In a meeting earlier this week, the Department of Justice said it is “monitoring” state-level pro-life laws, and many view this as a display of pro-abortion activism.
In the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, the Biden administration established a “reproductive rights task force” aimed at protecting and shoring up abortion support, as well as, it seems, keeping pro-life activities in its sites. “We’ve obviously been very active in monitoring what’s happening in the states and locally, and given that most state legislatures now are coming back into session, we’ll be continuing to do so and looking at any laws that may get passed that infringe on federal protections,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, according to CNN. Gupta leads the Justice Department’s task force.
The ominous-sounding statement comes as the pro-abortion task force has pushed various federal agencies in the Biden administration to take actions to promote access to abortion.
Garland framed the issue as necessary to counter the “threat” of pro-life laws to women’s health and well-being. “Legislatures across the country took steps to impose bans and other restrictions on access to abortion, with devastating consequences for women’s health, their safety, and their civil rights,” he said.
The Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) has been hard at work targeting pro-lifers and pro-life laws. In August, the DOJ sued the state of Idaho in an attempt to block the state’s 2020 trigger law that would protect most preborn children from abortion. In September, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced a policy change that allowed its health care facilities to commit abortions for veterans and dependents, even in states that outlawed abortion. Additionally, in October, the Department of Defense announced that it would pay for abortion travel expenses for military members and dependents.
Recently, the DOJ rendered a pro-abortion opinion to undermine a long-held federal law restricting the shipping of abortion-inducing drugs by mail, which Garland highlighted in his statements before the task force’s meeting. “A critical focus of the Task Force is on ensuring access to abortion medication. This includes protecting access to the drug mifepristone,” he stated. “We are vigorously defending the FDA in unprecedented litigation that is seeking to withdraw mifepristone from the marketplace […] and we are working to monitor recent State-level actions with respect to mifepristone that could implicate federal interests.”
The Justice Department’s ongoing efforts to promote and defend abortion contrasts with the seeming lack of attention paid to the alarming rise in attacks on pro-life pregnancy resource centers and churches, apparently weaponizing the Department of Justice against pro-lifers, which Garland touted, and framed as an issue of “civil rights”:
Since January 2021, the Department has charged more than a dozen cases involving dozens of defendants with FACE Act violations […] The Justice Department, through the Task Force, is committed to doing everything we can to protect continued lawful access to abortion medication and other reproductive health services.
On January 11, the House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the violence against pro-life organizations. The resolution “calls upon the Biden Administration to use all appropriate law enforcement authorities to uphold public safety and to protect the rights of pro-life facilities, groups, and churches,” as Live Action News reported. In a first, on Tuesday the Justice Department announced an indictment against two individuals accused of targeting pro-life pregnancy resource centers in Florida. Yet perpetrators of many other documented attacks remain at large.
