Year in Review: Combating throwaway culture | WORLD – WORLD News Group

A new pro-abortion White House administration at the beginning of 2021 ended four years of simple but important executive-level advances for the pro-life movement. President Joe Biden swiftly reversed many of former President Donald Trumps pro-life policies. But the lasting victory of Trumps conservative Supreme Court picks brought hopes for the end of Roe v. Wade. Tensions increased at the state level as pro-life lawmakers reacted to a national political climate that is hostile to unborn babies. Meanwhile, abortion and euthanasia advanced internationally.

Two days after his inauguration, President Biden releaseda statement pledging to codify a womans right to abortion into law. That promise hasnt been fulfilled yet, but his administration has done plenty to chip away at protections for babies.

In January, Biden signeda presidential memorandum revoking the Mexico City policy, which had prevented federal funds from going to international health groups that offer abortions. That same memorandum also removed the United States from the Geneva Consensus, an international pro-life declaration, and initiated the process of reversing Trumps Title X rule that kept abortion providers from getting federal family planning dollars.

In April, Bidens Food and Drug Administration dealt another blow, announcingit would not enforce the requirement for providers to dispense the abortion pill in person. That opened the floodgates for pro-abortion websites to continue sending abortive drugs to women through the mail. Bidens administration in the following months continued to publicize its stance on abortion, releasingin June a $6 trillion budget proposal without the Hyde Amendment, a long-standing measure keeping taxpayer money from funding the abortion industry.

Abortion advocates werent satisfied with those advances. The advocacy group We Testify complained that it took the Biden administration 224 days to use the word abortion in a notable public statement. We dont need more evasive statements from the White House that further stigmatize abortion, the group said on its website.

Effectively shut out at the federal level but simultaneously empowered by Trumps conservative judicial nominees, pro-life activists changedtactics and focused their attention on state legislation.

The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute called the 2021 legislative session the most damaging to the pro-abortion cause in decades. By April 29, states had introduced536 pro-life bills, and 61 had become law. By the same time in 2011, the previous record-holding year, states had enacted only 42 pro-life laws.

Arkansas in March passedone of the strongest bills, protecting even babies conceived through rape or incest, with an exception if a pregnancy threatens a womans life. Gov. Asa Hutchinson acknowledged that the law defied Supreme Court precedent but said, It is the intent of the legislation to set the stage for the Supreme Court overturning current case law.

The pro-life law that made the biggest waves passed in Texas two months later. Using a controversial enforcement mechanism, it protects babies from abortions once they have a detectable heartbeat, typically at around six weeks of gestation. The law went live in September and reportedly halvedthe number of abortions in the state. Thats causedan influx of clients at some of the states pregnancy centers, where staff have seen women sometimes angry, sometimes relievedthat they cant get an abortion after the first few weeks of pregnancy. The Supreme Court has allowedthe law to remain in effect as legal battles continue in the lower courts. Lawmakers in South Carolina also passed a heartbeat law in February, but that one hasnt gone into effect due to ongoing litigation.

In the fall, lawsuits over the Texas heartbeat law made a mad dash to the Supreme Court, which held oral arguments exactly two months after the rule went into effect. But the hearings focusedon technicalitiesjust a sideshow to the main abortion-related event in the high court this year.

The Supreme Court shocked pro-life and pro-abortion activists alike when it announced in May that it would take up Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, the case of a Mississippi law protecting babies from abortion after 15 weeks of gestation. The justices agreed to consider whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitchs July brief called on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and give back to states the power to regulate abortion before the point in pregnancy when a baby can survive outside the womb.

Pro-life activists sawthe courts agreement to hear the case as a signal of potential willingness to scrap its messy, decades-old abortion precedent. Pro-abortion activists thought the same, but with apprehension: Organizers of the 2021 Womens March rebrandedthe nationwide October demonstrations as abortion justice marches, a response to the Texas heartbeat law and the arguments in Dobbs.

In oral arguments on Dec. 1, the more moderate justices implied a willingness to go against Roes precedent and allow the Mississippi law to stand. If nothing else, one pro-abortion attorneys reference to a baby demonstratedthe effect ultrasound technology has had on the national conscience.

In an amicus brief filed in the Dobbs case, South African Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng for the United Nations warned that overturning Roecould have catastrophic implications for so-called abortion rights throughout the world. We know that politically that what happens in the United States does have an impact in precedents elsewhere in the world, Mofokeng toldThe Guardian.

Pro-life groups in Latin America have felt the reality of that statement in the past year, but not in the way that concerned Mofokeng. In the final days of 2020, Argentina becamethe largest Latin American country to legalize abortion. Pro-lifers blamed the change on international monetary pressure and political pressure. Some speculated that the timing of the bills passage corresponded with the results of the U.S. election when it became clear the new Biden administration would support international abortion groups financially.

In September, the Mexican Supreme Court issuedrulings that will prevent Mexican states from enforcing pro-life laws and make it easier to pass pro-abortion ones. The timing of that case coincided with meetings between Mexican government officials and pro-abortion U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

But at least one pro-life victory cameto Latin America in 2021: Honduras passed a bipartisan constitutional amendment to prevent lawmakers from legalizing abortion in the future. Pro-lifers there expect pressure from the United States to reverse the countrys position, but it would take a difficult three-fourths majority in the National Congress.

In a September radio interview, Pope Francis coupledabortion with euthanasia as signs of throwaway culture, calling the increasing legalization of euthanasia one of the tragedies of todays European culture.

This year, the Portuguese parliament twice passedlegislation that would legalize euthanasia in the country, but that bill has been held up for months by presidential vetoes and concerns from the countrys Constitutional Court. The practice advancedwith more ease elsewhere. Between March and September, three of the six Australian states legalized euthanasia for people with terminal illnesses. The country expects a vote over a bill in New South Wales, the only remaining state without legal euthanasia, in early 2022.

Spain in March also legalizedeuthanasia but leaped down the slippery slope, allowing the procedure even for people who arent about to die but who are suffering from a serious, chronic illness. In Canada, where euthanasia has been legal for terminally ill people since 2016, a new bill passed that removes the requirement for a patients death to be reasonably foreseeable. People with disabilities in the country worry this change in the law will make it easier for culture to throw them away when they become inconvenient.

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Year in Review: Combating throwaway culture | WORLD - WORLD News Group