The Legacy of Judas National Right to Life
Contact: Donna Ballentine, 888-888-2785
MEDIA ADVISORY, Dec. 20 /Christian Newswire/ -- The following is submitted by Brian Rohrbough, President, American RTL:
Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot went to the chief priests and said,
"What are you willing to give me if I deliver Him to you?"
And they counted out to him thirty pieces of silver.
So from that time he sought opportunity to betray Him.
In 1981, after president Ronald Reagan agreed he would sign federal personhood legislation for the unborn, National Right to Life and their longtime attorney James Bopp actually opposed that effort claiming they supported a states' rights approach. Move forward in time a quarter century to today. Notice that NRTL and Bopp have long opposed all state personhood efforts. Demonstrated below, NRTL has continuously promoted legislation that undermines the personhood of an innocent child. In betrayal, NRTL quietly worked to oppose South Dakota's recent abortion ban referendum. Now, like a thief in the night they are circulating a recent Bopp memo to pro-life legislators and religious organizations to oppose personhood efforts in Colorado and elsewhere. NRTL is attempting to turn pro-life officials against this legitimate effort to end abortion and enforce the God-given right to life.
A stalwart authority of the pro-life movement, Dr. Charles Rice of Notre Dame, accurately reports that not one of the U.S. Supreme Court justices, which includes those supported by NRTL, has ever affirmed personhood and the right to life for the unborn. The Court's infamous Partial-Birth Abortion ruling advocates "an injection that kills the fetus," and "less shocking methods" of killing the same late-term children, and explicitly keeps PBA legal declaring that the baby can be delivered up to "the navel" and then terminated. This Gonzales v. Carhart decision is a virtual PBA manual. Yet against the landslide of changing opinion among pro-life leaders (because they have now read the decision for themselves), Bopp continues to praise these justices who delivered the most aggressively pro-abortion, brutally-wicked decision ever issued by a U.S. court.
Written on the letterhead of Bopp's law firm, this August 7, 2007 11-page memo states, "And some have shamelessly vilified the Supreme Court justices who gave us this important victory... This is a grave injustice to these justices..." -James Bopp
"Woe to you also, lawyers!
For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.
In fact, you bear witness that you approve the deeds of your fathers;
for they indeed killed them, and you build their tombs."
NRTL and their longtime lawyer Bopp bear witness that they approve of the justices they lobbied for, who rule to continue to slaughter the innocent. The grave injustice is against the unborn. The growing list of Christian pro-life leaders condemning the evil PBA ruling include:
• Judge Roy Moore
• Ambassador Alan Keyes (see 30-second clip)
• Human Life Int'l president Rev. Tom Euteneuer
• Notre Dame Law School Professor Charles Rice
• American Life League's Judie Brown
• Congressman Bob Dornan
• And many more.
And the founder of Focus on the Family also confirmed that:
"Ending partial-birth abortion... does not save a single human life." -Dr. James Dobson, May 2007, FocusAction.org.
James Bopp and NRTL led the partial-birth abortion fiasco that wasted fifteen years but raised for the pro-life industry a quarter-billion dollars on a PBA ban that from its very inception never had the authority to prevent a single abortion. Bopp is an Advisor to false pro-life candidate Mitt Romney and American RTL Action is now running its first 527 political TV ad on the Fox News Channel in Iowa exposing Romney.
Full article continued: www.americanrighttolife.org
Ugh. Great. Now American Right to Life cronies can infiltrate ProLifeBlogs with the mission of their fledgling organization: to attack the National Right to Life.
Like I've said before: let's wait and see how many "American Right to Life" approved bills pass at any level of government. My guess: none.
Great blog..
Why is PLB allowing itself to be a conduit for attacking pro-life groups? We can have a good faith debate about the best strategy to protect the unborn, but allowing comments comparing a pro-life group to the betrayer of Jesus makes PLB look pretty bad. Surely this web site is above allowing these kinds of pathetic antics.
I was all set to agree with Steven, but then I saw my second cousin, Charlie Rice, quoted here. Being my relative aside, he's "definitive", for me and for many, when it comes to prolife issues and constitutional law as related to prolife issues. I have a call/email in to him to see which side (if any) of this new debate he might be on. There is something to this if Charlie is putting his name on something (plus I must see if he authorized actually putting his name on the ARTL website list in the right sidebar).
This press release paraphrases Dr. Rice but the rest of the paragraph is vague on whether he fully agrees with ARTL or with NRTL overall.
Annie B:
Just take note that the American Right to Life sidebar is not an endorsement of American Right to Life--it is a list of people who opposed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. That does not mean, ipso facto, that they support American Right to Life.
Annie B: Not only does your second cousin Charles not agree with NRTL's strategy of regulating child killing, he appears on the blockbuster DVD, "Focus on the Strategy II" that you can get at KGOVStore.com that also features Steve Ertelt in a debate with American RTL president and Columbine dad Brian Rohrbough. Finally, did you read the rest of that Legacy article? It's riveting, and devastating, and the correct URL to find it at is: artlaction.com/TheLegacyofJudas.
Thanks for being cautious! -Bob Enyart
This continuing debate within the pro-life movement is yet another example of how easy it is to compare the pro-life movement with the animal rights movement, which is also split.....
The large, well funded organizations (PETA, Humane Society and others supported by vegetarians, who don't eat meat, and some vegans, who don't eat any animal products, including meat, eggs, and dairy) take an "ethicist" approach - using incrementalism and "ethical treatment" options (like painkillers for animals about to be slaughtered....) to bring about less animal maltreatment. They applaud companies things like organic and "free range" meat, and decisions to stop serving veal (without going after the other forms of meat), and have a history of spending millions of dollars on campaigns that do little or nothing to advance the idea of "hey, lets not eat them" (which one would think is the goal). Peter Singer (known to pro-lifers as "that dude who thinks its ok to kill kids AFTER birth") is an animal ethicist, and claims that compassionate slaughter is OK (another example of his twisted view of "ethics").
The smaller groups (made up of committed vegans) focus on animal rights, and advocate nothing short of total elimination of animals from our diet. They do not congratulate companies that treat animals kindly...and then kill them, and they do not ask restaurants to stop serving one type of meat (like veal)....they ask them to stop serving ALL types of meat. These groups are thought of as more radical, but tend to be the ones making serious converts, and winning solid campaigns that actually accomplish their goals.
When I first saw this I cringed. It pains me to see one pro-lifer pull the rug out from under the works of another.
Sure, it would be great if the whole pro-life community could pool resources and have a unified strategy and get it all done perfectly. However, that is never going to happen. Real life is not like that. The pro-life cause is to big...to varied...to many important things need to be done...none of which need to wait around for the other guys program to be completed.
There must be a multi-pronged strategy. Stop thinking either/or. Start thinking both/and. There is room for both NRTL and ARTL efforts. Both are worthy works of mercy. Just like there must be room in our pool of resources for crisis pregnancy centers, TV ads, legal/political stuff, etc. One does not under cut the other. Even if you disagree with the logic of the other guy's strategy...trust that it is worthy...even if imperfect in your eyes. If you don't like it don't support it and just let if fail on its own (unless, of course, it's violent or some such nonsense).
Thanks, Bob E., I didn't know that about the DVD.
I haven't done a lot of research on this but this came up in a cursory google search, http://www.nrlc.org/news/1999/NRL499/amr.html
NRLC apparently sued ARTL in '99 "In order to protect our membership and the general public" alleging that ARTL's "the overwhelming majority of the pro-life resources raised [in 1998] by the nationwide telemarketing campaign being conducted under the name "American Right to Life," were paid to the telemarketing firm, Capitol Communications of Mesa, Arizona. You all can read it for yourselves, and I don't know how it was resolved (if at all). Anyone?
Regardless, ARTL has done a great service to me and I hope to us all, by pointing out what we thought (and have said, in Bopp's case) was "a great victory" in the PBA ruling, was in fact, completely NOT a victory. I read the ruling in more detail, and while some are misquoting certain passages in wrong places within the document, generally the ruling does change the PBA procedure allowing it to still be done minus a few short inches of the baby's body. Had I known that, I wouldn't have been so congratulatory of the justices' decision.
To answer Bob's q, I did read that legacy section in full. While it is certainly devastating, I objected to the inflamed rhetoric of some of it. Certainly unnecessary. ("In betrayal, NRTL quietly worked..." is an example. I would like to see some objective, calm proof that NRLC's work was indeed that before I believe it was intentional "betrayal.")
Other phrases, such as this "the godless NRTL strategy" and this series, are mostly antagonistic opinion and poetry: "NRTL, always brokering power, raising money for bloated salaries, and funding comfortable retirement programs, opposes all efforts, including South Dakota's recent referendum, toward actually ending abortion. NRTL and Bopp only prune the abortion weed and thereby strengthen its root, betraying those who trusted them, using donations not to protect children, but to regulate the most visibly egregious actions of the abortion industry, unwittingly doing Planned Parenthood's public relations work for them."
Wow! Give me less rhetoric and more factual original sources and quotes, and they'll have something there (perhaps I need to review their site in light of the corrections they commented on having made there in the other thread on this). This legacy oped said "see the Oregon RTL 2004 Voters Guide" yet gives me no link to easily go see it. Questionable journalism, this, and if I ever did that on our site, I'd be lambasted. Some of this is also an ironic attack on NRLC given the apparent money-funneling problems of ARTL in 1998 (As mentioned in link above).
I'd like to ask Nathan in particular, do you and other folks at and supporing NRLC, and those with ARTL, see how sometimes the inflammatory rhetoric is exactly what pleases satan most?
I also posted a reply to the newer thread on this topic, here, http://www.prolifeblogs.com/articles/archives/2007/12/american_right.php
I do believe it is a hard choice to make: try to save some, or try to save them all, but end up saving none. I've gone back and forth myself over a period of years.
I'm never one for succoring an organization that has come to seek its own self-preservation (good case in point, American Cancer Society), but let's be damn certain the intentional-betraying devastation is real, not just what some or even many believe it is.