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Welcome back to Respect Life Notes and Happy New Year! I’m Elise Ketch, a local Catholic and professional pro-life activist, taking over for beloved parishioner Frank Zapatka, who wrote RLN for several decades. Thank you for your service, Frank! Let me catch you up on the pro-life news since last April.
Over the summer, Congress passed the “Big Beautiful Bill” and President Trump signed it on July 4th. In this bill was a provision to defund abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood, of federal Medicaid funds for the entire year. At first this may seem like a defeat, not a win – after all, don’t we want Big Abortion defunded for good? But the great news is, all it takes is losing one year of funding for the abortion industry to start going bankrupt.
And the proof is coming in – according to Operation Rescue, at the end of 2025, the U.S. now has 10 fewer abortion clinics than in 2024! Planned Parenthood in particular has taken a sizable hit, shuttering 64 of its facilities, including its flagship Manhattan location in March (thanks in part to the amazing Witness for Life performed by faithful Catholics every first Saturday) and its Houston mega center in August (which was known for its role in the trafficking of aborted baby parts for research.) And according to the Guttmacher Institute, the total abortions in the U.S. for the first half of the year went down 5% compared to the last year! (This is partly attributed to the enforcement of Florida’s Heartbeat Act.)
Praise be to God that two of the most notorious third-trimester abortion clinics in the US closed this year as well. The Boulder Abortion Clinic closed in April because the infamous abortionist Warren Hern retired. And right here in Foggy Bottom, DC, the Washington Surgi-Clinic’s business license was found to be expired in September, and it was confirmed that they are no longer scheduling appointments. This was discovered after a campaign in June by Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust’s DC chapter to close the facility for good, in which activists exposed that the abortionist Cesare Santangelo was performing dangerous surgical abortions with his arm in a full cast. They established HurtBySurgi.com, inviting victims of malpractice by Washington Surgi-Clinic to come forward. (Washington Surgi-Clinic is the facility from which leaders of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising recovered the bodies of 115 babies, including three third-trimester babies who appear to be victims of partial-birth abortion and infanticide. Learn more about them at Jfor5.com.)
If you’re interested in fighting the remaining third-trimester abortion facility within the DC city limits, then please consider joining parishioners from St. Ann’s and the Cathedral of St. Matthew every first Saturday of the month to witness the dignity of DuPont Clinic’s victims with an hour of prayer. We gather outside of St. Matthew’s at 10:30am, walk over to DuPont Clinic by 11am, and have fellowship after around 12pm. Each time we pray, people ask us why we are there; we are thus able to spread awareness of this grave injustice occurring in our city, and people are often appalled to learn that babies as old as 33 weeks gestation are killed here for any reason. The next witness is scheduled for February 7th, 2026. If you can’t join us in person, please consider praying for the closure of DuPont Clinic!
Another win over the summer was the Supreme Court decision in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which ruled that states can defund abortion businesses of Medicaid dollars. However, our tax dollars are still at risk of being used to fund abortion. Just two weeks ago in January of 2026, President Trump urged GOP representatives to be a “little flexible” about the inclusion of the Hyde Amendment in future bills, which prohibits federal funding of abortion. Thankfully, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said “I’m just not gonna allow that to happen.” Please, contact your representatives and urge them to keep Hyde alive!
Did you know that the largest peaceful civil disobedience movement in America – garnering over 70,000 arrests – began right here in the DC area? On August 2nd, 1975, in Rockville, Maryland, seven women were arrested for performing a sit-in at the Sigma Reproductive Health Center. On August 30th, 2025, five of the sit-in participants and organizers reunited to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the birth of the pro-life “Rescue” movement. You can watch a full recording of their speeches by searching for “Sigma Seven Sit-In” on YouTube. Meanwhile, on December 5th, 2025, Rescue was “resurrected” by pro-lifers who performed a peaceful blockade of the entrance of a Planned Parenthood in Memphis, Tennessee, which is known to be assisting in the trafficking of women out of state for abortions. Seventeen pro-lifers were arrested during this action. More recently, Rescue Resurrection demonstrated against the abortion pill on January 22nd, 2026 in front of the HHS headquarters in Washington, DC. More information about these and future events are available at RescueResurrection.com.
Of course, the national March for Life takes place on January 23rd in DC and will be a rousing success, with thousands of people showing up for the unborn. The week before, the grassroots group Virginia for Preborn Justice hosted a week of action in Richmond, Virginia to combat the upcoming amendment being proposed as a ballot initiative to change Virginia’s constitution with the goal of codifying abortion as a “right” through all nine months of pregnancy. To get involved with their work, visit VirginiaForPrebornJustice.com. Also, last week, local Consistent Life Ethic campaign Horror & Hope both attended and hosted several events in the DC area with the goal of spreading the CLE message (an outgrowth of Catholic Social Teaching) that many pro-lifers also care about war, immigration, assisted suicide, the death penalty, and other injustices alongside abortion. They were inspired by the fact that the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision and the day that the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons went into effect are both January 22nd. View their efforts at HorrorAndHope.com. Let’s pray that 2026 will be a year of LIFE! Peace and blessings!
