By Peter Pinedo
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 6, 2024 / 11:15 am
Here’s a roundup of abortion-related developments happening across the country this week.
Florida investigating abortion amendment signatures for fraud
Brad McVay, Florida deputy secretary of state for legal affairs and elections integrity, is conducting a review of some 36,000 signatures in support of a broad abortion amendment, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that McVay asked officials in four counties — Hillsborough, Orange, Palm Beach, and Osceola — to submit signatures gathered in their jurisdiction. McVay suspects some of the more than 1 million signatures submitted to get the abortion amendment on the ballot may have been fraudulent.
In an email written by McVay to officials in Hillsborough County, McVay said that “most” of the circulators listed on the abortion amendment petition “represent known or suspected fraudsters.”
McVay also said that “several” other petition circulators “have very concerning invalidity rates.”
Titled the Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion or simply Amendment 4, the measure would invalidate both Florida’s six-week and 15-week pro-life protections for the unborn.
The amendment would also allow abortion past the point of viability through all nine months of pregnancy if determined by a health care provider to be necessary for the health of the mother.
IVF takes center stage in 2024 election
As both Democrats and Republicans rush to support access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), several pro-life activists are highlighting the destruction of human life brought about by these treatments.
Lila Rose, a Catholic and president of the national pro-life group Live Action, posted to X on Wednesday that in the IVF process “15 children on average are created per one live birth.”
“The remaining children are destroyed, experimented on, then killed, miscarried, or frozen indefinitely until they ‘need to be used,’” Rose said.
This comes after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump pledged that “under the Trump administration your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment.”
Meanwhile, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has made supporting IVF a central part of her campaign along with her abortion advocacy.
Shortly after announcing his IVF policy, Harris hosted a press call highlighting “Donald Trump’s threat to reproductive freedom, including IVF.”
Newsweek reported that during the call, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said: “American women are not stupid, and we know the only guaranteed protection for IVF is a new national law, which Kamala Harris supports and Donald Trump opposes.”
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Warren asserted that “anyone who cares about IVF will vote for Kamala Harris for president and Democrats for Congress.”
Texas sues Biden administration to investigate illegal abortions
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden Department of Health and Human Services over changes to federal medical privacy laws that restrict the state’s ability to investigate illegal abortion.
The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Wednesday.
The new rule, finalized by the Biden administration in April, modified certain provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the U.S. Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information to stop states from obtaining patient information from doctors relating to abortion.
The HHS said the changes were necessary to protect the private health information of individuals seeking “reproductive health care” amid the “shifting legal landscape” around abortion after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Paxton’s office, however, asserted that “the Biden administration’s motive is clear: to subvert lawful state investigations on issues that the courts have said the states may investigate.”
“This new rule actively undermines Congress’ clear statutory meaning when HIPAA was passed, and it reflects the Biden administration’s disrespect for the law,” Paxton said. “The federal government is attempting to undermine Texas’ law enforcement capabilities, and I will not allow this to happen.”
Texas law protects unborn babies beginning at conception, with the only exception being for the life of the mother.
