Looking at abortion in the news, as a societal and a cultural issue, there are many articles discussing startling new tactics that are happening. An article from the New York Times Sunday Magazine shared how hospitals are training the next generation of students to mainstream abortion in their practices, with Warren Buffett funding the project:

“The money for the Ryan and the Family Planning Fellowship comes from one foundation and from one family. The donor has chosen to remain anonymous, which helps to explain why there’s been so little publicity about the pro-choice strategy of bringing abortion into academic medicine. It has been covered by a veil of semisecrecy.

At the same time, as the Ryan and the fellowship have expanded to dozens of institutions, many people have come to know about the source of funding. In the course of my reporting, two doctors who had not done the fellowship themselves, but who work in universities, volunteered to me that the money for the programs comes from the Buffett Foundation. They meant the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation.

Susan Thompson Buffett was married to Warren Buffett and served as president of the foundation that bears her name. She died in 2004. Two years later, Warren Buffett gave the foundation about $3 billion. He said that he expected the gift to increase the foundation’s annual expenditures by $150 million. And in fact, total giving by the foundation, where two of the Buffetts’ children sit on the board, increased from $202 million in 2007 to $347 million in 2008, according to tax returns.”

Another article, from The Atlantic, reported in June that there is a new trend of DIY abortion which originated in Brazil. This DIY trend is accomplished through the unsupervised usage of a prescription drug known as Cytotec, a drug prescribed for the prevention of ulcers, but can also be used to bring about abortions:

“In Brazil, as in many parts of the world, Catholicism dominates the abortion debate. Like adultery and murder, it was a mortal sin, worthy of damnation to hell and, according to the country’s 1940 Penal Code, a crime against life. Despairing Brazilian women with unwanted pregnancies resorted to drastic and dangerous measures. They listened to old wives tails, ramming sharp objects into their uteruses and guzzling drug cocktails, and visiting clandestine, unsafe abortion clinics. But nothing seemed to reliably work, and all were perilous. That is, until they found the little white pill—that special drug that could, miraculously, ‘bring the period back.’

And so, the whispers circulated and hushed exchanges began. When women searched for the magic drug, they would shield their intentions with coded language: ‘I need to bring down my period,’ they would say, or ‘bring it back.’ For many Catholic women, describing miso in those terms felt better. It was different than aborting, and far less cognitively dissonant.”

But we know that an abortion is not simply “bring[ing] the period back,” but it is the death of a child.

So we come back to the main question and theme of tonight’s show: how can we move forward, and win, the battle of the heart and mind on the topic of abortion? How can we make the usage of a little white pill not just illegal but an unimaginable thing to do? Listen to tonight’s podcast to hear real stories and suggestions on what is being done to further the battle against abortion, and to find out what you can do to help.

Highlight – The abortion battle for hearts and minds

The abortion battle for hearts and minds, not just laws

Even if it’s as small as talking to a friend, or as big as volunteering at a local pregnancy center, there is something everyone can do to make a difference.