file: /pub/resources/text/ProLife.News/1993: PLN-0314.TXT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life Communications - Volume 3, No. 14 July, 1993 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This Pro-Life Newsletter is intended to provide articles and news information to those interested in Pro-Life Issues. All submissions should be sent to the editor, Steve (frezza@ee.pitt.edu). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) The American Right To Life By Terrence J. Hughes Every nation has some icon that gives it unity and identity. For Ireland it is the Celtic heritage; for England, the crown; for France, the language; for Italy, the city of Rome; for Egypt, the Nile; for Russia, the Motherland. For the United Stats, it is an idea -- the idea expressed in the first sentences of the Declaration of Independence. Those sentences identify and unify our nation, every bit as much as the Apostles' Creed identifies and unifies Christians. The American Creed proclaims that all men are created equal -- created by God, not by our parents, not by the state. From this flows our unalienable rights, first among them is the right to life. The Declaration states that when any form of government (including democracy) strips away those rights, it is the right and duty of the people to alter that government. In the _Roe v. Wade_ ruling of 1973, the Supreme Court gave one group in our society the absolute power to kill other human beings. That power denies the message of the Declaration. Yet the Declaration is listed first in the US Code of Statutory Law; it is the law of the land, and can never be unconstitutional. The whole history of the United States has been a process of ammending the Constitution to make it fulfill the promises of the Declaration. Once the Constitution counted black people as three-fifths of white people, not equal citizens. Once women could not vote. Now some Americans seek to extend the promises of the Declaration to include those human beings who are already created, but not yet born. These are questions ignored ..., yet they are the questions that pierce America's soul. Even if pro-lifers were a minority, it would remain our duty to uphold the national character; we cannot "behave like a minority" without betraying both ourselves and our nation. Our Founding Fathers were a minority. Thank God they didn't act like one. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) The Dark Moments of American Jurisprudence By Robert P. Casey, Governor of Pennsylvania If democratic government depends on any one central idea, it's that raw power alone - laws that flout [our] permanent principles - cannot command our respect. Our obedience, yes; Our allegiance, no. Alexander Hamilton put it this way: "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." Even the more secular-minded Thomas Jefferson agreed: the "only firm basis" of freedom, he wrote, is "a conviction in the minds of people that their liberties are gifts of God." American History has had its dark moments, but only twice has this principle been radically betrayed. Only twice has mortal power, using the instrument of the law itself, sought to exclude an entire class of people from their most sacred rights. One-hundred and thrity-six years ago, a human being was declared a peice of property, literally led off in chains as people of good conscience sat paralyzed by the ruling of the court. [The Dred Scott decision] The other time was January 22, 1973. An entire class of human beings was excluded from the protection of the state, their fate declared a "private" matter. That "sunbeam" that Hamilton envisioned, the Creator's signature on each new life, was deflected by human hands. No one has ever described what happened more concisely than Justice Byron White in his dissent. It was an act of "raw judicial pawer" -- power stripped of all moral and constitutional authority. _Roe vs. Wade_ was not one more natural adaptation in our constitutional evolution. It was not like _Brown vs. Board of Education_, a refinement extending law and liberty to an entire class. [It was] just the opposite: It was an abrupt mutation, a defiance of all precedent, a disjuncture of law and authority. Where we used to think of law above politics, in _Roe_, law and politics become indistingushable. How strange it is to hear abortion now defended in the name of "consensus." _Roe_ itself, the product of a contrived and fraudulent case, was a judicial decree overrulling a consensus expressed in the laws of most states. It arose not from the wisdom of the ages, or from the voice of the people, but from the ideology of the day and the will of a determined minority. It compels us to ignore the consensus of mankind about the treatment of the unborn. It commands us to disregard the clearest of Commandments. After 20 long years, the people of the United States have refused to heed the command. _Roe vs. Wade_ is a law we must observe, but never honor. In Hamilton's phrase, it's a piece of "parchment," a musty record bearing raw coercive power and devoid of moral authority. It has done its harm, and will do much more. But those who say we must learn to live with it still don't get it. Ultimately, _Roe_ cannot survive alongside our enduring, unshakeable sense of justice. It is no more permanent than any other act of human arrogance. It is no more unchangeable that the laws which sent Dred Scott back to his master. [ Excerpted from a speech given at conference on abortion and public policy, hosted in March, 1993 by Saint Louis University. These remarks were given at a special session in the historic old Courthouse in St. Louis, where the original Dred Scott trial was held.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Hyde Amendment to Stay Trumpeted as a 'defeat for Abortion Rights' in the newspapers, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an amended form of the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment is a U.S. Law that prohibits the use of Federal funds to pay for abortions for women who cannot afford them. The original amendment included provisions only for payment for an abortion where the woman's life was endangered; the amended version includes provisions for payment in the cases of rape and incest. President Clinton had urged that the Hyde Amendment be repealed. The passage of the Hyde amendment may prevent abortion (other than the cases of rape, incest and life of the mother) from being included in the new National Health Care Plan under consideration by the Clinton administration. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Help From Unlikely Corners In response to the amendments to FOCA approved recently by the House Judiciary Committee, the Illinois chapter of the National Organization for Women withdrew its support from the bill and is urging Illinois lawmakers to vote against it. They say that they want a clean bill (translation: no limits whatsoever) or no bill at all. This is illustrative of NOW's extremely pro-abortion philosophy, since the only thing resembling a limit which passed was the amendment allowing states to protect doctors and possibly private/religious hospitals from being forced to provide abortions. I guess NOW doesn't believe in freedom of choice for health care providers. The point is that if any meaningful amendments to FOCA are approved, the rabid pro-aborts may help do our job for us by urging the defeat of the bill. Evidently NOW (and hopefully NARAL, PP, etc.) will not be happy with a law that in any way protects unborn children, women seeking abortion, or pro-life doctors and facilities. - Jen Roth [ For those interested, telegrams concerning the FOCA can be sent via Western Union. Simply call 1-800-258-2222 and ask for HOT LINE #9381. They will send a pre-written FOCA Telegram message to your senators and congressional representative. The total cost is $8.30, and will be charged to your phone bill. The service is available 24-hours/day, 7days/week. Ed.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Hold The Sandwich A Minnesota Court of Appeals recently ruled that a deli owner may refuse to deliver food to a health center where abortions are performed. Reversing a decision of the Minnesota Commission on Human RIghts, the court held that the owner's refusal was based on conduct (performance of abortions) rather than to creed (the religious beliefs of the center's director and employees) and was a constitutionally-protected exercise of the owner's freedom of conscience. The Minnesota Commission on Human Rights had ruled against the deli owner, originally finding that his refusal to deliver food to the health center amounted to discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Civil Rights Ordinance, using a broad definition of 'creed.' The court turned to Black's Law Dictionary and case law, and rejected the commissions' definition of creed. The position adopted was that 'creed' should be limited to religion and religious beliefs. Because the deli owner's refusal was based on the fact that abortions were performed at the center, the court ruled that this was not the kind of discriminatory action prohibited by the state's public accommodations ordinance. "The Deli owner did nothing to either hinder or interfere with the activities of the facility," the court concluded. " He simply exercised his constitution- ally protected rights of 'freedom of conscience' by refusing to enter the premises of the health center." --- --- --- --- Similarly, the judge is considering a comparable 'freedom of conscience' issue in the Vermont case of Chuck and Susan Baker (_Paquette v. Regal Art Press_). The Baker case involves a Catholic couple who refused to print pro-abortion literature for a group called "Catholics For Free Choice" (CFFC). The ACLU joined in the fight on the side of CFFC claiming religious discrimination on the part of the Bakers. [Originally reported in PLN v1n8.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) On-Line Resource Update The 1993 Freedom of Choice Act (which is the amended version of the FOCA that came out of committee a few months back) is now available. For the long version, which includes the original 1991 wording and related PLN Articles. [Ask for "MADact"] The 1993 revisions are also available seperately [Ask for "FOCA1993"] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) U.S. Department of Justice JURIS System The Taxpayer Assets Project is gathering signatures for a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, asking that the Department of Justice provide public access to JURIS, the federal government's online database of legal information. JURIS contains vast amounts of federal legal information, including such items as: published and unpublished federal court decisions, including decisions from bankruptcy, military, tax and claims courts; and much more. JURIS currently provides online access to about 15,000 government officials, but the service is not available to private citizens. The aim of the pettition drive is to allow public access to this information. If you are willing to support this effort, please send your permission to the Taxpayer Assets Project at juris@essential.org. [For a copy of the pettition please contact the editor.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Reader Comments Diversification of Operation Rescue: I was fairly neutral concerning Operation Rescue (and a big fan of civil disobedience, when done correctly), until I read that Randall Terry was also using his OR notoriety to work for the ban on gays and lesbians in the military. I don't wish to begin on argument on -that- in our newsletter [don't expect them to be published, either - Ed.], but the diversification of issues that Mr. Terry wants to pull off disturbs me greatly. I feel he should stick to pro-life issues, rather than becoming a demonstration group for all evangelical Christian issues. He should also realize that every time he picks up a new issue, he will lose the support of those who don't agree with him on everything (like me). - John Stith [ For what it is worth, most national movements with a strong moral basis have taken stands on more than one issue - a very famous one is the position many suffragette organizers and organizations took towards prohibition. Ed.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote of the Month: "The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government." - Thomas Jefferson +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Credits: | | 1 - From T.J. Hughes' review of "Life Itself: Abortion in the American Mind"| | by Roger Rosenblatt. The review was published in the June, 1993 issue of| | Catholic World Report, pp.55-56. To subscribe to CWR call 1-800-825-0061| | 2 - Excerpted from a speech given by Robert Casey, Democratic Governor of | | Pennsylvania, at conference on abortion and public policy, hosted in | | March, 1993 by Saint Louis Univ.. Governor Casey is currently recovering| | from a combined heart-liver transplant at the University Medical Center | | Pittsburgh. Governor Casey's speech appeared in the May-June "Lifelines"| | Newsletter of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation pp 10-12. PaPLF, 310 | | Genet St. Scranton, PA 18505 | | 3 - From headline articles in the 1 July, 1993 editions of the "Pittsburgh | | Post Gazette" and "USA Today." | | 4 - From the June, 1993 issue of the Catholic League Newsletter, p. 13. | | Backissues and subscriptions can be had by calling The Catholic League | | for Religious and Civil Rights (publication office) at (414)476-8911. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Anyone desiring information on specific prolife groups, literature, tapes, or help with problems is encouraged to contact the editor.