This is the latest ERLC End-of-Year update as part of our RISE Campaign.
In 2017, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission advocated for life on Capitol Hill, in courts, churches, and throughout the public square. While we made a lot of progress for life, we still have a lot of work to do in 2018.
We hosted our second annual Evangelicals for Life conference in Washington, D.C. Hundreds of Christians joined us to discuss how we can be pro-life leaders in our communities from womb to tomb, equipping evangelicals as they gathered to March for Life.
Many of our top policy priorities for 2017 involved legislative and public policy efforts to defend the sanctity of every human life, no matter how small.
Once the president appointed Neil Gorsuch to replace the late pro-life Justice Antonin Scalia, the ERLC mobilized our resources on Capitol Hill and around the country to ensure his confirmation in the U.S. Senate. Among our efforts, we built a coalition and led an evangelical’s support letter for Gorsuch’s confirmation. Our letter was widely distributed on Capitol Hill, and Justice Gorsuch was confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
The ERLC also celebrated another significant pro-life victory when the Trump administration reinstated and expanded the pro-life Mexico City Policy, which ensure NGOs receiving federal foreign aid funds can neither perform nor promote abortions.
Many of our top policy priorities for 2017 involved legislative and public policy efforts to defend the sanctity of every human life, no matter how small.
For years, the ERLC battled the Obama administration’s HHS contraceptive mandate that forced Baptist organizations and other Christian service organizations to choose between their kingdom work or violating their consciences. We submitted written objections in the regulatory process, filed Supreme Court briefs in litigation challenging the mandate, and advocated the Trump administration to rescind the unconstitutional mandate. This October, the Trump administration released a new rule providing robust religious liberty exemptions and settled the Little Sisters of the Poor litigation in favor of faith-based organizations. This was a significant pro-life win years in the making.
On Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives passed the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and a health care reform bill that defunded Planned Parenthood. For the rest of this year and into next year if necessary, we will continue to encourage the Senate to protect vulnerable children by banning late-term abortions and defunding Planned Parenthood.
These are just two examples of our continued pro-life work ahead of us in 2018. We are focusing on the Conscience Protection Act (CPA) to give healthcare professionals the legal protection they need to abstain from providing abortion services. We are preparing to host our biggest Evangelicals for Life conference yet. We will continue fighting state-level efforts to impose physician-assisted suicide on vulnerable segments of our population, working with policy leaders like Sen. James Lankford to educate and mobilize Americans against this anti-biblical practice.
