Jeanne Mancini

(FOX NEWS) — A few years back, I watched a powerful video.

A company interviewed potential employees for a “Director of Operations” position. The job responsibilities included constant work on their feet (even overnight) and excellent negotiation and interpersonal skills.

The company was seeking someone with degrees in medicine, finance and the culinary arts. The shocked interviewees soon lost interest in the role when they were told there would be no compensation for the job, no breaks and no vacation days. The work was 24/7, 365 days a year. In fact, on holidays the employee’s workload would increase and it was required to be done in a cheerful disposition.

It turned out that the job posting was fake. The job description was that of being a Mom.

The interviewees quickly agreed that being a mom is the most challenging yet rewarding job in the world. This message is needed now more than ever in a world that so often takes mothers for granted.

People may think “moms don’t have a real job” or assume that their work requires no special talent or skills. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Mothers across the world and for all time have worked tirelessly to ensure that her child feels loved and taken care of, and that her child will live a life better than she did.

This Mother’s Day, I want to highlight the strength of three mothers who have inspired me during my time in the pro-life movement. 

Rose was diagnosed with endometriosis and told she could never have kids. As she was grieving this news with her husband, a young woman nearby named Elizabeth was grieving for a different reason. Elizabeth just found out she was pregnant, but she was unmarried and terrified to raise a child on her own.

(Originally published in Fox News)

(THE HILL) — Over the last few weeks, we have seen intense debate reignite over the role the federal government plays in limiting abortion. The backdrop to such debates is the upcoming presidential election, as well as the cultural reverberations around the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

There has been some confusion about the Dobbs decision. It did not simply “return abortion to the states.” Rather, it returned the power to protect the unborn to the voters, who can exercise this power through both their state and federal elected officials.

The Dobbs decision empowers states to enact pro-life laws that cover the period before viability — that is, approximately 22 weeks into a pregnancy or earlier. Under the Roe regime, states were not able to enforce such laws. Thankfully, many states have now implemented life-protective laws since the decision came down. To date, 24 states protect women and unborn children prior to viability. (Three of these are currently in litigation.)

Of course, the reverse is also sadly true. Twenty-six states currently have few or no protections for unborn babies, even at the stages where their hearts are beating, where they suck their thumbs or where they can feel pain. Seven of these states, along with Washington, D.C., have virtually no limits on abortion — not even a prohibition on painful dismemberment abortions.

This is why the U.S. must enact some form of a federal limit that protects unborn children nationwide. Otherwise, we continue on our deadly path, where over half of the country is exposed to the harms of abortion, and the human rights of the unborn are ignored.

It can be hard to comprehend that the most developed country in the world, the U.S., permits late term abortion in more than half of our states, even though 65 percent of Americans consistently believe that abortion should be illegal at least after the first trimester (about 12 weeks), and 80 percent believe that it should be illegal after the second trimester (about 24 weeks).

Our nation is in shameful company with its lack of protections for the unborn. Only seven other countries allow late-term abortions, including some of the worst international violators of human rights such as China and North Korea.  In comparison, 47 out of 50 European countries have stronger protections for the unborn, limiting elective abortion to 15 weeks’ gestation or earlier.

Even pro-choice Americans know that a seven-pound baby, almost fully formed, who has not yet been born, deserves the right to live. But the law does not reflect this reality.

(Originally published in The Hill)

(OSV News) — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans ruled Aug. 16 to restrict access to an abortion pill nationwide, finding that the government may not have followed its own rules when it loosened regulations on the drug. This ruling will not take effect unless the Supreme Court weighs in, meaning the drug will remain on the market for now.

A coalition of pro-life opponents of mifepristone, the first of two drugs used in a chemical abortion, filed suit in an effort to revoke the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill, arguing the government violated its own safety standards when it first approved the drug in 2000. However, proponents argue mifepristone poses statistically little risk to women using it for abortion early in pregnancy, and claim the drug is being singled out for political reasons.

The FDA in 2016 and 2023 expanded the availability of the drug beyond the 2000 standard, increasing the gestational limit on the drug from seven to 10 weeks, and making the drug available via telemedicine.

The appeals court’s ruling — if implemented by the Supreme Court — would roll back those expansions to their original limits.

“In loosening mifepristone’s safety restrictions, FDA failed to address several important concerns about whether the drug would be safe for the women who use it,” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote in the court’s ruling. “It failed to consider the cumulative effect of removing several important safeguards at the same time.”

Erin Hawley, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom and vice president of the ADF Center for Life and Regulatory Practice, told reporters on an Aug. 16 press call that “the district rightly required the FDA to do its job and to restore crucial safeguards for women and girls, including ending illegal mail-order abortions.”

“The FDA will finally be made to account for the damage it has caused and help countless women and the rule of law by unlawfully removing almost every meaningful safeguard from the chemical abortions drug regimen,” added Hawley, who also is the wife of Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

In a statement attributed to drugmaker GenBioPro, which manufactures generic mifepristone tablets, the company said that “we remain concerned about extremists and special interests using the courts in an attempt to undermine science and access to evidence-based medication as well as attempts to undermine the US Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory authority.”

“We will continue to use our company’s legal and regulatory tools to ensure access to mifepristone, which is essential to the health of many in the United States,” the statement said.

(Originally published in America Magazine)