In States That Limited Abortion After Dobbs, Biden’s Federal Agencies Are Pushing It Anyway
As a result of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision returning abortion regulations back to the states, the Biden administration has worked overtime to open every back door to advance its pro-abortion agenda, including in states with recently passed abortion restrictions or even bans. To accomplish this, it has turned to federal agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs to terminate the lives of unborn children. These efforts have quickly turned into a legal disaster.
Just last week, news broke that Stephanie Carter, an Army veteran and nurse practitioner at a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in Texas, is suing the Department of Veterans Affairs for forcing her to handle and distribute abortion pills — one of the latest mandates enacted by the Biden administration to circumvent the Dobbs decision. The “Reproductive Health Services” rule enacted in September “immediately allowed elective abortions at VA medical clinics.”
This rule does not currently allow for religious exemptions for workers like Carter, who have religious objections that conflict with this life-ending procedure. When Carter attempted to opt out of the handling and distribution of abortion pills at the Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center, her supervisor refused, according to a report from Live Action. This egregious violation of religious freedom has resulted in First Liberty Institute filing a lawsuit on Carter’s behalf.
To make matters worse, because this VA hospital is under both federal and state jurisdiction, Carter could be held liable for providing this abortion access, as it potentially conflicts with the various abortion restrictions in Texas.
“The rule that’s at issue in this case,” according to Danielle Runyan, an attorney of First Liberty Institute, “allows for abortions to be provided … to protect the life or health of the mother. ‘Health’ [can be] a wide variety of things that can potentially be in conflict with the laws of the state of Texas. So not only are Ms. Carter’s religious liberties being violated, but she could also be held criminally and civilly liable here in Texas if she complies with the rule.”
The Larger Biden Abortion Agenda
This gross violation of religious liberties is just one instance in the Biden administration’s recent efforts to bring abortions to states with pro-life laws. Just two weeks after the quite literally life-altering Dobbs decision, President Joe Biden signed the executive order “Protecting Access to Reproductive Health Care Services” in an attempt to access any loopholes.
The Federalist staff writer Jordan Boyd explained this order will effectively “funnel federal time, resources, and funds, mostly through the Department of Health and Human Services, to shield existing abortion facilities, promote unlimited abortion, and circumvent Republican state laws to help send women to abortion appointments in other states.”
Additionally, the order’s pledge to “protect access to medication abortion” is a misleading euphemism for a chemical abortion that starves, kills, and expels the dead child from a mother’s womb. This is clearly the antithesis of “medication” and has also sparked lawsuits against the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The order is just another way for the Biden administration to push abortion into states that have legally placed restrictions on it.
Since this order was signed, HHS has further peddled this abortion agenda. In August, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure wrote a letter to each U.S. governor, encouraging them to work with CMS by applying “for Medicaid 1115 waivers to provide increased access to care for women from states where reproductive rights are under attack and women may be denied medical care.”
So while the Dobbs decision has promoted federalism, reverting the choice to legalize or ban abortion back to the states, the pro-abortion Biden administration led by our self-proclaimed Catholic president is working to find every last loophole to allow the killing of unborn children in these abortion-restricted areas. Lawsuits like Carter’s may have these mandates come tumbling down into the same ash heap Roe now lies in.
Sophia is a graduate of Le Moyne College, where she received her B.A. in English. She is pursuing a career in political journalism.
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