The Life Legal Defense Foundation, based in Napa, Calif., is one such group that supports CPCs’ resistance to make clear — through signage — what services they do and do not offer. Yet, last week the organization joined a coalition of anti-abortion-rights groups in petitioning the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to put graphic warning labels on abortion.

Image from Students for Life of America 

Youth-centric anti-abortions rights group Students for Life of America (SFLA) started the campaign, which was sparked by the FDA’s recent announcement that cigarette packaging and advertisements will come with more in-depth, graphic warning labels starting September 2012.

“As much as I support the decision by the FDA to hold smokers accountable for the health risks they’re accepting, I can’t help but wonder where the warning labels on abortion are,” writes SFLA Executive Director Kristan Hawkins in a June 23 blog post. “Abortion is the single worst scar on the social justice movement in America. No one is debating that smoking has terrible consequences, but the extermination of innocent children is a crime of much more concern, and one I refuse to stand for.”

SFLA has created a petition asking the FDA to create such a label. The petition can be found at the website AbolishAbortion.com, which is run by SFLA and sponsored by the same coalition of student-led anti-abortion rights groups responsible for the websiteExpose Planned Parenthood.

According to SFLA’s website, the FDA petition is being co-sponsored by Catholic Coalition of New Mexico, Dr. Gerry M. Nadal, Human Life Alliance, International Right to Life Federation, Life Coalition International, Life Issues Institute, Life Legal Defense Foundation, One More Soul, Operation Rescue, Prolife Nation, the Radiance Foundation, Secular Pro-Life, Students for Life of Illinois and Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust.

As to where such a graphic warning label would be placed, Hawkins suggests abortion facilities, abortion-causing drugs.

In aforementioned blog post, Hawkins argues that abortion warning labels are long overdue:

Now, many folks have begun speaking out against the new FDA regulations on cigarette package. Some non-smokers are complaining that they don’t want to be bothered by unsettling pictures that don’t apply to them, and smokers say they don’t want to feel pressured or uncomfortable while exercising their freedom to purchase and use cigarettes.

[…]

As a political conservative on most issues, I do worry about the over-reaching of the federal government and whether or not the FDA should have the right to impose such regulations in a free society.

However, that’s not the issue that keeps me up all night.

Abortion is.

[…]

If you look at the statistics, it’s clear that abortion kills more Americans than smoking does.

Why is it that the issue of regulating abortion is one health issue the FDA won’t address?

Why shouldn’t abortion facilities be required to post pictures of aborted children in their windows or, at very least, on brochures given to each women who comes to the facility for an abortion?

But Paul Smalera, writing in Slate this week, has another approach to the legislation that’s worth a look.

First, he points out, the bill acknowledges the dangers of nicotine but prohibits a ban on the drug. Second, flavored tobaccos are banned, except for menthol cigarettes, which just happen to be favored disproportionately by African-Americans. Third, the bill makes it nearly impossible for tobacco companies to introduce new products, all but solidifying the market-share advantages enjoyed by industry giants today. And fourth, the nation’s largest tobacco company (i.e. market-share leader) is a proud cheerleader for the bill.

Money quote:

“It is a dream come true for Philip Morris,” Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, told me. “First, they make it look like they are a reformed company which really cares about reducing the toll of cigarettes and protecting the public’s health; and second, they protect their domination of the market and make it impossible for potentially competitive products to enter the market.” Other tobacco companies have taken to calling the bill the “Marlboro Monopoly Act of 2009.”

It’s the ole “do-you-take-a-half-loaf-or-nothing” question. (And if you like it here, you’re gonna love the looming health reform debate.) But Smalera has a few words about that as well.

“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good,” has been the old saw the administration uses to admonish interest groups dissatisfied with compromise legislation. But opponents of this bill on both sides are asking, What’s the enemy of terrible? Isn’t it this bill, which is racist, protectionist, cynical, and misguided?

And, he adds, soon to be law.

“What we should be doing is banning tobacco,” Coburn said in a recent Senate floor speech he gave during a debate on a tobacco regulation bill. “Nobody up here has the courage to do that. It is a big business. There are millions of Americans who are addicted to nicotine. And even if they are not addicted to the nicotine, they are addicted to the habit.”

The Senate this week took up legislation, already passed by the House, to empower the Food and Drug Administration to oversee the tobacco industry. Many Republicans are opposed to the bill, arguing that it would cripple the industry and eliminate jobs vital to certain states. But Coburn, a physician, is opposed for different reasons.

Coburn made his case against the bill because he said it would send a mixed message to the FDA, which is charged with ensuring the safety of food and drugs. Coburn’s argument is that there’s nothing safe about tobacco and that it would make more sense for the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to regulate it.

The Senate is expected to pass the bill next week, and President Obama has indicated he’ll sign it into law.