LFF was founded on the cornerstone of the sanctity of human life:

We affirm the personhood of the unborn child as created in the image of God.
We affirm that life begins at conception and should be protected through the entire pregnancy.
We affirm that life, both born and unborn, is a human right entitled to legal protections.
We affirm that Roe v Wade was a tragic mistake and should be overruled.

We have supported carefully planned, drafted, and legally defendable pro-life legislation in Louisiana for several decades. Our chief concern being the protection of human life, both the mom’s and the child’s.

LFF also has labored with the pro-life community to provide a network of pregnancy centers and adoption agencies to provide compassionate care to women. From the Choose Life License plate to the Alternatives to Abortion program, Louisiana has demonstrated that we care for both unborn children and their mothers, as evidenced by the resources directed toward those efforts.

We support, in principle, the affirmation of the personhood of the unborn child in HB 813. However, structural issues within the bill ensure that it will immediately be challenged and then enjoined.

Some of those issues are as follows:

The enforcement provisions of the bill are overly broad and legally vague. It gives enforcement authority to the state, which is the duty of the Attorney General. This requires a constitutional amendment, not a statute.
The bill violates the separation of powers enshrined in both the Louisiana Constitution and the U.S. Constitution. The legislature would instruct judges in how they must rule in a case interpreting a statute. The legislature does not possess ‘jurisdiction’ to prevent a state court judge from enjoining, staying, overruling, or voiding any provision of the statute, or threatening impeachment for simply fulfilling judicial responsibilities.
It violates the supremacy of U.S. statutes and U.S. federal court decisions under the U.S. Constitution. We believe in the rule of law, the Louisiana Constitution, and the Constitution of the United States, both of which legislators took an oath to uphold. HB 813 directs Louisiana to defy rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. While we wholeheartedly disagree with the ruling in Roe, HB 813 is not a workable solution.

Louisiana law protects babies from abortion when Roe v. Wade is overturned through our 2006 Human Life Protection Act (RS 40.1061), commonly referred to as the “Trigger Law.” Current Louisiana law would hold accountable with criminal and civil penalties those individuals performing the abortion or selling or providing the chemical abortion drugs, not the woman having the abortion. The tragedy of abortion isn’t limited to the unborn child who loses her life. The mother who aborts her child also suffers devastating physical and psychological damage following an abortion.

We live in an unprecedented moment where hope abounds that the Roe v. Wade decision will be overruled by next month with a final U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case. Simply stated, the filing and passage of this bill would be untimely, unnecessary, and unhelpful in a post-Roe Louisiana.

Roe v. Wade is a cancer that has been eating away at our nation since 1973 and has resulted in the death of over 60 million babies. That cancer needs to be excised and the right to life of the unborn restored.

We have great respect for proponents of this bill and we heartily support the concept of making Louisiana abortion-free. We believe that with patience and prayer, that will happen very soon with the existing pro-life framework of laws in our state. In our effort to do the right thing concerning a respectful life ethic, we must also seek the right manner and the right time.

HB 813 in its current form is simply not the right manner nor is it the right time.

In His Service,
Gene Mills
President
Louisiana Family Forum