Brave Ollie Possum

Pro-life advocates saw both hopeful gains and discouraging setbacks this year in their efforts to fight for unborn babies and their mothers. Fewer women received surgical abortions nationwide, but the number of mothers taking the abortion pill continued to skyrocket. State lawmakers passed more sweeping pro-life legislation, but federal judges blocked those laws from taking effect.

A Texas hospital wants to end treatment for a terminally ill 10-month-old girl against her family’s wishes, triggering a debate over a state law that opponents say gives medical professionals more power than parents.

Last week, Texas Fourth Court of Appeals Chief Justice Sandee Bryan Marion granted Trinity Lewis, the mother of Tinslee, until Jan. 2, 2020, to find another healthcare facility to care for her daughter before allowing Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth to withdraw life-sustaining measures.

A study of abortion pill reversal methods that was halted due to safety concerns only further proves the dangers of drug-induced abortions, pro-life advocates and obstetricians say.

Twelve women enrolled in a University of California, Davis, study took mifepristone, also known as Mifeprex, the first pill in a two-drug regimen to end the baby’s life and send the mother in labor. Researchers gave half of the women a placebo and the other half progesterone, a hormone that has been shown to reverse the effects of mifepristone, saving the unborn baby’s life.

Bob Skovgard plans to sing Christmas carols outside a Kettering, Ohio, abortion center this week like he has for nearly 25 years. But this year is different than others, he said, because Ohio finally passed a law protecting unborn babies with detectable heartbeats, even though a federal judge has temporarily blocked it.

The Louisiana Department of Justice said the abortion facility at the center of an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case has attempted to hide evidence of potential criminal activity. But a federal appeals court upheld a gag order that prevents law enforcement, the high court, and the public from learning the details of the alleged crimes.

Texas investigators said a pro-life organization must repay $1.6 million in state funding for “serious contractural violations.” But the group’s founder said the report contains numerous errors and called the state’s actions a “smear campaign” intended to undercut services to low-income women.

Lawyers say that obvious pro-abortion bias by the federal judge who oversaw the civil trial for David Daleiden and his colleagues gives them plenty of grounds for appeal. On Friday, a federal jury ruled that Daleiden, Sandra Merritt, and others associated with the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) must pay up to $2.3 million in damages to Planned Parenthood for secretly recording the abortion giant’s associates talking about harvesting and selling aborted baby parts.