Welcome to G3 Weekly—a summary of this week’s top news stories on Christianity and the public square.
This week, lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed legislation requiring abortion doctors to save the lives of children who survive the procedure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a resource meant to help schools evaluate LGBTQ inclusion. Meanwhile, CVS and Walgreens announced plans to offer abortion pills.
House Passes ‘Born-Alive’ Protection Bill
“Unequal weights and unequal measures are both alike an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 20:10).
Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives advanced legislation mandating that children who survive botched abortion attempts should be given medical attention.
The “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” says that any infant “born alive after an abortion or within a hospital, clinic, or other facility has the same claim to the protection of the law that would arise for any newborn, or for any person who comes to a hospital, clinic, or other facility for screening and treatment or otherwise becomes a patient within its care.” The legislation passed with the support of every voting Republican, while all Democrats except for Henry Cuellar of Texas sided against the bill.
Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who replaced former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as leader of the Democratic caucus, said that the legislation was part of a “march toward criminalizing abortion care, a nationwide ban.”
Most commentators emphasized the fact that virtually all of the Democratic caucus voted against legislation that would save babies from murder. Others, however, noted that lawmakers should guarantee equal protection under the law for all human beings, whether born or preborn.
“Every person outside the womb is already protected by law. Why are we having to say that a baby born in an abortionist’s office needs to be protected by that very abortionist from him killing a born baby?” commented Dusty Deevers, pastor of Grace Community Church in Elgin, Oklahoma. “Why a new law? Why not tell those magistrates who will not enforce standing protections on human life, that if they will not do so, justice will come down on their heads?”
CDC Gives ‘LGBTQ Inclusivity’ Resource to Government Schools
“It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin” (Luke 17:2).
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced an “LGBTQ inclusivity self-assessment tool” for education professionals.
The resource from the public health agency claimed that schools “play a critical role in supporting the health and academic development” of youth identifying as LGBTQ. “Creating and sustaining inclusive school environments, policies, programs, and practices that include LGBTQ youth is one strategy for improving the health and academic success of all youth,” the document said. “Inclusive in this context refers to the presence of clear policies or practices that address the needs of LGBTQ students who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized.”
Criteria offered to administrators for the evaluation of their schools include whether students can use the bathroom or locker room aligning with their “chosen gender,” whether school dances and pep rallies allow for “same-gender and gender non-conforming couples,” and whether preferred names and pronouns are used by all staff members.
The document offers additional resources from the National LGBT Health Education Center and other activist groups for interested school administrators.
CVS and Walgreens Offer Abortion Pills
“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute” (Psalm 82:3).
Pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens revealed plans to sell abortion pills after the Food and Drug Administration changed rules on the substance.
A series of two tablets, one containing mifepristone and the other containing misoprostol, are often used for abortions when preborn children are in the first weeks of development, circumventing the need for surgery. Some 54% of abortions in the United States occur through so-called medication abortion, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute, even as statutes proposed in conservative states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade generally introduce regulations on surgical abortion.
“We are working through the registration, necessary training of our pharmacists, as well as evaluating our pharmacy network in terms of where we normally dispense products that have extra FDA requirements and will dispense these consistent with federal and state laws,” a spokesperson for Walgreens said in a statement to Axios.
Pro-life organizations typically oppose criminal sanctions on mothers who willfully attempt to abort their children. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, on the other hand, clarified that the state’s laws against endangering children with chemicals apply to preborn babies, even though the state’s pro-life laws contain carveouts for mothers.
