Posts on National Right to Life Committee

John McCain's courting of Religious Right leaders and activists started off badly, culminating in the Rod Parsley/John Hagee debacle back in May, but since then, the campaign seems to have regained its footing and subsequent lower-profile efforts have been startlingly effective:

As we noted a few weeks ago, McCain quietly met with a handful of right-wing leaders at which he was pressured to start talking more in public about the issues they care about and, as if to signal that he heard the message loud and clear, announced the next day that he supported the anti-gay California Marriage Amendment. From that point, things began to pick up and just last week, he secured the support of a bevy of right-wing activists like Mat Staver, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Phyllis Schlafly, Rick Scarborough, and David Barton.

Just last week we were noting how the Right, even though not traditionally supportive of McCain, was working diligently to remind its supporters that the future of the Supreme Court is at stake in the next election. It seems that the McCain campaign has been playing up that angle in its outreach efforts as well:

Mr. Burress said he, Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly, former interior secretary and Christian Coalition leader Donald P. Hodel, WallBuilders founder David Barton, Liberty Council counsel Mathew Staver and others have been moved to work for the election of Mr. McCain.

He cited mostly their trust in several McCain promises - to make judicial appointments that will resemble that of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Antonin Scalia, to "get serious" on abortion and same-sex marriage, and to push values issues in general.

It looks like this is a coordinated message that the McCain campaign and its surrogates are committed to spreading far and wide:

A pro-family activist and former presidential candidate says people of faith cannot afford to endure four years of Barack Obama in hopes that he will be defeated in 2012. Gary Bauer says it's all about the Supreme Court.

...

But Bauer, who is chairman of American Values, says the American public cannot afford to wait four years. "Today we're only one vote away from having a pro-life, pro-family majority in the Supreme Court," he observes. "If Barack Obama is elected, that opportunity will lost, I believe, for several decades."

CNSNews reports that Sen. Fred Thompson brought that message to the National Right to Life Committee's annual convention last week and that it was well-received:

The 2008 presidential election is "foremost about the United States Supreme Court," the president of the National Right to Life Committee said at the group's annual convention Thursday.

"It's not the economy, stupid," said Dr. Wanda Franz, referencing President Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan. "No, for us, it's the Supreme Court."

...

"It is absolutely vital to have a court that is on the right side," said Gregg Trude, executive director of Montana Right to Life.

"We are very hopeful that the next Supreme Court vacancy is filled by someone who believes what the Constitution says and believes that it is the role of judges to interpret the law and not to make the law," Lauinger said.

So popular is the message, in fact, that McCain himself made sure to work it into his own remarks at the NRLC convention:

I will look for accomplished men and women, with a proven record of excellence in the law, and a proven commitment, to strictly interpreting the Constitution of the United States. I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Sam Alito, my friend the late William Rehnquist, jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference. I have been pro-life, my entire public career.

“American RTL 3, Romney 0”: So boasted a press release from a new and little-known anti-abortion group. American Right to Life Action, a 527 that formed in November, seems to be dedicated entirely to opposing Mitt Romney.

The group started with an ad in Iowa (“Mitt Romney, willing to sacrifice children, lying for your vote,” it concluded), although it’s not clear how widely it was placed. "We have tested this ad with focus groups," said the group’s president, Steve Curtis, "and it has everyone laughing, laughing with us, at Mitt Romney for being such an obvious liar about the most important issue for any leader in America: abortion." ARTL updated the ad for South Carolina, while issuing press releases denouncing Romney endorsers Bob Jones III and Ann Coulter. And in Florida, the group sent out half a million anti-Romney e-mails. “The evidence is indisputable -- Mitt Romney is lying to get Christian votes," said Brian Rohrbough, the ARTL’s vice president.

According to Curtis, ARTL “went head-to-head” with Romney, who indeed lost those three elections—although claiming credit for Romney’s losses is somewhat analogous to the American Family Association’s constant boasting that its anti-gay boycott is the cause of the Ford Motor Company’s rust-belt woes.

But despite its dogged pursuit of Romney, ARTL is not your typical flash-in-the-pan anti-Mitt outfit (like Janet Folger’s new front group). One clue was this gratuitous swipe at the National Right to Life Committee after the latter endorsed Fred Thompson:

Denver-based "American Right To Life Action also calls National RTL's support of Mitt Romney a betrayal of the innocent," said Curtis. NRTL is playing the odds, and "doubled down," officially endorsing anti-human life amendment Fred Thompson, while supporting their own longtime general counsel for serving as a "key advisor" to the Romney campaign. "The Republican National Committee has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to NRTL, which calls into question NRTL's loyalty to the unborn," added Curtis, "especially now that its political architect, James Bopp, is endorsing a pro-abortion candidate like Mitt Romney who plainly lies to deceive pro-lifers."

Huh? Paul Weyrich, a Romney backer, accused NRLC of selling out when it picked Thompson, but it seems a little far-fetched to make it out to be a secret, Br’er Rabbit-like endorsement of an opposing candidate.

In fact, American Right to Life was founded to counter the National Right to Life Committee, which ARTL vice president Rohrbough calls the “Judas” of the anti-abortion movement.

Activists are likely to place a far-reaching abortion ban on the Missouri ballot this year, one pegged to the emerging anti-abortion strategy of claiming to be protecting women. The Baltimore Sun reports:

If passed, it would stand as possibly the most restrictive abortion law in the country, requiring abortion providers to investigate each patient's background and lifestyle in order to certify that the woman was not coerced into the procedure.

Under the initiative, doctors would not be allowed to perform a nonemergency abortion unless they believed "the imminent death or serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman" would occur.

Critics say the proposal would expose doctors to lawsuits from women who later regretted their decisions to terminate pregnancies. …

Anti-abortion groups say the proposal would make Missouri a model for the country.

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt laid groundwork last fall by forming a “task force” on “the impact of abortion on women,” a group composed of anti-abortion activists, and a major backer of the initiative is the Illinois-based Elliot Institute, whose founder was described as the “Moses” of the movement to define anti-choice as a defense of women’s interests, whether the women know it or not.

This tactic found validation in last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding the “Partial Birth Abortion Ban”—the court’s majority opinion seemed to echo the paternalist view, a point certainly not missed by any activists attempting to pass a far-reaching abortion ban.

But an initiative likely to reach the Colorado ballot takes a different approach: giving fertilized eggs equal protection and full rights under law. Playing the ingénue, the 20-year-old law student spearheading the amendment “insists her only aim is to define when human life begins, and any discussion about abortion is up to lawmakers.” Of course the “Human Life Amendment,” as it has been known since before she was born, was designed specifically to overturn Roe v. Wade and ban abortion completely.

The hard-line approach of Colorado’s amendment—and a similar initiative being considered for the ballot in Georgia—goes to the heart of a rift between absolutists and incrementalists in the anti-abortion movement. From the Washington Times:

"National Right to Life thinks this will do more harm than good," [Brian Rooney of the Thomas More Law Center, which backs the amendments] said. "They argue that the makeup of the court isn't right for a decision. We argue that this is the best opportunity we're likely to have in the next decade. If we don't confront Roe now, the way the politics of the presidential election are going, we could be waiting for years."

Indeed, National Right to Life ended up divorcing its Colorado affiliate last year after a spat over incrementalism. (The head of Colorado Right to Life accused NRLC of selling out to the Republican Party.)

Breaking with the national organization, which backed Fred Thompson, Georgia Right to Life goes with Huckabee: "Gov. Huckabee has a proven track record of solid pro-life legislation during his terms as governor of Arkansas. He is noted for having passed a state 'Human Life Amendment' which says that 'the policy of Arkansas is to protect the life of every unborn child from conception to birth.' Arkansas Amendment 68 will take effect the moment that Roe vs. Wade is reversed. He is especially supportive of our efforts here in Georgia, to promote the passage of H.R. 536, the Paramount Right to Life Amendment."

The Los Angeles Times recently reported on the reappearance of a somewhat rusty tactic in the anti-abortion movement’s tool belt: attempts to pass a “Human Life Amendment” to several state constitutions, which would purportedly grant full “personhood” rights beginning at conception. Such an end-run would circumvent a protracted political debate—which they could lose, as they did when South Dakota voters rejected an abortion ban last year—and likely end up in federal court, where activists hope new right-wing Supreme Court justices will take the opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the major national religious-right groups have preferred a more incremental strategy of advancing less-sweeping restrictions and promoting Republican politicians who promise to appoint anti-abortion judges, leaving absolutist activists out in the cold, as the Times notes:

For the most part, the campaigns are run by local activists, with little support or funding from big national antiabortion groups. Similar efforts have failed in the past: Proponents in Michigan could not collect enough signatures to put a personhood measure on the ballot in 2006. The Georgia proposal stalled in the Legislature this year.

Indeed, Clarke Forsythe and Denise Burke of Americans United for Life—a legal group active since the 1970s—published an article in National Review today calling the HLA “a losing move for the pro-life movement.” While AUL is hardly an influential group in this decade, its anti-HLA commentary recalls the anti-abortion movement’s in-fighting in the 1980s and 1990s over militant clinic protests (and the occasional murder of doctors). Although AUL was happy to represent militant activist Joseph Scheidler and his Pro-Life Action League in court, at the same time it pooh-poohed the frenzied “Summer of Mercy” protest in Wichita in 1991. “[I]t is better to show the public that [the abortion provider’s] practices are unlawful than to engage in tactics that attract attention to the unlawfulness of pro-lifers,” cautioned AUL’s president.

"Having one of Romney’s people talking about somebody else buying something has got to be one of the most ironic things that happened," he says regarding Weyrich's reaction to National Right to Life endorsement of Thompson. NRLC: It's a "slap in the face."

"... a man who once offered legal advice to a pro-choice group, voted against key pro-life issues in the Senate and now espouses convoluted reasons for rejecting constitutional protection of the unborn." More here.

Rounding out a spate of recent right-wing endorsements of Republican presidential candidates, Fred Thompson has secured the support of the National Right to Life Committee. While not as far-fetched as Pat Robertson’s Giuliani endorsement, the pairing ought to raise some eyebrows, and not just because of Thompson’s rejection of major NRLC priorities such as the Human Life Amendment and federal intervention in Terri Schiavo’s case, or the candidate’s warning that a national abortion ban could lead to putting girls in prison, a notion Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America called “insulting.”

In his cornpone video message to NRLC’s annual convention last summer, Thompson played up his kinship with the group and his “100 percent” anti-abortion record in the Senate, but Thompson’s signature accomplishment in Congress was passage of campaign-finance reform, a bill hated by anti-abortion groups (as John McCain discovered) and arguably by no one more than NRLC.

In fact, Thompson’s campaign-finance hearings in the late 1990s specifically targeted NRLC, subpoenaing its and other groups’ financial records in search of evidence of electioneering. As recently as 2003, Thompson wrote an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of the law’s regulation of “sham issue advocacy by non-party groups”—a point decided by the Court this year, in favor of “sham issue advocacy,” in a case involving NRLC affiliate Wisconsin Right to Life. (NRLC’s continuing disdain for campaign-finance regulation is also implied by its neglect to mention in its press release that the endorsement is actually by NRLC’s affiliated PAC.)

The odd endorsement led conservative-movement stalwart Paul Weyrich to suggest that the group had been bought off. "I think in all probability the Thompson people were engaged with the National Right to Life people in financial dealing," he said.

While the conservative movement coalition of the economic right and social right has shown some small cracks in the last year, one bill in Congress has them singing the same tune: a proposal to expand the coverage of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The Religious Right is complaining that the bill defines “children” beginning with birth, rather than conception. According to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, making “unborn children” ineligible to sign up for insurance “is a calculated move to open the door to federal taxpayer-funded abortions.” (FRC’s David Christiansen clarified: “The federal dollars wouldn't necessarily be used to do the abortion, but it's freeing up states to perform these other services, including abortion, with their own state money.”)

Meanwhile, National Right to Life Committee asserted that the bill would lead to Medicare “rationing” and thus “involuntary euthanasia.” “They have attacked the sanctity of life both at the beginning and the latter stages of life,” cried Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, speaking of “the Democratic leadership” in Congress.

In addition, the Religious Right warns that the bill renews funding for abstinence education, but doesn’t restrict it to abstinence-only programs. “They’re simply giving states more money to fund Planned Parenthood and the programs that teach our children to have sex,” complained Linda Klepacki of Focus on the Family. “Comprehensive sex education will once again have a monopoly on your school systems.”

Meanwhile, economic-right activists are warning that expanding SCHIP is “a step towards socialism.” In this, they find welcome support from Perkins, who – despite his warnings about abortion – wrote that the “[m]ost important” aspect of the bill is that “its expansion represents a direct attack on private insurance, pushing Americans closer to what many Democratic leaders have long advocated--government-run, taxpayer-funded, universal health care, managed with the same efficiency and customer care as your local DMV.”

Both the Heritage Foundation and Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform have trashed the bill. But as Robert Novak reports, they are having some trouble on the details, arguing with each other over right-wing amendments offered by Republicans.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson, who is reportedly going to announce his candidacy for president soon, recently offered his video greetings to the annual convention of the National Right to Life Committee, an organization that endorsed him when he ran for Senate in 1994. While Thompson has so far been favorably received by the Religious Right– with the possible exception of James Dobson – the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is a reminder that groups like NRLC may have second thoughts about him.

The case, FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, limited parts of the campaign-finance law that regulated “issue ads” implicating a candidate for office. While anti-abortion activists were not the only critics of the law to appreciate the decision, the case had a particular relevance for them with an NRLC state affiliate’s name on the docket. And such activists have also made campaign finance into a campaign issue for presidential candidate John McCain, the co-author of the bill – despite McCain’s fervent opposition to abortion.

When it comes to Thompson, these activists might remember his role as sherpa for John Roberts during his contentious confirmation to be chief justice of the Court, and Roberts was the author of the Wisconsin Right to Life decision. But, as National Journal reporter Marc Ambinder reminds us, Thompson was also a major backer of campaign reform during his time in the Senate, when he chaired the committee investigating campaign finance – and he picked a nasty fight with a handful of advocacy groups, including the same National Right to Life Committee.

In 1997, Thompson used a Senate government affairs committee hearing to probe the electioneering of National Right to Life and other groups, and his subpoena request for internal NRTL documents was strongly resisted by counsel -- including James Bopp, Jr., who now advises Mitt Romney.

In addition, Thompson wrote a friend-of-the-court brief in 2003 in support of the law’s overturned provisions:

Thompson wrote that "sham issue advocacy by non-party groups" was a "problem" that BCRA "addresses." Congress, Thompson wrote, "had a compelling interest in enacting the BCRA reforms. The rapidly increasing practices of raising and spending soft money (with a significant focus on sham ‘issue ads’ that unquestionably influence federal elections) fully justify the BCRA reforms.”

Thompson and McCain were the only two Republican senators “firmly committed” to campaign reform, as the New York Times reported in 1997, and that advocacy has apparently cost McCain much support from a part of the right-wing base that would seemingly take to him. Will Thompson’s campaign reform past come back to haunt him?

When President Bush again vetoed funding for embryonic stem-cell research, he did more than earn praise from the Religious Right – he invited them to the veto ceremony. His guests included members of Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and the National Right to Life Committee.

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, who was not at the White House event, said that “President Bush has proven once again that he's not just a man who talks about preserving a 'culture of life' as political rhetoric -- he's a man who deeply cherishes the sanctity of all human life. His veto today of a bill that would have led to dissection of young innocents in the name of suspect science solidifies his already-strong record as one of our nation's most pro-life presidents.”

Focus’s Jim Daly, who was there, applauded Bush for his rhetoric. "The quote that really caught my attention was, 'I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line,’” Daly said. “He was very forthright about it -- very staunch, no equivocation. I think it really shows, on the core issues, this president really gets the pro-life agenda."

The National Right to Life Committee is holding its annual convention in Kansas City this weekend, and it’s drawn some prominent Republicans: President Bush saluted the gathered activists, saying in a taped message, “You have been a fearless shepherd of the innocent and unborn. … Together we've compiled an unprecedented record in the defense of the unborn and our work continues.”

Several GOP presidential candidates made the journey to greet the activists in person. Mitt Romney told conference-goers that their activism made him an anti-abortion “convert”; while he received a standing ovation, a video recently released by the McCain campaign shows him reiterating his pro-choice position as governor in 2005, emphasizing that he still has a long way to go to convince activists such as these of his sincerity. Sam Brownback was “cheered wildly,” according to Reuters, as he told the crowd, “We are winning the fight for life. We are going to win the fight for life.” Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul also spoke at the conference.

Fred Thompson, still yet to officially declare his candidacy for president, submitted a video message, featuring pictures of his wife and children. An archive video of Thompson as a candidate has also recently surfaced, showing him apparently supporting abortion rights. But unlike Romney, Thompson’s message today was not that of a convert:

In 1994, I made my first run for the U.S. Senate. I was proud to receive the National Right to Life endorsement. I’ve been with you ever since. You’ve been with me ever since. On abortion related votes I’ve been 100 percent.

These high-profile guests come at a crucial time for National Right to Life. The group has been at the center of an internecine conflict in the anti-abortion movement over long-term strategy. Its former Colorado state affiliate, Colorado Right to Life, joined a few other small groups to denounce religious-right heavyweight James Dobson, demanding that he “repent” for supporting the “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban.” National Right to Life defended Dobson, and Colorado Right to Life President Brian Rohrbough fired back, accusing its parent group of becoming “a wing of the Republican Party.” Since the ban only prevents one procedure, abortions will continue, according to the dissidents:

"The broader movement is claiming that we're saving lives, and we're not," said Brian Rohrbough, one of the dissident activists. "It can't get any worse than that." …

"We've been promised for almost 40 years that the strategy of electing Republicans would get us a Republican Supreme Court that would end abortion, and that has not happened," Rohrbough said. "If we raise money to do the same thing over and over again we will never, ever establish personhood for all [unborn] children."

The partial-birth ruling "gives us the most powerful example we've ever had of how morally bankrupt this strategy is," added the Rev. Bob Enyart, pastor of Denver Bible Church.

Meanwhile, incrementalists – including Dobson and most other national groups – see the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the ban as a major victory, and they plan to continue chipping away at Roe v. Wade by pushing more and more restrictions. Activist Jill Stanek accused her erstwhile “purist” allies of “fanatical thinking.” Meanwhile, Colorado Right to Life and the others took out another ad, this time in Human Events, again calling the ruling “More Wicked than Roe.”

So it wasn’t surprising that the day before National Right to Life’s big convention, it cut its state affiliate loose, naming “Colorado Citizens for Life/Protecting Life Now” in its stead.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been keeping an eye on the fight between various far-right anti-abortion groups that culminated in Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, Colorado Right to Life, and others placing a full-page ad in the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Washington Times demanding that James Dobson and Focus on the Family “repent” for saying that a recent Supreme Court decision upholding the federal “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act” would “protect children.”

Now, it looks as if Dobson has emerged on top, because Colorado Right to Life has been kicked out of the National Right to Life coalition:

Colorado Right to Life was kicked out of the National Right to Life coalition on Wednesday, in part for publicly criticizing Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.

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In a written statement, the national coalition said Wednesday it disagreed with the ad. It said its rules require state affiliates to be in line the national group's objectives.

Leslie Hanks, vice president of Colorado Right to Life, said the state group had a more "confrontational" approach than National Right to Life wanted.

…

In a written statement, Focus on the Family said it appreciated the national group's action. Carrie Gordon Earll, a spokeswoman for Focus on the Family, called Colorado Right to Life a "rogue and divisive group."

"Rather than use their money and energy to advance pro-life goals, CORTL chose instead to attack its allies in the cause. CORTL gave its parent organization no choice but to name a new state affiliate," she said.

The Washington Post today reports on the unusual spat among anti-abortion groups, apparently over the tactics of incrementalism versus absolutism, that spilled into public attacks against Focus on the Family founder James Dobson two weeks ago. Groups including Rev. Flip Benham’s Operation Rescue/Operation Save America and Colorado Right to Life placed a full-page ad in the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Washington Times demanding that Dobson “repent” for saying that a recent Supreme Court decision upholding the federal “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act” would “protect children.”

Confusingly, a separate anti-abortion group also called Operation Rescue praised Dobson for pushing the ban, and Colorado Right to Life’s national parent group also said it was in “complete disagreement” with its state affiliate.

In the Post, Colorado Right to Life President Brian Rohrbough fired back. A Focus on the Family spokesman said they supported the ban “because we, and most pro-lifers, are sophisticated enough to know we're not going to win a total victory all at once. We're going to win piece by piece.” But Rohrbough said the decision “encourage[s] abortionists to find less shocking means to kill late-term babies.”

"What happened in the abortion world is that groups like National Right to Life, they're really a wing of the Republican Party, and they're not geared to push for personhood for an unborn child -- they're geared to getting Republicans elected," he said. "So we're seeing these ridiculous laws like the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban put forward, and then we're deceived about what they really do."

As we wrote yesterday, James Dobson’s applause for the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the “Partial Birth Abortion Ban” led to an unusual row between far-right anti-abortion groups: One group claiming the name Operation Rescue condemned Dobson for backsliding and called on him to “please repent,” while another group also calling itself Operation Rescue defended the Focus on the Family leader. Oddly enough, a similar dispute emerged out of the same anti-Dobson campaign.

Colorado Right to Life joined Flip Benham’s Operation Rescue/Operation Save America in taking out a full-page ad in the Gazette, the newspaper in Colorado Springs, where Focus on the Family is located. Focus’s Citizenlink web site responded with an article that enlists the support of Colorado Right to Life’s parent group, National Right to Life:

The National Right to Life Committee said it’s “in complete disagreement” with an ad sponsored by a state affiliate that attacks Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family Action. …

David O’Steen, executive director of National Right to Life in Washington, D.C., said the Colorado affiliate is wrong about the court ruling. “It’s the first time that the court has allowed the legislative branch to outlaw a specific abortion procedure,” O’Steen told CitizenLink. “We think it’s a great victory.”

The Colorado affiliate is also wrong about Dobson, he explained. “We app