During a $500 a plate breakfast at Washington D.C.’s Capitol Hill Club, March for Life Action donors heard from 22 Republican U.S. Representatives. Despite widespread conservative victories over reproductive rights since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, Republicans are still looking to further limit access to abortion.
“The battle’s not over,” said Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN). “Just because Roe versus Wade has been overturned, the fight is even more now because of the pill. We actually have more abortions now because of the pill that’s being mailed. Something should be harder to mail than alcohol. Alcohol is not easy to mail, but now the abortion pill is. And so we have a lot of fights on our hands.”
Rep. Bob Onder (R-MO) admitted that Dobbs and anti-abortion legislation at the state level have been ineffective in reducing the total number of abortions nationwide. “We all know that there are more abortions going on in America today than there were before Dobbs,” he said. “This is largely driven by the chemical abortion policy and the mail-order abortion policy promulgated by the Biden administration. It is time for the Trump administration to go back to his first administration’s policy of requiring in-person visits and outline this pernicious practice of mail-order abortion that we know not only has resulted in more abortions, but has resulted in men obtaining these drugs to coerce and poison their girlfriends or, in some cases, the trafficking victims under their control.”
The Food and Drug Administration permanently ended the requirement for in-person visits for medication abortion in December 2021, after temporarily suspending the practice during the COVID pandemic, but then reinstating it following the Supreme Court’s March 2021 FDA v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists decision. Eighteen states currently have laws requiring in-person visits for medication abortion.
In addition to medication abortion, Republicans also see human euthanasia, or medical aid in dying, as a legislative priority. “There are two things that are on the horizon,” said Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), a doctor who prescribed ivermectin to patients during the COVID pandemic. “Now, it’s abortion by mail. That’s the bottom line. Mifepristone. You go online and these companies that will sell this drug across state lines brag about it — how easy it is and it’s just a supposition. We’re pushing back. We know that drug is not as safe as the proponents claim, and if someone’s going to use it they should be aware of all the risks. It should be under very controlled circumstances and of course the pro-abortion movement doesn’t want that, they literally want that abortion by mail. The other thing that I ask you to please start getting involved in is the end-of-life assisted suicide.”
While Republicans broadly oppose abortion, many have their own direct experiences with abortion. “Jesus Christ changed my life on July 2nd, 1973 at 5:30 in the afternoon,” said Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) “I was in a life of drugs. I lived up with a girl, and I had her kill our baby. I’m a victim of abortion. Thirty-five years after the fact I had to go back to her and apologize. I carried that weight. It was very freeing. Forgiveness was sought, forgiveness was extended, and I learned valuable lessons.”
Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) blamed pro-abortion activists for the difficulty she had trying to get care for an ectopic pregnancy in Florida, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. “Two years ago, I experienced a devastatingly dangerous ectopic pregnancy,” she said. “Due to the pro-abortion radical lobby who has invested millions of dollars in trying to take a hold of the narrative that abortion is health care, doctors were scared to help me … We had just passed the law, the heartbeat law. There was no heartbeat, they could never find a heartbeat. I was approximately five weeks along. And the doctors saw the levels going up and they said, you’re gonna bleed out if we don’t do something. And I said, ‘Please help me.’ They said, ‘We’ll lose our license.’ It’s because the pro-abortion lobby, they were geofencing around hospitals, telling doctors, nurses, and techs that if they helped women who were miscarrying or had ectopic pregnancies, that they would lose their license.”
Cammack has introduced legislation to clarify that women should still be able to access abortion in cases of medical emergency. “I’m proud to have introduce the Truth in Women’s Healthcare Act to establish the fact that no — life of the mother, miscarriages, and ectopics — those are not abortions.”
Despite Cammack’s claims, medically, definitionally, miscarriages are “spontaneous abortions,” and the only treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is an abortion.
It’s not just legislators who oppose abortion, but also a number of high-level appointees within the Trump administration.
“The administration which I have the privilege to serve as Assistant Secretary for Health is the most pro-life administration I’ve seen in my 62 years,” said Admiral Brian Christine, the assistant Secretary for Health and head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. “I am the upgrade from Rachel, or Richard Levine, for the last few years. Thank you, God. We stand for life at HHS. We stand for conscience and protections. We stand for everything that you stand for. I promise you, the President and Secretary Kennedy are with us on this, and I’m proud to be here today.”
Jennie Lichtor, the president of March for Life, told the room full of donors that her donor-funded work isn’t done yet. “It is just not true that our work is over at the federal level,” she said. “It is not true that there’s nothing more to be done for the unborn through federal legislating and policy-making. We all know that that’s not true, and that’s why we continue to be really active here in Washington, talking with the executive branch and with our friends on Capitol Hill to protect the unborn. There are all kinds of protections that are available under federal law and even more that should be enacted or adopted at the federal level through law or through policy.”
While there were no concrete plans for ending medication abortion, but there were many calls for donations. “Please consider more contributions.” said Bill Wichterman, the chairman of March for Life Action, the 501c4 arm of the organization. “We love big checks, because the more you give us, the more we can do, right?”
