Posted on 05/28/2002 6:06:36 AM PDT by FreeTally
'Choose Life' tag may have hit $1 million
By Bill Cotterell
DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER
It's been a long and bumpy legal and political road, but supporters of Florida's "Choose Life" license tag think they have passed the $1 million milepost.
"We don't know where or exactly when that tag sale or renewal took place, but we believe we went over the top this past week," said Russ Amerling, an organizer with the Ocala-based organization promoting the bright yellow tag. "We're going to be tracking the figures and try to pinpoint a millionth-dollar tag sale."
The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles reported $995,000 in "Choose Life" tag sales and renewals as of May 17, making the controversial plate one of the fastest-selling specialty tags ever offered. Department figures indicated 30,072 had been sold through the end of March - the latest date with complete figures - and 16,150 had been renewed.
That's far below the Challenger commemorative tag - which has nearly 700,000 sales and 1.7 million renewals since its issue almost a year after the 1986 shuttle disaster. Tags honoring several universities and environmental causes, including the Florida panther and manatee, also have racked up bigger sales in 10 to 15 years. But "Choose Life" is going fast in just more than two years on the road.
The 2002 Legislature approved eight new tags this year, so motorists will have 56 specialty designs to choose from when all are up and running in a few months. Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet last week approved an American Red Cross plate but dropped three others - the Girl Scouts and two arena football teams - that fell short of 8,000 sales and renewals over five years.
The Legislature authorized the $20 "Choose Life" tag in 1999. Sales were delayed more than a year when pro-choice forces unsuccessfully filed state and federal lawsuits, arguing that "Choose Life" was an anti-abortion message borrowed from the Bible.
DHSMV spokesman Bob Sanchez said that, at the rate tags have been sold and renewed, the $1 million mark was probably achieved last week. Amerling said statewide sales were $56,000 last month, up from $47,000 in July of last year.
The state has begun distributing proceeds to county commissions, and Leon County has received $13,900 from local tag sales. The money will go to the Open Door Women's Clinic, which will use it for adoption services.
Anti-abortion forces began collecting signatures from drivers, who promised to buy the specialty tag, in the mid-1990s. The Legislature balked for a session or two, but after Republicans took over, a bill authorizing the plate passed in 1998 - and then-Gov. Lawton Chiles vetoed it.
Most Democrats in the Legislature argued that the "Choose Life" message meant the state was officially taking sides in the long-running abortion argument. Bush, an abortion opponent, supported the tag in 1999 and signed a bill sponsored by Rep. Bev Kilmer, R-Quincy, authorizing its issuance.
The law lets each of the 67 counties decide how to spend proceeds from sales in their tag offices, but it restricts distribution to nonprofit adoption and child-development services that do not provide abortion or refer women to abortion clinics.
Leon County Circuit Judge Nikki Clark dismissed a suit filed against the law on religious grounds. A federal court in Jacksonville threw out another suit that contended it was unfair to offer "Choose Life" without a companion pro-choice license tag.
Amerling said another federal suit is pending in West Palm Beach - filed by the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy against the exclusion of Planned Parenthood and other groups that include abortion in their services.
"Our argument is that manatee tags don't save panthers, and panther tags don't save manatees," Amerling said. "The courts have said the law gives us the right to decide what type of organizations receive the funds from our plate."
Palm Beach County delayed distribution of its funds pending resolution of the federal suit, Amerling said. He said about half the counties in Florida have held back the funds while drawing up methods for clinics and counseling services to apply for grants or enter into contracts for adoption and other children's services.
Also, note that Planned Parenthood has the nerve to claim they can't be denied proceeds from the sale of the tag. They will lose, as they have lost the other law suits as well(and for people who didn't have faith in Nikki Clark back during the election lawsuits, it seems as if she has proven she is fair).
Keep up the good work, Floridians!
What the writer, and pro-abortion groups, fail to grasp is that "Choose Life" is one of the two choices an expectant mother can make. Choosing life is inherently "pro-choice" - but not the way the pro-abortion groups would have it.
I've watched as journalists over the past 6-7 years increasingly drop "Pro-Life" - substituting "Anti-Abortion". It has a subliminal negative sound to it, where "Pro-Life" has a more positive connotation (which most journalists are reluctant to allow).
Am I splitting hairs? Too sensitive? Mebbe so. But I agree with the great philosopher who is on the cutting edge of societal evolution: "Words mean things".
With enough signatures, you can get almost anything placed on a tag here in Florida(the key words being enough signatures). There is probably a specialty tag that almost everyone could find that they like. A proceed to goes to an individual cause, which really pleases residents. And as the article says, after so many years, if interest dies in the tag, they eliminate it. This is one thing(tags) that Florida has done well over the past 10-20 years.
I never thought of that, but you are probably right.
Not that I can see. Consider this sentence from the article:
A federal court in Jacksonville threw out another suit that contended it was unfair to offer "Choose Life" without a companion pro-choice license tag.Liberalism blinds its believers so that they are unaware of their own self-parody. If a plate saying "Choose Life" is to be balanced with a plate carrying the "other side", then what would be on that other plate? Naturally, something that means the opposite, such as "Choose Death", right? But that's too obvious, and besides, I think it's only half of the meaning. I think it likely that they really mean to negate both "life" and (other peoples')"choice." Ergo, "Forced Death" might be a more appropriate slogan.
Of course, they can't say this out loud; after all, the philosopher which you mention also has noted that liberals must hide their true colors when they show themselves in public. So we get a cover-up, feelgood slogan that hides its true meaning, even from those that use it.
The phrase "pro-choice" is a code for anything but.
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