Day Gardner

Right Unites to Fight Health Care Reform

Submitted by Kyle on July 22, 2009 - 10:05am

We have been collecting everything that the Religious Right has been saying about efforts to pass health care reform for an upcoming Right Wing Watch In Focus report and, in doing so, quickly noticed that their primary focus was on claiming that any such plan would lead to public financing of abortion.

Until recently, activists and organization had been primarily making this case individually, but now it looks like several of them have decided to team-up for a nationwide webcast tomorrow evening:

Pro-life groups, including Focus on the Family, are hosting a webcast Thursday at 9 p.m. EDT to educate and mobilize pro-lifers against President Obama's healthcare reform bill, which currently mandates public and private insurance coverage of abortion.

The healthcare reform has hit a roadblock in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Fiscally conservative Democrats, known as Blue Dogs, have balked at the cost of the plan.

Pro-life advocates are hoping the delay allows them to marshal support for amendments that would take the federal funding of abortions out of the bill.

"We are advocating amendments that would simply remove any mandates for abortion, remove any federal subsidies for abortion," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life.

Others agree that this is a watershed event for the pro-life movement.

Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List said: "It is without question the biggest event since Roe v. Wade when it comes to the pro-life issue."

Participants include James Dobson, Charmaine Yoest, Tony Perkins, Frank Pavone, Marjorie Dannenfelser, Wendy Wright, Tom Minnery, Rep. Chris Smith, Richard Land, Day Gardner, and several others, including Mike Huckabee, according to Dan Gilgoff.

Politico has more on their effort:

A coalition of anti-abortion groups is set to open a new front against Democrats’ efforts to restructure American health care, claiming the plans open a back door to publicly financed abortions.

The groups, which are launching a broad campaign on the issue this week, claim that existing health care proposals constitute a stealth “abortion mandate” that will spend taxpayer money on abortions and require insurance companies to cover abortions — allegations that health care reform supporters call misleading.

“President Obama keeps on talking about common ground, and there is really, really common ground on funding issues,” said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, the group organizing the planned three-week campaign on the issue. “Almost no one wants to fund abortion, regardless of their position on abortion as a whole.”

Yoest’s group plans to release a letter to Barack Obama on Thursday in which it cites, according to its reading of proposed legislation, “our belief that the bills are intended to include abortion.”

The noisy, contentious health care debate — which has grown pointedly acrimonious in recent days — has proceeded largely without reference to abortion. But the decision of these high-profile conservative groups to launch the new campaign under the rubric “Stop the Abortion Mandate” may change that and provide a new obstacle to the reform legislation.

The leaders involved include Christian conservatives such as James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family; Family Research Council President Tony Perkins; and the Southern Baptist Convention’s Dr. Richard Land, who will be launching the push in a webcast Thursday evening.

“We just realized how urgent the situation was, what was at stake,” said David Bereit, the national director of 40 Days for Life, another group involved in the campaign, which will focus on generating pressure on members of Congress to insist on an explicit ban on abortion within the legislation.

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Bachmann Joins Schenck, Childress, Gardner, and Others for PreNDA Press Conference

Submitted by Kyle on March 31, 2009 - 2:36pm

In Rob Schenck's latest video update, which we mentioned earlier, he said that he was going to be participating in a press conference pressing for passage of the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, a piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Trent Franks that would "prohibit discrimination against the unborn on the basis of sex or race, and for other purposes."

Franks introduced the same legislation last year, but it never went anywhere, so he is apparently back to give it another try and has brought some of the more right-wing anti-abortion activists on board to rally support:

Congressman Trent Franks (AZ-02), a Member of the House Judiciary Committee, will host a press conference on Tuesday to introduce the Prenatal Nondiscrimation Act (“PreNDA”). PreNDA would prohibit knowingly performing or soliciting funding for race- or sex-selection abortion.

What: Press conference introducing the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act

Who:

· Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ)

· Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN), Republican Conference Chairman

· Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)

· Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-CO)

· Day Gardner — President, National Black Pro-Life Union

· Reverend Clenard Childress — Northeast Region President of the Life Education And Resource Network (L.E.A.R.N.)

· Wendy Wright, President, Concerned Women for America

When: Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 1:00p.m. EST

Faith and Action has now posted some photos from the press conference and indeed Wright, Gardner, and Childress were all there, as was Schenck.

Wright and Schenck are already well-known to readers of the blog, but you may not know much about the others, like Childress, who is listed as being associated with LEARN but is better known for his BlackGenocide.org website and the movement of the same name that he leads. Gardner is also active in that movement and known for making statements, such as she did before the election, that "Christians who vote for Obama are voting against the word of God."

But guess who also showed up:

That's right - Michele Bachmann, flanked by Gardner on the left and Schenck on the right (with Wright's blonde hair visible in the back.)

This photo pretty much tells you all you need to know about Rep. Bachmann and where any of the support for PreNDA will be coming from.

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Understanding the "Black Genocide" Movement

Submitted by Kyle on February 25, 2009 - 1:49pm

Kathryn Joyce, author of “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement,” has a good piece up on “Religion Dispatches” on the effort by anti-choice activists to convince Americans that reproductive freedom is actually a plot to commit genocide against minorities:

Lately, however, antiabortion groups don’t simply seize the mantle of abolitionism, but argue directly that abortion is a concerted attack on people of color. Black and brown populations are, according to the new rhetoric, allegedly targeted for aggressive population control by abortion providers who deliberately place clinics in inner-city, low-income neighborhoods, resulting in higher rates of abortion among Latina and black women in the United States compared to white women.

[A]ntiabortion activists continue to claim that providers are targeting black and Latino populations, and have leafleted inner-city neighborhoods with denunciations of “Klan Parenthood,” juxtaposing images of lynchings and aborted fetuses with the slogan “lynching is for amateurs.” The argument’s popularity is climbing, spurring numerous rallies, publications and organizations devoted to spreading word of abortion providers’ supposedly racist motives. Indeed, Rep. Franks, the lead sponsor of the Susan B. Anthony bill, said he was inspired by a Washington, DC abortion clinic protest last April that denounced the “black genocide” of abortion.

Among the most prominent names in the movement are Day Gardner, of the National Black Pro-Life Union; Rev. Clenard Childress and Johnny Hunter of the group Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN, at the website Black Genocide.org); and Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King. King, the media darling of the bunch, addressed the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 38th Annual Legislative Convention this summer, arguing that “fully 1/4 of the black population of the US has gone missing” due to abortion.

This is something we’ve mentioned several times before and Joyce does a good job of explaining how this message was developed and who is pushing it, so be sure to read the whole thing.

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Understanding Rick Warren's Work in Africa

Submitted by Kyle on January 7, 2009 - 9:29am

Writing in The Daily Beast, Max Blumenthal takes a look at the work that Rick Warren is doing combating AIDS in Africa and finds some rather disturbing connections. For instance:

Troubled by what he was witnessing in Africa, Rep. Tom Lantos led the new Democratic-controlled Congress to reform PEPFAR [the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief] during a reauthorization process in February 2008. Lantos insisted that Congress lift the abstinence-only earmark imposed by Republicans in 2002, and begin to fund family planning elements like free condom distribution. His maneuver infuriated Warren, who immediately boarded a plane for Washington to join Christian right leaders including born-again former Watergate felon Chuck Colson for an emergency press conference on the Capitol lawn. In his speech, Warren claimed that Lantos’ bill would spawn an increase in the sex trafficking of young women. The bill died and PEPFAR was reauthorized in its flawed form.

A release announcing this press conference shows that Warren wasn't only sharing the microphone with Colson, but rather a bevy with right-wing Congressmen and activists including Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, Rep. Joe Pitts, Rep. Mike Pence, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Bishop Harry Jackson, Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, and Day Gardner of the National Black Pro-Life Union.

Even more disturbing is Warren's close ties to Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa:

Warren’s man in Uganda is a charismatic pastor named Martin Ssempa. The head of the Makerere Community Church, a rapidly growing congregation, Ssempe enjoys close ties to his country’s First Lady, Janet Museveni, and is a favorite of the Bush White House. In the capitol of Kampala, Ssempa is known for his boisterous crusading. Ssempa’s stunts have included burning condoms in the name of Jesus and arranging the publication of names of homosexuals in cooperative local newspapers while lobbying for criminal penalties to imprison them.

...

In August 2007, Ssempa led hundreds of his followers through the streets of Kampala to demand that the government mete out harsh punishments against gays. “Arrest all homos,” read placards. And: “A man cannot marry a man.” Ssempa continued his crusade online, publishing the names of Ugandan gay rights activists on a website he created, along with photos and home addresses. “Homosexual promoters,” he called them, suggesting they intended to seduce Uganda’s children into their lifestyle. Soon afterwards, two of President Yoweri Museveni’s top officials demanded the arrest of the gay activists named by Ssempa. Terrified, the activists immediately into hiding.

I remember this incident because I actually wrote a post about it at the time that included a quote from Janice Crouse of the Beverly LaHaye Institute hailing the Ugandan protesters for standing up when “the Devil is attacking them”:

I thank the Lord that we have people in Uganda who are devoted Christians who are willing to go out there at the beginning, at the outset, to say “you’re not going to change our culture, you’re not going to have influence here. We stand up for what is right, what is legal, and what is part of the culture of Uganda.”

It also included this photo taken of one of Ssempa's protesters:

Is this the anti-AIDS work in Africa of which Warren is so proud?

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By “Someone,” Do You Mean “Everyone”?

Submitted by Kyle on October 31, 2008 - 12:02pm

Day Gardner of the National Black Pro-Life Union has sent out a press release entitled “Someone has to Say it ... Christians Who Vote for Obama are Voting Against the Word of God.”

We hate to break it to her, but she’s not the first one to make this important point.