Remember women, teens, and unborn girls and boys… all around the world.

While today we mourn more than 62 million unborn little ones whose lives were terminated by various forms of abortion, we also remember women and teens who died from abortions.

I remember Holly Paterson, who died on my birthday, Constitution Day. While I celebrated with the woman who gave me life, Holly was painfully dying from sepsis after her much older boyfriend took her to Planned Parenthood for RU-486. Her distraught father later called the FFL office explaining that he didn’t know if he was pro-life or pro-choice, but he wanted to know why his 18-year-old daughter, who had just graduated from high school, was dead.

So many lives have been taken, including Dawn Ravenell, the 13-year-old girl who never came home after she had an abortion without her parents’ knowledge. We weep for Cree Erwin, who died on her son’s first birthday after receiving an abortion at the Planned Parenthood in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And we mourn with the husband of Karnamaya Mongar, a poor immigrant who died as a result of her abortion at the hands of the convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell. Where is the outrage from women’s advocates?

Today, we remember all of them, and on the solemn 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we recommit ourselves to work peacefully and lovingly toward eliminating the root causes that drive women and teens to abortion.

But the violence of abortion does not stop at our borders.

“It will be our policy to support women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in the United States, as well as globally,” Dr. Anthony Fauci announced to board members of the World Health Organization yesterday, adding that “President Biden will be revoking the Mexico City Policy in the coming days.”

According to CNA: “The ‘Mexico City Policy,’ referred to by its detractors as the ‘Global Gag Rule,’ was first introduced in 1984. It has traditionally barred U.S. family planning assistance from going to foreign NGOs that promote or perform abortions….

“Supporters of the policy have told CNA that it prevents taxpayers from having to support international groups that promote abortions and abortion ideology in developing countries, even those where abortion is illegal.”

Most experts on each side of the political and abortion divide predict that all federal anti-abortion restrictions will be eliminated during the Biden presidency, both nationally as well as internationally.

Nigerian pro-life activist Obianuju “Uju” Ekeocha lamented the news: “So President Biden intends to repeal the Mexico City Policy so that the United States can resume funding abortion organizations in Africa and other parts of the developing world… to kill our innocent unborn children. We will object.”

As a senator, President Biden was a champion of the Violence Against Women Act, which FFL actively supported. If only we could help him to reconsider abortion against those girls, as well as boys, in the womb. We hope he can come to see that sex-selection abortions against girls in Asia are the ultimate gender discrimination. If only he could answer the suffragist Alice Paul, who asked, “How can you help and protect women by killing them as babies?” If only he could hear “the cries of the girl child,” as the late Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, a victim of violence herself, asked.

As Feminists for Life, we stand for nonviolence and nondiscrimination. The children of the poor are as precious as those of the privileged. Choosing to announce the reversal of this policy on the eve of Roe v. Wade is, by definition, anti-woman and anti-poor, including women of color, who disproportionately suffer the most abortions.

We remember all of them this day.

Because women deserve better,

Serrin M. Foster
President
Feminists for Life of America
Editor-in-Chief
Women Deserve Better
& The American Feminist

P.S. To help a pregnant woman in need now, please direct her to our helpsite, WomenDeserveBetter.com.