NEWSWEEK

State Representatives Levi Dean and Johnathan Newman introduced the Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act on Wednesday. The bill would grant legal protections from the moment of fertilization, meaning abortion would be treated as homicide, in a challenge to an abortion rights amendment to the State Constitution that voters approved in 2023.

While Republicans in Ohio have historically passed abortion restrictions and bans, legislation in the past has been aimed at penalizing abortion providers rather than the people who have them.

PROBLEMATIC with SARAH STOCK

Sarah Stock speaks with Ben Zeisloft, the communications director for the Foundation to Abolish Abortion. The two discuss the “second victim narrative” prevalent in the pro-life movement and whether or not women should be penalized for abortion.

CINCINNATI ENQUIRER

Reps. Levi Dean, R-Xenia, and Johnathan Newman, R-Troy, are introducing the “Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act.” The bill would treat abortion like homicide by granting criminal and civil protections from the point of fertilization. The bill also seeks to end in vitro fertilization, where an egg and sperm are fertilized outside the body, and could affect some contraception.

“IVF thrives on its ability to treat human beings as something lesser,” said Austin Beigel, president of End Abortion Ohio. “When you do identify all human beings as people under the law, what will happen is IVF will effectively end itself.”

ABC NEWS

Republican lawmakers in Ohio are planning on introducing a bill on Wednesday that would ban almost all abortions and criminalize the procedure. The “Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act” would overturn the amendment to the Ohio constitution, voted on in 2023, that establishes “an individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion” before viability.

“In many times in our country’s history, the majority of people have desired evil things. We have discriminated horribly against the Black man and woman, and people wanted that,” he continued. “So, I have no qualms about saying I oppose the majority of the will of the people when the people desire something that is evil.”

THE INDEPENDENT

Representatives Levi Dean and Johnathan Newman are set to introduce the "Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act” on Wednesday, which would classify abortion as homicide. Austin Beigel, founder of End Abortion Ohio, told The Independent the bill will “make a positive affirmation of the personhood of the pre-born.”

In 2023, Ohio residents voted to enshrine abortion access in the state Constitution. Since then, judges have struck down legislation that seeks to limit or ban abortion access despite the amendment.

THE WESTERN JOURNAL

Rather than casting all women as victims, we should simply state that anyone who willfully partakes in the death of a preborn baby has committed murder, whether that person was the father, the mother, or a third-party abortionist. When pro-life entities deny that simple position, they not only act inconsistently with their professed belief that abortion is murder, but they create a blanket license to murder a baby, so long as the mother herself is the murderer.

We either believe that abortion is murder, or we do not. We either believe that preborn babies are image-bearers of God, or we do not. We either want to abolish abortion, or we do not. Walsh and other conservatives are seeing that reality, and pro-life groups should follow suit.

THE WESTERN JOURNAL

When the Southern Baptists assemble in the coming days in Dallas, they will once more consider how they can oppose the murder of preborn babies in our nation. But in order to most effectively accomplish that task, they may have to disband the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, their own public policy arm, which has shockingly subverted efforts to end abortion.

Southern Baptists want to end abortion across the country. They correctly view preborn babies as image-bearers of God who should be protected by the same laws that protect born people. They have made this stance clear, and yet the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the institution Southern Baptists trust to wield their considerable influence in the public square, has not only been derelict in advancing that stance, but has consciously subverted that stance.

THE SENTINEL

South Carolina Republican State Representative Rob Harris requested a hearing on the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act once state lawmakers return to Columbia next year.

One analysis from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion warned that over 15,000 abortions were conducted by South Carolina residents in 2023: more than 4,800 babies were murdered in the state, another 1,500 were murdered with abortion pills, and 8,700 were murdered out of state.

GIVE ME LIBERTY PODCAST with RYAN HELFENBEIN

Standing for Freedom Center Executive Director Ryan Helfenbein and Bradley Pierce discuss the need to establish equal protection for preborn babies and abolish abortion across America.

THE WESTERN JOURNAL

These lawmakers and lobbyists should have learned that their political four-dimensional chess is already a proven failure, as shown by the passage of Amendment 3 in their deep-red state.

“While many of these Republican lawmakers and pro-life lobbyists may think they are employing prudential strategy in crafting a ballot measure they believe will pass, in the hope of mitigating the evil of Amendment 3, they are violating commands from God to exercise judgment without partiality,” the Foundation to Abolish Abortion added. “They are practicing another kind of child sacrifice by withholding legal protection from some children in the hopes of saving others.”

THE WESTERN JOURNAL

Oklahoma is ostensibly one of the most conservative states in the union, yet over the past several years, Republican lawmakers in the state have failed to truly end abortion.

But when four elected Republicans in the Oklahoma Senate voted against equal protection of the laws for preborn babies earlier this year, they were censured by the Oklahoma Republican Party, signaling that the conservative grassroots have finally had enough of their failure.

TEXAS SCORECARD

House Bill 2197 by State Rep. Brent Money (R–Greenville) was filed to amend Texas’ penal code to treat all abortion-related deaths as homicide. It was originally scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday, April 22, in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee.

Shortly before the scheduled hearing, Chairman John Smithee (R–Amarillo) removed it from the hearing agenda. Planned Parenthood praised this move.

CENTER FOR BAPTIST LEADERSHIP

Some messengers may enter the Annual Meeting in Dallas this year sincerely believing that abortion is a settled issue. Many will come from conservative states that claim to have fully banned abortion after the Supreme Court moved to overturn Roe v. Wade three years ago.

But even though certain states have closed their surgical abortion facilities, there is no state in which abortion has been truly banned. As shown by a report last year from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, baby murder endures in conservative states, especially because of loopholes that allow women to self-induce their abortions with methods such as mail-order abortion pills.

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Planned Parenthood took in nearly $800 million in taxpayer funding as the number of abortions increased and the number of patients remained flat, according to the organization’s annual report released Monday.

Bradley Pierce, president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, connected the increase in abortions to the growing popularity of the abortion pill, which now accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. elective pregnancy terminations. “This aligns with a broader increase in abortions across the United States over the past few years, which appears to be driven by abortion pills and other self-induced abortion methods,” he said.

THE ELIJAH HAAHR SHOW

Former Missouri House Speaker Elijah Haahr and Bradley Pierce discuss several Republicans voting present on HB 1072 and HB 1417, which would have abolished abortion in Missouri.

While some anti-abortion groups were celebratory, others hinted that the closure was at best a symbolic victory. Bradley Pierce, president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, told Blaze News, “Whether or not they are forced to close by the laws in any particular state, we can expect more surgical abortion facilities to shut their doors in the coming years. That is largely because of the increasing popularity of abortion pills and other methods of self-induced abortion.”

While the number of such facilities is dwindling, Pierce noted that since Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortions have gone up “generally due to the increasing popularity of abortion pills, which have become the primary method of abortion in the United States. Even in conservative states where clinics have closed, women are still ordering and taking abortion pills.”

NPR

Because they believe laws that protect abortion access to be morally illegitimate, activists are even working in states where they have extremely low chances of success. In Missouri, for example, legislators have introduced an abolitionist bill, though a majority of voters enshrined a right to abortion in the constitution. Bradley Pierce, president of a Texas-based nonprofit called the Foundation to Abolish Abortion (FAA), called the Missouri amendment “null and void.”

“We are relying on the principle of higher law in the state of Missouri,” Pierce wrote in an email. “State and local officials,” he wrote, “have the duty to obey the higher law of God.”

THE DAILY CONTROVERSY with CHRIS REID

Chris Reid and Bradley Pierce discuss HB 518, the Alabama Prenatal Equal Protection Act, as well as the broader need to abolish abortion in Alabama.

1819 NEWS

The bill in question, House Bill 518 (HB518), also known as the Prenatal Equal Protection Act, is aimed at providing “equal protection” under the law for unborn children who are killed by abortion. HB518 would permit criminal prosecution for abortions in the state with several exceptions. Under the bill, prosecutions where the victim is an unborn child “must be treated the same as if the unborn child were born alive.”

The Foundation to Abolish Abortion (FAA) has been active this and previous years, advocating for similar equal protection bills in state legislatures nationwide, including Alabama.

MUSKOGEE POLITICO

Oklahoma Republican Party activists gathered this past weekend to elect new leadership and advance new party business at the biennial state convention. Among the items passed by convention delegates was a censure of four Republican state senators for voting in the Senate judiciary committee to against a bill to end abortion in Oklahoma.

Yes, after decades of pro-life pledges and bills, it’s Republicans (allegedly “conservative” and “100% pro-life,” to boot) that are standing in the way of abolishing abortion in our state and ending the continued post-Dobbs slaughter of preborn human beings. You can read a little more background information in this article from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion.