March 13, 2025
For every political and legislative leader claiming there’s not much on the LIFE issue that can be done, Students for Life Action (SFLAction) wants you to know we made a list. Our 2025 legislative agenda has been circulated in Washington D.C., and for those keeping an eye the pro-life choices that are on the table, here’s a look at how to protect LIFE in Law and in Service.
Our Priorities Include:
- Defund Planned Parenthood & All Abortion Vendors. Methods include:
RECONCILLIATION, a process for addressing things that have a financial impact. This needs to prioritize the defunding of Planned Parenthood and other abortion vendors for more than one year. We like cutting them off for the next 50 years, to reverse the course of nearly 50 years of pro-abortion policy. This process needs to begin with defunding language in the base text, not as an amendment too easily dropped during negotiations.
DEBAR & DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD, a process that begins with an investigation into the bad acts of the nation’s number one abortion vendor, to disqualify them from receiving government contacts. This can be handled, at Congress’ request, by the Department of Justice or any of the agency Solicitors General throughout the Trump Administration.
DOGE CUTS through evaluation of discretional spending. BILLS are on the move, detailed further down.
- Require that the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) add Chemical Abortion Pill’s active metabolites to their “Forever Chemicals” tracking list, to evaluate Abortion Pill Water Pollution.
We urge Congress to direct the EPA to conduct regular and comprehensive environmental testing for the presence of the active metabolites in the abortion drug Mifepristone in the same manner as testing is conducted for “forever chemicals” or PFAS chemicals. This data is needed to assess potential environmental harms from the chemically tainted blood, placenta tissue, and human remains flushed into America’s waterways, exposing aquatic life, animals, plants, and people to dangerous, unhealthy chemicals. According to the Planned Parenthood-founded Guttmacher Institute, Chemical Abortions now account for more than 6 in 10 abortions.
The safety of America’s drinking water demands that deliberate pollution be addressed, and pollutants tracked to the best of our nation’s ability. Recently, the EPA began expanding its monitoring list of “forever chemicals” – substances that linger in America’s drinking water. In a recent letter sent to the EPA, several pro-life and pro-family groups joined together calling for the support of Congress to demand that the EPA evaluate water safety and track the “forever chemicals” of Chemical Abortion Pills considering potential abortion water pollution.
- Demand the FDA conducts environmental testing to determine compliance with the Clean Water Act,Protective Laws for Endangered Species, and Requirements for Re-Certifying Safety to human beings when regulations have been changed, as they were during the Obama & Biden Administrations.
As Students for Life of America (SFLA) documented in FIVE citizen petitions to the FDA, the issues with Chemical Abortion Pills remain unresolved. There is evidence that aquatic animal and plant life can be negatively impacted by Mifepristone, but it has not been sufficiently investigated in this country. Mifepristone can be present in the remains of the blood and placenta tissue that, along with a deceased preborn child, is flushed into America’s wastewater when disposed of at a home, apartment, or dormitory. See here for more detailed research.
The extent to which Mifepristone is then present in wastewater has not been sufficiently studied, and the increase in the number of Chemical Abortions over the past two decades provides ample reason for concern.
- Include Red Bag Medical Waste disposal requirement to the Chemical Abortion Pill health & safety standards known as REMS — Risk, Evaluation, Mitigation Strategies — set by the FDA.
Medical waste, as the name implies, is the waste generated by healthcare events, often in hospitals, abortion vendors, blood banks, doctors’ offices, outpatient surgical centers, and clinical laboratories. This waste may contain contaminated blood, body fluids, human remains, and other potentially infectious materials. Discarded needles, syringes, human tissues, blood, bodily fluids, placenta, fetal remains, and hospital radioactive waste are all classified as medical waste, also known as pathological waste. As more than 64% of U.S. abortions are Chemical Abortions, we are flushing chemically tainted blood, placenta tissue, and human remains down the toilet because of the Biden Administration’s allowance of No Test, Online Distribution of Chemical Abortion Pills.
To be clear, we are drinking people’s abortions as the Biden-Harris Administration’s FDA authorized changes in policies and turned a blind eye to the outsourcing of medical waste to women’s homes, schools, and places of business.
This contaminated medical waste can pose a potential threat to human lives and the environment. Red and Yellow Biohazard Bags are required to contain and segregate all medical waste. Therefore, the FDA needs to add this to the REMS for Chemical Abortion Pill distribution to protect America’s clean water. This is detailed in an FDA Citizen Petition filed by Students for Life of America.
FDA funds must be cut until they take seriously the need to investigate the potential harms of Chemical Abortion Pills to the environment and to demand Red Bag Medical Waste requirements.
- Dock funds sent from the Department of Education to schools that distribute Chemical Abortion Pills on publicly funded college and university campuses through health centers.
Within the last few years, California, New York, and now Massachusetts have passed legislation mandating all four-year public colleges provide Chemical Abortion Pills to students. A great way to combat this is stripping federal funds from public colleges and universities that distribute deadly Chemical Abortion Pills to students. If Congress does not address this soon, the list of states and colleges becoming abortion vendors will only grow. Another tool, outside of the budgeting process, is to support the Protecting Life on College Campuses Act.
- Cease abortion vendor funding for research on the broken bodies of preborn
It has been proven time and time again that several universities including the University of San Francisco and the University of Pittsburgh have bought baby parts to use for their own research purposes. These universities receive a great deal of federal funds ultimately using taxpayer dollars towards unethical broken baby part research. That money flow must be cut off and the dignity of those who lost their lives to abortion be protected.
- Support transformational legislation that protects life in law and in service.
SFLAction keeps a running list of life-affirming legislation here, which includes bills like Ending Chemical Abortion Act, Life at Conception Act, Defunding Planned Parenthood Act, Protecting Life & Taxpayers Act & No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion to name but a few of the measures SFLAction is tracking.
General Principles:
- Cut funds to Planned Parenthood and abortion vendors at home and abroad.
Recently, the Senate added terrible abortion funding earmarks. One of the earmarks provided $1.8 million to the Women and Infants Hospital in Rhode Island, for “facilities and equipment.”
Abortionfinder.org reports that this facility is one of two in-person abortion vendors in Rhode Island. It commits abortion up to 23 weeks (about 5 and a half months) of pregnancy. This is even later than the other in-person vendor, Planned Parenthood. 23 weeks is past the point when the preborn baby can feel pain. [Page 145 of Division D Explanatory Notes].
The other provided $650,000 to Dartmouth Hitchcock in Nashua, NH, for “facilities and equipment.” Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s website states: “We routinely provide both medication and procedural abortion care up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.” [Page 118 of Division D Explanatory Notes].
This is unacceptable and should never happen again.
- Support the Hyde/Weldon/Dornan/Smith/Helms
The Hyde Amendment has been a bi-partisan, pro-life provision added to every spending bill over the last FOUR decades, ensuring no taxpayer dollars can directly fund abortion violence except in cases of rape, incest, and if the mother’s life is in danger. We must continue to enforce and even codify the Hyde Amendment, a key tool in place to stop abortion vendor support. Other important, long-standing measures must also receive support.
The Heritage Foundation describes them as follows:
- “The Hyde Amendment (1976) prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services from spending taxpayer dollars for most abortions;
- “The Helms Amendment(1973) that restricts foreign aid funds from being expended on abortions;
- “The Smith Amendment (1983) prohibits funding elective abortions in the Federal Employee Health Benefits program;
- “The Dornan Amendment (1989) that prohibits funding elective abortions within Washington, D.C.; and
- “The Weldon Amendment (2004) protects health care providers from discrimination on the basis of their refusal to provide and pay for abortions or refer women to have them. The Department of Health and Human ServicesOffice for Civil Rights enforces the Weldon Amendment.”
Those who argue that abortion is not federal should at the very least ensure that scarce taxpayer resources are not supporting abortion or abortion vendors.
- Expand the Child Tax Credit.
The Child Tax Credit (CTC) is a bi-partisan effort to ensure that families are empowered to raise children in America without feeling financially strangled. Part of SFLAction’s Post-Roe Blueprint is expanding CTC, a program designed to invest in young families who are sacrificing to raise the next generation which includes future taxpayers and citizens. A strong CTC protects families, promotes pro-life values, and gives parents freedom to raise their children in accordance with their own values.
A Child Tax Credit could also help with the shocking 41-year low birth rate from last year. It also helps the economy. When families keep more of their hard-earned money, they are more encouraged to start their own businesses or enter the workforce because they have more funds for childcare or transportation.
- Increase Life Affirming Care for young families.
Especially considering the billions of dollars wasted on abortion and abortion vendors since Roe v. Wade, it is entirely appropriate to also invest in programs that support those who choose life, and the organizations dedicated to helping young families thrive and survive.
Students for Life Action asks that each pro-life member of Congress do their duty to protect the American people from abortion exploitation in our budget processes in the FY25 budget season and the upcoming 119th Congress.
We will not stop fighting until taxpayer resources are used to protect American lives, not end them.