$10,000 Offer to National RTL From American RTL to Name 'One' Pro-Life Justice
PR Newswire
Article Last Updated: 05/21/2008 12:53:40 PM MDT
DENVER, May 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "American Right To Life is offering attorney James Bopp $10,000 for National RTL," said the group's president Brian Rohrbough, "if he can name a single justice on the current U.S. Supreme Court who has ever acknowledged that the unborn child has a right to life, whether in a majority opinion or a dissent."
"A quarter century after Bopp and NRTL refused President Ronald Reagan's offer to work toward federalpersonhood legislation, they have long opposed all state personhood efforts," says the group's site AmericanRTL. HYPERLINK "http://americanrtl.org/" org.
On May 13, Colorado pro-lifers turned in 131,000 signatures exceeding by 55,000 the number needed to force a statewide vote to acknowledge in law the personhood of the unborn child.
"National Right to Life has misled the pro-life community to think that this is the wrong time to advocate personhood because we need one more Justice on the Supreme Court to have a pro-life majority," said Rohrbough. "But if we added a Justice who would uphold the right to life of the unborn, then we would haveonly one such Justice. The failed long-term strategy of regulating the killing of a fetus has left America without a single Justice who knows that it's wrong to kill an unborn baby; NRTL's compromise will never produce a pro-life court."
Continued . . .
Les:
You and your friends at American RTL could not be more wrong. How do you think it is that ARTL acts as if they are the only ones to understand fully the problem and that they're the only ones with answers. Well, you're not. You're just hypercritical hypocrites trying to make a name for yourselves. You should be ashamed for your constant attack on other pro-lifers, who simply have different tactics than your own. And, on another point, it's not YOUR money to wager and doing so violates your non-profit status. Who was the idiot to dream up this scheme, I wonder? Stop your vitriol, cease your self-promotion, and help us fight abortion.
I noticed, PLA, that you did not answer the question in the press release. Can you name even a single justice on the court who has ever, in any federal case, held that the unborn has a right to life? I'm sure you didn't answer because there is no such judge. As I talk to pro-lifers about this offer, I find them stunned, having been misled for decades to assume that the pro-life dollars, campaigning and votes we have turned in were getting us judges who honor the culture of life. It turns out that entire compromise strategy is a failure. PLA, why don't you address the substance of this horrifying observation, rather than criticize those who criticize?
George:
My intent was only to point out the wastefulness, if not foolishness, of such an offer. Why engage in this kind of lunacy only in order to make a point? If you have a point, make it, but don't grandstand.
And, neither did you directly address the question. But, then, why should you? No, George, they made the claim, they ... you need to support that claim. Don't try playing your little games with rest of us. This philosophical criticism of yours really cannot be addressed, can it? I mean, how does one go about proving a negative? And, this is part of the game you play. Well, you can play by yourself, while the rest of us go about ending abortion and saving lives. We'll leave the foolishness to people like you and ARTL.
George:
1. Wasteful? It's not wasteful of $10k because not one alleged pro-life justice has ever asserted the right to life of the unborn, so the prize money goes unclaimed.
2. Making a Name? On ARTL trying to make a name for itself, if they are exposing an actual failure of a 30-year strategy that was supposed to produce pro-life judges, and if they're correct that 'our own' compromise on God's command, Do not murder, produces 'our own' judges who reject the right to life, then they should shout from the housetops. If they are wrong, you have the opportunity here to correct them.
3. Grandstand: ARTL's $10k offer is probably the most effective way to educate the entire pro-life community that there is not one pro-life judge on the court. It seems you think that not one judge has ever argued for the right to life is either: irrelevant, or better left unsaid. Many of us disagree. And ARTL criticizes for violations of God's moral commands, you criticize for style.
4. Proving a Negative: either PLA you're confused, or you're obfuscating on life and death. Nat'l RTL doesn't have to prove a negative, they just have to name a single justice who in any case has ever acknowledged the unborn's RTL. That's not proving a negative. ARTL did prove a negative, which is easy when the domain of the problem is small, by reviewing all the evidence. And here is some of their evidence, from AmericanRTL.org:
In an article... Notre Dame Law School's professor emeritus Charles Rice said, "Every justice now on the court accepts the Roe holding that the unborn child is a non-person... The situation remains as described by Justice John Paul Stevens in Planned Parenthood v. Casey." For Stevens had written that "the Court... rejected, the argument 'that the fetus is a "person"'. ... there was no dissent..." And Clarence Thomas wrote in his Stenberg dissent that "a State may permit abortion," and Antonin Scalia wrote in Casey, "The states may, if they wish, permit abortion-on-demand..."
In 2002 Scalia said, "I will... strike down a law that is the opposite of Roe v. Wade. ... One wants no state to be able to prohibit abortion and the other one wants every state to have to prohibit abortion, and they're both wrong..." In 2004 Scalia claimed, "Take the abortion issue... there's something to be said for both sides." And on April 9, 2008 Scalia said, "You want the right to abortion? Create it the way most rights are created in a democracy. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea - and pass a law."
"National RTL claims success in Antonin Scalia but he is not pro-life; like all the Republicans on the Court, he is a legal positivist, which is a courtroom moral relativist," Rohrbough said.
PLA, these tragic observations are irrefragable, yet mostly unknown to pro-lifers. From this day forward you have an obligation to let people know that 'our own' Republican 'pro-life' judges reject the personhood and the God-given right to life of the unborn. I pray you will not try to keep Christians in ignorance about this grave situation. Of course, one of the last reasons that party hacks offer to Christians to support some lesser evil is because we want to get Republican judges. However, from Terri Schiavo, to Roe v. Wade, to the federal judge who wrote that 'under God' in the pledge is unconstitutional, to Dover PA, to California's rulings against homeschooling and for homosexual marriage, all of these aggressively anti-Christian rulings, and a thousand others, came from the Republican judges we've worked for 30 years to get in office. So, what PLA, give this failure another 30 years? For whose benefit?
I worked for NRLC for 10 years-- from 1994-2004. The criticisms leveled at the organization are unfair, gross distortions and an insult to pro-lifers everywhere. National Right to Life will likely not react to this-- they do not respond to name-calling and will rarely criticize another pro-life group. I address all of this at length on my blog-- www.lauraechevarria.com
If NRTL won't respond, its because of two reasons:
1 - There isn't a completely pro-life SCOTUS justice
2 - They think they're above it (ie they are the elites of the pro-life movement, and don't have to respond to those below them).
While I'm not a fan of the Christo-centric ideology of ARTL, I prefer the total abolition approach to the watered down "we're not the ones being killed so we can take our time" approach of NRTL.
When someone murders a pregnant woman, the assailant is charged with a DOUBLE murder. However, when the woman has an abortion, the unborn baby becomes a "fetus". The mother is the only person who has the "right" to kill her baby. Talk about convoluted logic!
JohnStallworth@comcast.net
Laura Echevarria, in your reply to the lesforlife post of American RTL's $10,000 offer to NRTL, you mistakenly took James Dobson's quote and suggested that ARTL said it. ARTL even put it in quotes, and linked to Focus on the Family's website, where Dobson wrote that "Ending PBA... does not save a single human life." The power of that admission is that Dobson was a leading supporter of the PBA effort, which raised over $250 million in pro-life funds but as ARTL has correctly reported elsewhere, "never had the authority to prevent a single abortion."
Laura, in replying to the ARTL exposing that not one of the Republican U.S. Supreme Court justices have ever held that an unborn child has a right to life, as a former NRTL employee you wrote: "Regarding Supreme Court appointments: anyone recall the Reagan nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court? 'Nuff said."
Nuff? As I recall from Bork's own book, Slouching Toward Gomorrah, he wrote that he was pro-choice when nominated to the Supreme Court. The NRTL quarter-century strategy claimed that by electing Republicans, we would get judges who respect the culture of life. ARTL is demonstrating that focusing on laws that end with, "and then you can kill the baby" has backfired and decades later not one of these federal judges respects the personhood of the unborn. In fact as ARTL has documented, all six of the Reagan, Bush, W. Bush judges on Florida's federal court ruled to starve to death Terri Schiavo. All six. NRTL's judge strategy has failed.
Laura, it's peculiar that in your lengthy reply, you talk about duct tape on carpet at NRTL's old offices a decade ago, but completely ignore ARTL's observation that not a single justice on the Supreme Court is pro-life and accepts the right to life of the unborn. Not one. Didn't you find that little detail of their widely published press release worth mentioning?