[For "pain capable", admitting privileges, waiting periods, heartbeat, informed consent, anesthesia, "protected class" bills, racially-motivated abortion bans, etc., see Compromised Incrementalism below.]

PRINCIPLED INCREMENTALISM

When personhood is finally enforced in law, of all the abortion laws then in effect, only the principled incrementalism bills will not be thereby abolished. All compromised incrementalism will be repealed when personhood is in effect. As American RTL wrote to Dr. James Dobson in our full-page open letter that appeared in newspapers around the country, "Incrementalism is fine; compromised incre­mentalism violates God's enduring command, Do not murder."

Examples of Principled Laws

• Fetal Crimes Bills: only principled UVCA bills, but not those re-affirming abortion
• Divesting Pension Funds: from companies that perform or support abortion
• Parental Involvement: in medical care, but not mentioning nor re-affirming abortion
• Born-Alive Infant Protection: though moral, legal protection for survivors backfires
• Prohibit Embryonic Stem Cell Research: for both publicly and privately funded use
• Prevent Insurance Coverage: prohibit any health insurance from covering abortion
• Prevent Funding of Abortion: prohibit financing of abortion (without re-affirming abortion and its funding as is usually done)

American RTL's two must-read articles, Oppose Regulations Because... and Oppose Exceptions Because... explain the principles that must be adhered to in order to write principled incremental legislation. In summary, the God-given right to life must be advocated without exception. As an example of a horrendous violation of those principles, see ARTL's PBA Summary: Saved Not One, about the 15-year fundraiser that took in a quarter-of-a-billion dollars for the pro-life industry, yet as Dr. Dobson wrote, "Ending partial-birth abortion... does not save a single human life." Rather than being a victory, many pro-life leaders have since condemned the U.S. Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Carhart ruling upholding the PBA "Ban" for being a virtual late-term abortion manual.

COMPROMISED INCREMENTALISM

On the other hand, morally compromised legislation can be recognized in that they are child-killing regulations, present child-killing exceptions, and in that they therefore:
   - end with "and then you can kill the baby"
   - would keep abortion legal if Roe were ever merely overturned.
"And then you can kill the baby" bills include:

Examples of Unprincipled Laws

• Informed Consent (here's an example)
• Waiting Period (then kill her)
• Partial-Birth Abortion "Ban" (for example PBA: Saved Not One)
• Late-term Bans (including pain capable, heartbeat, and anesthesia bills)
• Clinic Regulations (cleaner reputation for mills)
• Admitting Privilege (safer abortions)
• Fetal Pain Bills (here's an example)
• Parental Notification or Consent (then kill him)
• Etc.

Use the Personhood Test: One way to help people see whether or not an abortion law is principled or not is to apply the personhood test. When America finally recognizes the personhood and God-given right to life of every child, some pro-life laws will become redundant and unnecessary. However, other laws which include "pro-life" regulations and exceptions will be explicitly invalidated and annulled. The pro-life laws that will be merely rendered no longer necessary are the principled incrementalism. The abortion regulations that will be invalidated are the compromised laws. An example of this is found in Ohio's HB 125 "heartbeat bill" which bans the killing of an unborn child only after the detectability of a heartbeat). Morally compromised incremental efforts have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for their supporters but undermine the nation's recognition of the sanctity of human life. Principled pro-life laws build toward victory. So American Right To Life urges everyone to oppose compromised incrementalism and to support only principled laws, and especially personhood!

Compromised: Pain Capable, Heartbeat, Etc: Just like Roe v. Wade, pain capable bills, heartbeat bills, etc., regulate the age at which a child can be killed, showing them to be violations of God's command, Do not kill the innocent (and so also unconstitutional). Therefore, by the law of unintended consequences, though well-intentioned, passing a heartbeat bill can actually increase the number of unborn children killed. For if a "heartbeat bill" becomes law, there would be a predictable significant increase in the use of mechanical abortifacient IUDs and chemical abortifacients like RU-486 (mifepristone) including the routine use of the Morning After Pill.

A prestigious Harvard University publication, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, published an important paper by Josh Craddock, Protecting Prenatal Persons: Does the Fourteenth Amendment Prohibit Abortion?

National Cancer Institute Lead Researcher Reverses Herself
Now Admits Abortion/Breast Cancer Risk Factor

Updated June 2017 -- NCI Researcher Now Agrees: Louise A. Brinton, largely responsible for getting the government-funded NCI to deny the abortion-breast cancer link, has reversed herself and co-authored a new study which now describes significant breast cancer risk factors including "induced abortion."\ "Specifically, older age, family history of breast cancer, earlier menarche age, induced abortion, and oral contraceptive use were associated with an increased risk for breast cancer," wrote Brinton and her co-authors in the peer-reviewed Cancer Epidemiology journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. The study also says that these risk factors are "consistent with the effects observed in previous studies on younger women." (See "Risk Factors for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer," Brinton, et al., American Association for Cancer Research.)