of convenience. 
Second of all, I was awakened to the fact that in all my attempts to support the individual rights of pregnant women, I had blatantly ignored the rights of another individual: the unborn child. How could I argue that I was pro-choice on the basis of liberty if my conclusion was infringing upon not just the rights, but the very existence of another individual? And more importantly, an individual with no representation who played no role in creating the situation?
Finally, I learned that abortion was considered for my own life. Stuck in an unhappy marriage on the path to divorce, my father concluded that abortion should be the solution to the unplanned, unwanted pregnancy that was me. Despite an unknown marital future, my mother fought back. 
However, it didn’t end with that. My father’s demands were the catalyst for my mom searching her own convictions and changing her long-held libertarian, pro-choice stance. With me, the issue had become personal, and she delved deeper into the moral questions surrounding abortion.
As selfish as it might sound, learning that someone believed my own life could be disposable was the coup de grâce for my transition.
Obviously, leaving behind my pro-choice convictions — as weak as they were — did not happen overnight. This is a nuanced, complex issue that should be approached with empathy and from the perspective of thoughtful, moral reflection. 
The harsh reality of abortion, the murder of an unborn child, should not keep people from approaching the subject of unwanted pregnancies with grace, support, and solutions for women who find themselves in difficult situations.
This is an issue of morality, not a cheap political game.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Brett Cooper

I Was Ambivalently Pro Choice. Then I Learned A Harsh Truth.

On Thursday, April 7, I drove downtown in the rain to an abortion clinic run by Dr. Cesare Santangelo, an abortionist accused of using gruesome techniques to end the lives of unborn babies.
I can&#8217;t stop thinking about what I saw.
I have been asking officials for answers and explanations all week — the D.C. Medical Examiner, Mayor Muriel Bowser, the Metropolitan Police Department, Washington Surgi-Clinic, Curtis Bay Medical Waste Facility, Planned Parenthood Baltimore City Center, the Department of Health and Human Services.
But no one will address why a box, allegedly containing 110 pulverized 1st-trimester babies and five premie-sized babies, was about to be sent from Washington Surgi-Clinic to Curtis Bay Medical Waste Facility (a facility that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/eq-dc-area-waste-facility-swears-it-doesnt-incinerate-fetal-remains-amid-discovery-of-aborted-babies">continues to insist to me</a>, ignoring photographs of its labeling on the box of aborted babies, that it does not burn fetal remains).
Officials <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/04/01/lauren-handy-dc-abortion-fetuses/">have said</a> that autopsies will not be performed. Authorities will not address whether the five babies were alive when they were extracted.
The only interest that D.C. officials have seemingly shown in this matter is whether members of a pro-life group, the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), committed a crime when they took a box of aborted fetal remains from a dolly outside Washington Surgi-Clinic.
PAAU told me that they asked the driver of a Curtis Bay Medical Waste truck if they could take the box to give the babies a proper funeral, and that he agreed, noting that he had already scanned the box into the system and its disappearance would likely go unnoticed.
Live Action <a href="https://twitter.com/LilaGraceRose/status/1509994640170172418">photographed these five babies</a>. Pro-life <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/d-c-authorities-wont-autopsy-recovered-bodies-of-these-aborted-babies-police-are-hiding-barbaric-crimes-pro-lifers-say">medical professionals and experts</a> who examined the photographs estimated that they were in the end of the 2nd trimester or in the 3rd trimester when they were aborted. (Warning: Posts contain graphic and disturbing images.)
This week, GOP lawmakers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gop-lawmakers-demand-d-c-doj-investigate-bodies-of-aborted-babies-uncovered-by-pro-life-activists">called</a> on Mayor Bowser and the Department of Justice to investigate the abortions of the five babies and &#8220;to preserve all of the children’s remains as evidence and conduct autopsies.”
And yet, D.C. officials remain silent.
Then came Thursday morning.
Frustrated with the lack of responses, I drove to abortionist Dr. Cesare Santangelo&#8217;s million-dollar home. When no one answered the door, I drove to his abortion clinic, located on the fourth floor of a Foggy Bottom office building near George Washington University.
He&#8217;s practiced in Washington Surgi-Clinic for decades, despite <a href="https://www.gilmanbedigian.com/medical-malpractice-suit-in-washington-dc-involving-death-of-mother-following-a-miscarriage/">multiple complaints of medical malpractice</a> and allegations that he uses gruesome abortion techniques and allows babies to die after surviving abortions.
One lawsuit <a href="https://www.gilmanbedigian.com/medical-malpractice-suit-in-washington-dc-involving-death-of-mother-following-a-miscarriage/">accused him</a> of bungling the removal of a baby so badly that fetal debris ended up in the lungs of the mother, who died.
I noticed a sign on the door of the clinic warning visitors that they would be turned away without a mask. Hesitant to go in without one, I paused for a moment to search my purse, and at that moment, a young woman emerged from the clinic followed by a man whom I believed to be her boyfriend.
She looked stressed, but I was focused on talking to Santangelo, so I went inside and asked the girl behind the desk for a mask.
She was friendly, asking as she handed me a mask, &#8220;Do you have an appointment?&#8221;
&#8220;No,&#8221; I told her. I recognized her voice from the many times I had called the clinic. &#8220;I&#8217;m looking for Dr. Santangelo. I think you and I chatted on the phone earlier. I&#8217;m a reporter with The Daily Wire and I have some questions for him. I&#8217;d love to talk to you, too!&#8221;
Her face immediately changed. &#8220;He&#8217;s not here right now,&#8221; she said.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s true,&#8221; I told her, glancing around at the waiting room full of patients.
But the clinic worker insisted that she could tell me nothing and that all press inquiries must go through the National Abortion Federation, which is handling the abortion clinic&#8217;s publicity amid scrutiny (they also have not responded to my many requests for comment).
A second woman who worked at the clinic came out of her office and firmly told me that they would not give me any answers. They both seemed worried about what I would say in front of the patients gathered in the waiting room.
I reminded the clinic workers that the Metropolitan Police Department, Republican senators, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are all involved in the happenings of the last few weeks.
If the clinic and Santangelo had done nothing wrong, sharing their perspective with media could only help, I offered.
They refused to tell me anything, and so I left.
But the young woman who was leaving when I walked in the door was still in the hallway. She appeared to be in great distress, leaning on the wall, heaving and moaning.
The man with her looked up when I came out, and I could see pain and anxiety written all over his face. His eyes were red. I briefly wondered if he would be angry with me if I spoke to the woman.
&#8220;Is everything okay?&#8221; I asked, taken aback.
The woman nodded and attempted to smile at me, straightening up. She was very pregnant; I believe she was in her second trimester.
I asked her what she was doing at the clinic, and she told me, &#8220;I&#8217;m here for an abortion.&#8221;
In confusion, I looked at her rounded stomach, protruding firmly from her t-shirt.
&#8220;Did you already get it?&#8221; I asked.
&#8220;No,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It&#8217;s happening right now.&#8221;
&#8220;Right now?&#8221; I repeated, glancing back and forth between the couple as the mother leaned with one hand on the wall, clearly in pain.
&#8220;They took the tubes out,&#8221; she responded breathlessly. She was writhing in pain.
I immediately understood her to mean laminaria sticks, often made out of seaweed, which abortionists use to dilate a woman&#8217;s cervix.
Dr. Ingrid Skop, senior fellow and director of medical affairs at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, tells me that the laminaria absorbs the water from the cervix and helps the cervix to dilate, making it easier for the abortionist to &#8220;reach in&#8221; to the uterus &#8220;blindly with surgical instruments and remove the baby in a piecemeal fashion&#8221; in a dilation and evacuation dismemberment abortion.
Former abortionist Kathi Aultman, now an associate scholar with the Charlotte Lozier Institute, told me it&#8217;s likely that the young woman I encountered would be heading into an induction abortion since she was in the hallway.
If she were going to be having a dilation and evacuation abortion, Aultman said, the doctor would take the laminaria out at the beginning of the procedure while she was in the stirrups.
In such an induction abortion, the doctor usually injects the baby with digoxin or potassium chloride when he puts the laminaria in, then waits a day or two for the baby to die before inducing the abortion. But the baby does not always die, Aultman told me, and if the doctor does not reach in and cut the umbilical cord before the baby is induced, that baby can be born alive.
Since I have become all too familiar with these types of procedures over the past few days, the thought that the young woman I saw was about to undergo these types of abortions flashed through my mind as I stood there in the hallway.
I also thought of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/under-fire-abortionist-in-2012-we-would-not-help-baby-born-alive">recordings I had just carefully watched</a>, purportedly showing Santangelo admitting that he has had patients who still delivered their babies after the abortionist inserted the laminaria to dilate them.
&#8220;They got some contractions and they panicked, and they were in Virginia at the hospital, they went to the hospital, because they had some pain, instead of calling me,&#8221; he said in recordings taken by an undercover Live Action activist. “And the hospital helped them to deliver. Which was the stupidest thing they could have done.&#8221;
As I stood there in the doorway, before I had an opportunity to speak to the young woman or even process what was going on, the abortion clinic worker stuck her head out of the door.
&#8220;Don&#8217;t talk to her!&#8221; she yelled at the woman and man beside me. &#8220;Come inside. Come inside.&#8221;
&#8220;She doesn&#8217;t want you to talk to me because I&#8217;m a reporter,&#8221; I told the couple. They did not seem too concerned about this, but as the woman continued to order them inside, shouting over me, they began to go.
I urged them to reach out to me through The Daily Wire if they wanted to talk. The woman nodded, and the door closed behind them. I stood in the hallway a moment, bewildered by the brief interaction.
Then I got in the elevator and went down to the lobby and out into the rain, overcome by the thought that the woman upstairs, in so much pain and distress, was aborting her unborn baby.
And that the abortionist ending the life of her baby does so while D.C. officials go about their business, ignoring questions and calls for action from lawmakers, activists, and press, hoping this messy little abortion situation will go away without making any more trouble.
I ran through the brief conversation with the woman at the clinic in my head, wondering what I should have said, whether I should have asked her if she actually wanted to go through with it. I called a friend and broke down, crying. I then called my editor, who was also shaken by the story, came home, and sat down to write.
<h3>Cesare Santangelo</h3>
Pro-life activists like the Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising believe that Santangelo has been allowing living babies born alive through his botched abortions to die in his clinic, suggesting he is violating the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/108th-congress/senate-bill/3">prohibits physicians from performing</a> partial-birth abortions except when the mother’s life is in danger, and the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.
Their claims stem in part from undercover videos in which Live Action <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxOWyumLufA">recorded Santangelo discussing</a> how he would allow babies to die if they were accidentally delivered during abortions.
In the Live Action video, Santangelo is shown telling a woman (the Live Action investigator), who is 24 weeks pregnant, that her baby is the size of her hand and that he hoped to get the baby out &#8220;intact,&#8221; noting that “it doesn’t always happen that way.”
“I cut the umbilical cord first, wait for the baby to expire, and then we do it that way,” he says in the video.
The Live Action investigator asked Santangelo a leading question about whether the baby might &#8220;move&#8221; if it were born alive, prompting the abortionist to explain again, “That’s why I try and sever the umbilical cord first, and we wait for that to stop pulsing, and this way the fetus is expired first, so it doesn’t.”
“Has it ever survived?” asked the Live Action investigator. Santangelo told her &#8220;no, not here,&#8221; but noted “usually at this point in your pregnancy it is too early to survive, usually, it will expire shortly after birth.”
“But if it did, what would happen,” the investigator asked. “Like, would I have to take it home, or like —”
“I mean technically, legally, we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive,” he responded. “But you know, it probably wouldn’t. It’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point.”
“When you have a pregnancy that is 23, 24 weeks … if you do everything possible to help it survive, there’s a maybe a 20-30% chance that it would survive,” he said. “If you don’t do anything then, you know, the chances are much, much less.”
&#8220;There are things you can do&#8221; to make sure the baby does not survive, he added.
“Obviously, you’re here for a certain procedure, and if your pregnancy were — let’s say you went into labor, the membranes ruptured, and you delivered before we got to the termination of the procedure here,&#8221; he explained. “Then we would do things, we would not help it.&#8221;
&#8220;We wouldn’t intubate, let’s say,” he explained, noting that he “wouldn’t do any extra,” comparing letting the baby die to letting a terminal person die. “Like a ‘do not resuscitate’ order,” he added.
Santangelo noted that if the mother were in a hospital in Virginia and went into labor and medical professionals saw her deliver her baby, they would do everything to help her baby survive.
“But you won’t?” the mother questioned.
“We wouldn’t here,” he answered.
“That’s happened before,” Santangelo noted. “We’ve had patients that, you know, on the second day of the laminaria, they got some contractions and they panicked, and they were in Virginia at the hospital, they went to the hospital, because they had some pain, instead of calling me.”
“And the hospital helped them to deliver,” he continued. “Which was the stupidest thing they could have done &#8230; and they did everything they [inaudible] have done, which was help them to deliver.”
Washington Surgi-Clinic would not discuss this with me over email or in person.
MPD would not comment on Santangelo or his past comments, citing “the ongoing nature of this investigation.”
<h3>&#8220;Nothing Will Be Done&#8221;</h3>
Not everyone is afraid to speak on this matter. I&#8217;ve spoken with lawmakers as well as pro-life activists.
Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy told me Wednesday that ideologically-motivated D.C. officials are unlikely to do anything about the discovery of the baby bodies.
“These children were murdered by abortion,” he continued. “Some of them, it appears, were killed outside the already too-permissive bounds of the law. Unfortunately, we know that nothing will be done.”
&#8220;Unsurprisingly,&#8221; he added, &#8220;D.C. has already announced that it would not perform autopsies to see if any of the children in question were murdered outside of the womb — a violation of The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.&#8221;
I have repeatedly asked the D.C. Medical Examiner and Bowser&#8217;s office to address why autopsies will not be performed, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/04/01/lauren-handy-dc-abortion-fetuses/">as The Washington Post reported</a>.
According to Aultman, who reviewed photographs of the aborted babies, “Baby Girl #1” was aborted in either the late 2nd or early 3rd trimester and likely had a decent chance at survival at her gestational age and size.
Live Action posted photographs of “<a href="https://twitter.com/LilaGraceRose/status/1509996789943918602">Baby Girl #1</a>” on Twitter. (Warning: Posts contain graphic and disturbing images.)
“She has some bruising of the face and some maceration of the skin, which could be consistent with death prior to the abortion,” Aultman explained. “She appears intact and completely normal except for trauma to the neck, possibly from traction applied during the attempt to deliver the head.”
“There appears to be an incision at the base of the skull, and the head has been decompressed by removing the brain,” Alutmann continued. “This is consistent with an Intact [dilation and evacuation] or [dilation and extraction]. If the baby was alive at the start of this procedure, it would be considered a Partial Birth Abortion and would be illegal.”
Dr. Kendra Kolb, a neonatologist, also agreed that Baby Girl #1 appears to be between 28-30 weeks, noting “evidence of deep lacerations to the posterior neck which presumably correlates to the method of abortion used to end her life.”
“Baby Girl #2” was in the second trimester and was dismembered through a dilation and evacuation dismemberment abortion, both Aultman and Kolb agreed.
“She has evidence of both dismemberment of her upper extremity, decapitation, and organ evisceration as the result of this unimaginably brutal procedure,” said Kolb.
Live Action also posted photographs of “<a href="https://twitter.com/LilaGraceRose/status/1509997795461283864">Baby Girl #2</a>” on Twitter. (Warning: Posts contain graphic and disturbing images.)
“Her head has been crushed or possibly decompressed using suction inserted through an incision in the skull,” Aultman said. “Her skin is macerated, and her tissues appear grey, consistent with death prior to the abortion. She appears completely normal and was aborted using the [dilation and evacuation] technique, also known as dismemberment abortion.”
Lauren Handy and Terrisa Bukovinac, both members of PAAU, told me this week that they believe that Santangelo has a history of &#8220;sloppy,&#8221; &#8220;cheap&#8221; abortions.
Bukovinac described opening a large bucket and discovering &#8220;Baby Boy #1,&#8221; who PAAU named Christopher X, &#8220;a beautiful 30+ week baby boy with hair on his head.&#8221; She believes that he was most likely born alive.
“We’ve long known Santangelo is too cheap to use feticide and the chances of a baby this advanced in gestational age being delivered whole without the use of feticide is extremely high,&#8221; she explained.
Handy said that another one of the babies injuries are &#8220;consistent with what we’d expect from a partial-birth abortion which is a federal crime.&#8221;
&#8220;Santangelo has a history of being sloppy, facing wrongful death lawsuits, and ignoring the law,&#8221; she said.

I Went To The Clinic Of The DC Abortionist Accused Of Gruesome Crimes. Here’s What I Saw.

I Went To The Clinic Of The D.C. Abortionist Accused Of Gruesome Crimes. Here’s What I Saw.

Washington D.C.

When Rebekah decided to have an abortion, she turned to Google.  It was easy for her to find an abortion provider, where she was given two pills that would terminate her pregnancy.  She took the first one, then changed her mind, choosing to keep her baby.  So she turned to Google again and found information about Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) treatment.  A doctor prescribed hormone therapy, and she was able to stop the abortion process and <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/abortion-pill-reversal-son-may-never-born/">save her child</a>.  
Rebekah’s son, now seven, is one of some <a href="https://www.heartbeatinternational.org/our-work/apr">2,500 children</a> born to mothers who have changed their minds midway through the abortion-by-pill process.  Although APR treatment involves an FDA-approved and regularly-prescribed hormone &#8212;<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30831017/"> progesterone</a> &#8212; it’s far less widely known than medical abortion itself.  Google would like to keep it that way.  The Big Tech giant <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/google-live-action-pro-life-groups-ads-unproven-medical-claims">has banned</a> ads promoting APR from its platform, restricting access to this life-saving treatment from women seeking to make informed decisions about their health &#8211; and the lives of their children.
This is more than just another assault by a tech company against free speech, which sadly happens too often.  This time, Big Tech has taken a stand against the preservation of life by withholding information that could save it.  And they’re doing it for cynical political reasons.
Pro-life groups like my organization, <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/">Live Action</a>, had been running hundreds of thousands of ads directing women to an APR hotline that can provide them with the healthcare information needed to save their baby’s life and then connect them with a local doctor who can help.  For months, Google approved these ads and ran them regularly.  Then a pro-abortion group calling itself the “Center Against Digital Hate” got involved. They launched a <a href="https://www.counterhate.com/endangeringwomen">dishonest, anti-science attack on APR</a> and demanded Google stop running these ads. Nobody seemed at all curious about why a group whose stated goal is to prevent online hate speech takes such offense at an ad that offers an alternative health care option to women, or what their real agenda might be.
Google did not contact Live Action to ask for further information, or for scientific corroboration of the medical efficacy of APR.  Instead, they apologized to CCDH and took down the educational ads explaining that they now violated Google&#8217;s policy against “unreliable claims”. 
The only thing “unreliable” is Google’s capricious advertising policy.  They continue to advertise the dangerous abortion pill, not to mention even more dubious so-called health products.  From magical supplements that alleviate joint pain to copper-infused socks, Google has no issue with targeting ads to sick and vulnerable people seeking relief &#8211; practices that helped the company rake in more than <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/05/18/how-does-google-make-money-advertising-business-breakdown-.html">$145 billion in ad revenue last year</a>.  Yet, women can’t view information about abortion pill reversal &#8211; a treatment that is safe, scientifically sound, and most importantly, effective at saving the life of a preborn child. 
Every child saved by APR is one that escapes the fate of the <a href="https://2363.org/">2,363 babies aborted every day</a> in America.  That’s the equivalent of four elementary schools or 72 school busses.  That horrific statistic is a sign of our country’s moral decay, but it’s also a sign of the booming abortion industry, and its grisly work being aided by Big Tech ads.  Google isn’t the only one censoring APR ads.  Live Action has had our ads similarly <a href="https://youtu.be/xRyYdsqLBqU">rejected by Twitter</a> and our organization blocked altogether by <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/pinterest-bans-live-action">Pinterest</a>, while these tech giants continue advertising abortion providers.
There should be no harm in letting women know they have choices.  If they chose to have a medical abortion, they can choose to stop it.  The motivation behind Google’s decision to keep that information from them lies in a desire to censor the very idea that abortion can be regrettable.  The fact that some women may dare to change their minds runs counter to the abortion industry’s efforts to present abortion as a simple act of “healthcare”.
But it seems the abortion industry and their powerful allies are nervous. The pro-life movement is gaining ground.  In December, the Supreme Court will hear a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/mississippi-asks-supreme-court-to-end-roe-v-wade-abortion-rights-11626985810">critical case</a> that could likely reverse the constitutional fiction created by Roe v. Wade.  What do proponents of abortion do when they see the Roe regime under threat? They use the institutions at their command, including Big Tech allies like Google &#8211; a gatekeeper of information for every individual with internet access &#8211; to censor opposing ideas.
That’s not the mark of an institution committed to free expression.  It’s the mark of an institution afraid that the moral bankruptcy animating its leadership, its culture, and most of its employees and the politicians they support will be exposed by courageous, informed women who dare to reject abortion and embrace life. 
Lila Rose is the President and Founder of Live Action.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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