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Rather than treating preborn babies as equally valuable as born people, the Clean Water for All Life Act sanitizes the act of baby murder. The bill treats preborn babies not as image-bearers of God, but as a special type of garbage: with just enough dignity to be discarded as medical waste instead of excrement, but not quite enough dignity to be protected from murder in the first place.

Christian conservatives should instead advance legislation that treats preborn babies like the image-bearers of God they truly are, establishing equal protection of the laws for preborn babies and truly abolishing abortion. We can flush any other legislation down the toilet.

KENTUCKY TODAY

A new bill targeting the use of abortion pills was introduced in the U.S. House on Wednesday. “The murder-for-profit abortion industry has completely ignored the dangerous and unethical disposal of pre-born baby remains and toxic chemical waste produced by abortion pills,” said bill sponsor U.S. Rep. Mary Miller. “I introduced the Clean Water for All Life Act to put an end to their reckless and inhumane practices.”

The bill is also coming under friendly fire from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, which called it “morally confused and ineffective” in an X post on Wednesday. “The Clean Water for All Act doesn't even pretend to ban abortion. Instead, it regulates the circumstances of abortion, maintaining a legal pathway for baby murder to continue, just as long as the murdered baby is not flushed down the toilet,” said Bradley Pierce, president of FAA.

NEWS FROM THE STATES

The mainstream anti-abortion movement spent the last half-century helping to pass incremental, strategic federal and state laws that made abortion harder to access and more expensive, eventually ending federal abortion rights.

But groups like Abolitionists Rising, End Abortion Now and the Foundation to Abolish Abortion are pushing for near-total bans, with only exceptions for spontaneous miscarriages and life-saving medical procedures.

NASHVILLE BANNER

Last week, a crowd of loud, mostly male anti-abortion activists from Tennessee and surrounding states stuffed the hallway of Tennessee’s Cordell Hull legislative building, singing and protesting after a controversial anti-abortion bill failed to even receive a motion in the Population Health Subcommittee. 

The loudest voices were from diehard anti-abortion activists from groups like End Abortion Now and the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, who urged its passage. Other anti-abortion organizations, such as Tennessee Right to Life, actively campaigned against the bill.

THE WESTERN JOURNAL

John Rice-Cameron, the legislative liaison with the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, noted that the Population Health subcommittee that handled it was “stacked with some of the more liberal Republicans in the Tennessee House.”

“In order for that bill to be heard, we needed one legislator to make a motion, and then another one to second that motion,” he remarked.

THE BLAZE

Across the country, abortion-rights activists have used ballot initiatives to write a “right to abortion” into state constitutions. Once voters approve those amendments, courts use them to bulldoze state pro-life laws. The trend will continue unless the anti-abortion movement rethinks its messaging — fast.

Conservatives face a familiar temptation in a culture that punishes conviction: soften the message for short-term gains. Electoral politics requires prudence. It doesn’t require self-censorship. When the pro-life movement treats its own argument as too radioactive to say plainly, moderates still aren’t convinced — and the base stops listening.

PROTESTIA

Despite having supermajorities in the House and Senate, professing pro-life Republicans, with the blessing of several prominent pro-life groups, killed a bill yesterday which would have made TN the most anti-abortion state in the country and banned abortion by establishing equal protection of the laws for preborn babies.

The Foundation to Abolish Abortion, which was a strong proponent of the legislation, explains how House Bill 570 was defeated: “After IMMENSE pressure from the Pro-Life establishment and the left-wing media, NONE of the Republican lawmakers on the Tennessee House Population Health Subcommittee had the courage to motion for House Bill 570 to be heard.”

WKRN

In rare form, the Republican supermajority members assigned to the House Population Health Subcommittee failed to make a motion to begin debating the bill of one of their fellow conservatives, Rep. Jody Barrett.

The Foundation to Abolish Abortion, the group behind the bill, called those lawmakers on the subcommittee “some of the more liberal Republicans” in Tennessee and accused them of disobeying God. “The Republicans on this subcommittee — not a single one of them had the courage or the conviction to make a motion to hear the bill, and as a result, the bill died right then and there,” John Rice-Cameron with the Foundation to Abolish Abortion said.

KENTUCKY TODAY

Wuchner then asked attendees to lower signs urging support for House Bill 714, the Prenatal Equal Protection Act, which would allow women who abort their babies to be prosecuted for homicide. Supporters of the bill cheered at the mention of their signs, which also said "Preborn Human Rights."

Supporters of HB 714 continued to raise their signs throughout the rally and the March down Capitol Avenue and conversed with other march attendees while handing out information about the bill.

ABORTION EVERY DAY

We’ve been following HB 570 for a while now—along with all the other “equal protection” bills introduced across the country. As you likely know, these bills are coming from extremists who call themselves abortion “abolitionists.” They’re ultra-religious, ultra-misogynist, and ultra-terrifying.

Abortion, Every Day has been screaming from the rooftops about their bills for years: we’re seeing more legislation introduced, more co-sponsors signing on, and more normalization in media coverage.

NASHVILLE SCENE

Bradley Pierce, president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, helped write the bill and traveled in from Texas for the Tuesday meeting. Like Barrett, he accused “pro-life” Republican legislators of not being pro-life enough.

“Pro-life leaders and politicians here are aligning themselves with Planned Parenthood and opposing equal protection, which would outlaw abortion,” Pierce tells the Scene. “That's why we call ourselves abolitionists. We're for life, but we're not pro-life, because that's what the pro-life movement does.” 

LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER

The Herald-Leader asked the same question of Bradley Pierce, the president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, a group that lobbies for abortion to be treated like a homicide. Pierce said women who experience a miscarriage or still birth typically seek medical care, which would “ensure they cannot be accused of wrongfully concealing the birth of an infant.”

In addition to his work with the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, Pierce is a lawyer, and he wrote wrote House Bill 714, introduced in the legislature in February. If enacted, the bill would expand Kentucky’s homicide statute to include the death of an unborn child.

WORLD

But abolitionists argue the Bible is clear that authorities should apply justice without partiality. “I don’t think it’s merciful to tell women that they’re allowed to murder their children,” said Bradley Pierce, president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion. “To those who say that having a blanket exemption for women is merciful, do you apply that to any other area of law?”

Pierce says he has drafted legislation in more than 30 states, including the bill in Tennessee. He believes the measure would have strengthened existing protections for unborn babies and deterred both the pregnant woman who is seeking an abortion and others who might coerce her into one. “There are many people who get away with murder, but most do not… The law still deters many, many, many murders from ever happening,” he said.

THE TENNESSEE CONSERVATIVE

Some outlets, like The Tennessean, have espoused that this legislation would allow the death penalty for women who have abortions, though numerous organizations, including the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, have rebutted this narrative, saying the bill “would simply make murdering anyone illegal for everyone,” and emphasizing that full judicial due process would still apply. 

Abortion numbers continue to climb in the state with more women resorting to surgical abortions at out-of-state clinics or telehealth and black-market purchase of abortifacients, with many of these providers protected from any form of accountability or prosecution thanks to blue state “shield laws.”

MOTHER JONES

Parks says Love Life does not identify as an abolitionist organization—“that’s not really our forte.” But he says it does offer a training called “Legalize Life” run by Bradley Pierce, president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion and Abolish Abortion Texas, who has pushed for legislation that would charge anyone who gets abortion care with murder.

When I press Parks on Pierce, he acknowledges, “Many of the people in our organization align with that ideology, and there are variations of it.” As he describes Love Life’s position on abortion, it sounds very much like one an abolitionist would embrace. “We agree abortion is murder and that it should be outlawed and every human life should be protected under our laws,” he says. “And we believe that children in the womb are human life.”