By Daniel Payne
CNA Staff, Sep 4, 2025 /
12:44 pm
Here’s a roundup of recent pro-life and abortion-related news:
Pro-life group says late-term abortion clinic halted procedures after campaign against it
A pro-life group said a major Washington, D.C., late-term abortion clinic has ceased operations for the time being after a public campaign against it.
The Washington Surgi-Clinic, which has been at the center of controversy for years due to allegations of illegal abortion services, has “halted appointments” after a “campaign to shut the facility down” was mounted by the group Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust.
The pro-life group said in a press release on Sept. 2 that it filed a complaint with the city board of medicine presenting “numerous complaints and lawsuits” against clinic abortionist Cesare Santangelo.
The clinic subsequently said it is “not currently taking appointments” and is hoping to resume them in “late September.”
Santangelo, meanwhile, has not been seen at the clinic “in over three weeks,” the press release said.
Texas passes law allowing state residents to sue abortion pill manufacturers
Texas lawmakers this week passed a bill that will allow state residents to sue providers and distributors of abortion pills who circulate the deadly drugs in the state.
State Rep. Jeff Leach, who authored the measure, announced the bill’s passage on Facebook on Sept. 3, writing that the law, when signed, will ensure “that those who traffic dangerous abortion drugs into our state are held accountable.”
The measure will allow plaintiffs to collect up to $100,000 in damages from those who bring abortion pills into the state or provide them to Texas residents. Pregnant women who use the pills cannot be sued under the law.
Abortion drugs are illegal in Texas, though those seeking to abort children can acquire them through the mail. State Attorney General Ken Paxton last year filed a lawsuit against an abortionist in New York, alleging she illegally provided abortion drugs to a woman in Texas.
Leach on Sept. 3 said the state will continue to be “a national leader in the fight for life.” Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to sign the measure into law.
Amy Coney Barrett defends Roe v. Wade repeal in new memoir
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a soon-to-be-published memoir has defended her decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, citing what she said was public sentiment as well as long-standing legal precedent.
Barrett’s memoir, “Listening to the Law,” is due to be published on Sept. 9. Multiple media outlets reported on her remarks touching on Roe ahead of the book’s launch.
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“The evidence does not show that the American people have traditionally considered the right to obtain an abortion so fundamental to liberty that it ‘goes without saying’ in the Constitution,” she writes in the book.
“In fact, the evidence cuts in the opposite direction. Abortion not only lacked long-standing protection in American law — it had long been forbidden.”
The Supreme Court’s role, the justice writes in the memoir, “is to respect the choices that the people have agreed upon, not to tell them what they should agree to.”
Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at the College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.