NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland (LifeSiteNews) – On the main stage at CPAC yesterday, Planned Parenthood director turned pro-life advocate Abby Johnson starkly described the reality of “the expansion of medication abortion into all pharmacies” that the Biden administration and its “incredibly partisan FDA” are attempting.
“We’re talking about women going into pharmacies, requesting these very dangerous chemical abortion drugs, going home without any sort of medical supervision, taking these pills not really knowing what’s going to happen to their bodies, not really understanding what’s going to happen inside of their womb,” she said. “They’re passing these babies into the toilet, fully formed babies – 12, 14, 16 weeks along in their pregnancy – possibly hemorrhaging in their bathroom, unable to get to an emergency care facility, looking in the toilet and seeing their fully formed baby floating there in the toilet.”
“And then these women have to make a decision, right – what do I do with this fully formed baby?” continued Johnson. “What do I do with this child? Do I scoop this child up out of the toilet? Do I take this child to be buried? What do I do with it? Do I flush my child down the toilet?”
Johnson spoke alongside Concerned Women for America’s Penny Nance and Moms for America’s Kimberly Fletcher on a human dignity-focused panel moderated by Sandy Rios. Early in her remarks Nance offered a message to women who have had abortions: “God loves you, He wants to redeem you, He wants to restore you. He never, ever gives up on us. Ever. You can always join us sinners at the foot of the cross.”
Johnson’s description of what happens when babies older than 10 weeks are aborted via pill at home lines up with some of what was described in an October 18, 2022 Washington Post article titled “Covert network provides pills for thousands of abortions in U.S. post Roe”:
Many in the medical community, including Brandi, the spokesperson for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, say it’s safe to take abortion pills beyond the 10-week limit imposed by the FDA.
The distributor refers the later-term cases to an abortion doula she’s known for years, who counsels them over text about exactly what they will see when they pass the pregnancy. A 12-week fetus is roughly the size of a plum; a 15-week fetus, the size of an apple.
These cases, in particular, present significant legal risk to the patient, who has to figure out how to surreptitiously dispose of the remains. The abortion doula said she often sends a small amount of acid so the client can dissolve some of the fetus, and bury whatever is left.
“I try to emotionally prepare them and say, ‘It’s going to look like a baby,’” the doula said.
Pro-life and social issues at CPAC
Thursday’s panel – listed on the CPAC website as being titled “One Tuff Mutha,” and later called the “Mother Truckers panel” by CPAC on Twitter – was the closest the massive annual conservative conference came to a panel explicitly devoted to abortion and pro-life issues.
Abortion is “conspicuously absent from this weekend’s agenda,” pro-life researcher Dr. Michael New wrote at National Review. “What makes this especially disappointing is that sanctity-of-life issues were exceptionally salient this past year. In the past twelve months, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and 13 states are currently protecting preborn children.”
There was controversy about the lack of a distinct pro-life panel last year, too, and social conservatives have previously criticized CPAC for its embrace of the LGBT cause.
Alongside speeches from conservative bigwigs and some 2024 presidential hopefuls (including, of course, former President Trump himself and notably not including former Vice President Mike Pence or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis), of interest to social conservatives and pro-lifers may be a panel on the FBI targeting Catholics; an appearance from Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik; a panel on transgenderism featuring teenage detransitioner Chloe Cole; a panel on “debanking”; Steve Bannon; and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
‘Such an absence of decency and truth and humanity in our culture across the board’
Moms for America’s Fletcher warned attendees that “it would make your skin crawl to know what our children are being exposed to” in classrooms, citing parents being handcuffed at school board meetings for reading sexually explicit materials available at their children’s schools – because it’s too graphic for public TV, on which school board meetings are often broadcast. Schools are “teaching kindergarteners how to stimulate themselves” as part of so-called sex education and “coming out” parties for gender-confused first graders are causing their classmates to return home “terrified they’re going to turn into the opposite sex,” she relayed.
“We have had such an absence of decency and truth and humanity in our culture across the board,” Fletcher lamented. Schoolchildren “are beating each other up and being sent to the hospital…Everything that gives them purpose and passion has been stripped away from them.” They are being taught to hate their country, hate their neighbors, and hate themselves, she said.
But Fletcher and her fellow panelists ended with a message of hope: because women are a civilizing force in society, women can turn “lift the culture” and bring back human dignity.
And God has won the ultimate battle. He wants us “to participate in the daily victories,” Johnson reflected.