Posted on 11/13/2008 9:46:23 AM PST by EternalVigilance
It’s time for new leadership in the pro-life movement and, thankfully, that leadership is now beginning to rise up all across America. This is happening under the banner of the Personhood Movement, which recognizes the personhood of all unborn children and the fact that they are therefore protected by the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.
For more than three decades, the existing leadership of the pro-life movement has pursued a strategy of regulating abortion rather than ending it. Instead of insisting on our nation’s most important founding principle of the protection of the unalienable God-given right to life for all, by forgetting this timeless principle upon which our liberty is premised, they have thereby ceded the moral, political, and legal battle to the enablers of the abortion industry.
This failed strategy is now putting our posterity further into danger’s path. President-elect Obama has promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which will, in effect, nullify any incremental pro-life law or regulation that has been passed over the last 35 years. While National Right to Life and their compromised allies will never acknowledge it, this would leave these “conventional” pro-life organizations no alternative but to embrace Human Life Amendments. Unfortunately, NRLC has consistently worked to undermine these efforts in every state where one has been introduced.
Right to Life of Michigan is one of the largest and most highly esteemed conventional pro-life organizations in the nation. And yet, they opposed Michigan’s Human Life Amendment in 2006. From the Grand Rapids Press, March, 2006:
“Rather than try to directly ban abortion, Right to Life of Michigan wants to put its resources into electing a U.S. senator and governor who oppose abortion,” said Paul Miller, chairman of the group's PAC.
Predictably, since then, they have lost all of it: the Human Life Amendment, one race for Governor and two for the U.S. Senate. In fact, one of these U.S. Senate candidates lost his RLM pro-life endorsement precisely because he supported the Human Life Amendment petition drive.
Let’s fast forward to today. In Michigan, RLM prides itself on being an 800-pound political gorilla. How did this political powerhouse fare in the 2008 election? Let’s take a look:
1. They lost 17 State Representative seats.
2. They lost 12 Circuit or District Court judges.
3. They lost one position on the Wayne State Board of Regents.
4. They lost the University of Michigan Board of Regents.
5. They lost one position on the Michigan State University Board of Trustees.
6. They lost one position on the State Board of Education.
7. They lost an incumbent Michigan State Supreme Court Justice.
8. They lost two incumbent U.S. Congressmen.
9. They lost the U.S. Senate race.
10. They lost the presidential race.
11. They lost the fight against Proposal 2, which legalizes and funds embryonic stem cell research.
These so-called “leaders” have now proven, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that their supposed pragmatism is really nothing more than unprincipled shortsightedness. Their total ineffectiveness, their complete irrelevance to anything real, is now apparent to all.
Proposal 2 passed because of these people’s lack of conviction and focus on the true crime of embryonic stem cell research: it kills human beings, persons who have just as much right to live as anybody else. A mountain of money was used, not to make the case for preserving the integrity of America’s most precious principles, but instead focused entirely on money issues. The true stakes were obscured by their trivialization of the most important moral issue of our time.
Had they shown a human face, represented by the thousands of living “snowflake babies,” those children who had formerly been frozen embryos but who were adopted out and given life, as a comparison with the sterile medical term, “stem cell research,” the results would have likely been far different. This doesn’t even take into account the huge amount of money that RLM, through its political arms, spent trying to elect a man who ran ads in the recent election promising to spend millions more of the taxpayers’ dollars on life-destroying embryonic stem cell research: Senator John McCain.
The extent to which Right to Life of Michigan is willing to play all political sides was best conveyed by the Michigan State Senate Leader, Mike Bishop (R) when, in 2004, he and his pro-abortion Democrat opponent received a co-endorsement from RLM.
Senator Bishop:
“For me, the issue of life is a core conviction not subject to the whims of political expediency. I stand by my votes for life and with those who supported me, but I cannot stand up for an organization, which through a co-endorsement, makes a mockery of the principles and ideals upon which the organization was founded. If a candidate with a 92% approval rating from Planned Parenthood is as worthy of endorsement as the candidate with a 100% pro-life voting record, then something is fundamentally flawed in the way that organization chooses their endorsements. Then again maybe it is a wake-up call for the grassroots supporters to reevaluate who their leaders are.”
But there is a new day dawning. We have been inspired this year by the courageous efforts of those in Colorado who worked tirelessly to put their Personhood Amendment, which recognizes the unalienable right to life of all from the moment of fertilization, on the ballot. Their efforts resulted in the gathering of more than twice as many petition signatures as required to do so. While the effort did not succeed at the ballot box this time, there is new momentum all over the nation to introduce and pass Personhood and Human Life Amendments. One of the brand new organizations founded to help in these efforts, Personhood USA, cites 16 states that already have initiatives underway.
So all is not lost. New leadership brings with it new hope. Those of us who believe that the right to life is unalienable shall continue to pursue the protection of unborn children through the ratification of Personhood Amendments, state by state. For the sake of our babies, let us hope and pray that the compromised leaders of the past come to their senses and begin to do what is right. Regardless of whether they do or not, we are going forward, with or without them.
Judy Zabik is spokesperson for Flint Area Right to Life and Black Americans for Life (http://www.FlintRTL.com) in Flint, Michigan, Board member of Genesee County Republican Party, Treasurer for Alan Keyes for President (http://www.alankeyes.com), and Treasurer for America’s Independent Party National Committee (http://www.aipnews.com).
I don’t propose, nor do I dispose.
I vote.
And yet the people of Colorado voted down this amendment by embarrassingly large margins. Even El Paso county, one of the most conservative counties in the country, voted it down by large margins.
So how is this evidence of success? If this idea could barely get 25% of the vote in Colorado, how is it a winning idea?
So you're saying it's stupid to pray about pro-life issues? I don't think so. We serve an awesome God and it is His will that we honor Him as Creator and take care of His most innocent creations. He does not grant us immediate relief from our troubles and He gives us free-will to disobey Him, but He does honor every prayer spoken in earnest. You can disagree all you want, but I will NEVER underestimate the power of prayer.
So you're saying it's stupid to pray about pro-life issues? I don't think so. We serve an awesome God and it is His will that we honor Him as Creator and take care of His most innocent creations. He does not grant us immediate relief from our troubles and He gives us free-will to disobey Him, but He does honor every prayer spoken in earnest. You can disagree all you want, but I will NEVER underestimate the power of prayer.
Well, this is an egalitarian country, so paternalism isn’t going to win many votes.
We got a lot of work to do.
mailings are a form of disinformation
always vet the source
It's not a crime to kill a person who is completely innocent of any capital crime if he steps out in front of your car on the freeway.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the unborn get some manner of due process as persons rather than as property, but simply declaring the unborn as "persons" isn't going to be a pro-life panacea.
If that is achieved, I expect the pro-aborts will just pass laws saying that killing an unborn person is "justifiable homicide."
Write a book about partial Birth Abortions—an Uncle Tom’s Cabin for this issue. Or make a movie with a high powered emotional script. Maybe Mel Gibson could fund it or the Catholic Church. This is how to win—not with hate but love.
Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation also had some confused priorities.
John Murtha's Republican challenger, William Russell, was pro-life.
Yet PPLF shockingly seemed to endorse Murtha. (Their flyer listed MURTHA's name in all caps and bold type, which for all intents and purposes conveyed their endorsement against Russell, whose name was in small type.)
While it's true Murtha has a pro-life record --with the exception of supporting taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research-- any pro-life org worth of the name should recognize that given a choice between two pro-life candidates, they should endorse the Republican.
The reason should be obvious: NO pro-life legislation, and NO pro-life judicial nominations, will be permitted to be brought to a vote, until Democrats cease to have a majority in Congress.
“How many billion times are Pro-Lifers going to pray prayers just like that one before they figure out the answer is “No.”
The truth is is that too few people are saying those prayers. Was this the way they fought at Lepanto? I don’t think so.
I just went with RTL’s endorsement.
But I see your point.
Egalitarian? Hardly.
Point out the fundimental disparity of women having nine months to choose whether to reproduce, and men being expected to make that choice prior to any sexual contact, and you’ll see paternalism get support from both the feminist AND the fundamentalist.
Lepanto was won because of more prayers?
There is another possibility: states could actively proclaim that neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor the federal government have any right to put forth dictates which violate the United States Constitution.
It is ridiculous to suggest that two wrongs make a right.
Things need to go the other way, with both men and women assured the right in law to prevent the abortion of all of their prenatal daughters and sons from conception forward.
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