Dred Scott Shepardized

News Update: For the complete list of the president's 44 potential Ginsburg replacements, and for the true state of affairs, see kgov.com/republican-judicial-crisis.

Justices Reference Dred Scott 56 Times
Informing Personhood/Abolitionist Strategy
 

Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error v. John Sandford [sic]* (1857)

The U.S. Supreme Court has mentioned its own pro-slavery Dred Scott decision 56 times in more than 150 years since issuing their opinion that many blacks and some other humans could be owned as property. What have they said about their own ruling, and what might that tell us about the fight to re-criminalize abortion? To answer these questions American Right To Life commissioned this Shepardization of the Scott opinion, analyzing each reference to that iconic case to better equip those working to protect the innocent.

Dred Scott

The Supreme Court has been mostly positive or neutral in its references to its own pro-slavery Dred Scott decision as documented below. As late as 1992 in an abortion decision they actually make excuses for their own century-old Plessy ruling which upheld law based on the amount of "colored blood" in a person's veins. Both Roe v. Wade and Dred Scott falsely present living human beings as property and not as persons with full human rights. For decades, national pro-life organizations, arguing that the Supreme Court is not ready to overturn its 1973 ruling, have therefore actually opposed constitutional amendment efforts to recognize the personhood and right to life of the unborn child. This review of the court's references to its own atrocious violation of the human rights of millions of enslaved human beings indicates that it is politically naïve to craft a pro-life strategy based primarily on the composition and humility of the court.

$10,000 to name one pro-life Justice

Updated Sept. 18, 2020:

$10,000 Cash Offered to National Right To Life
from American RTL to name 'one' pro-life justice

[CNBC, the Denver Post, Yahoo News, Covenant News, Houston Chronicle, etc., all reported this.]

Denver, CO -- "American Right To Life is offering $10,000 to National RTL," said the group's president Leslie Hanks, "if they can name a single justice on the current U.S. Supreme Court who has ever stated, in an interview or a ruling or even a dissent, that the unborn child has a right to life. The point is that after decades of NRTL’s compromise strategy, there is not a single justice on the court who acknowledges the child’s right to life."

Check Image"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," says the group's site AmericanRTL.org. "A quarter century later notice that NRTL and Bopp have long opposed all state personhood efforts."

In contrast, for the elections in 2008, 2010, and 2014, Colorado pro-lifers turned in a third of a million signatures of registered voters to force statewide referendums to acknowledge in law the personhood of the unborn child, and while the first two campaigns lost, we narrowed the margin from a 3-to-1 defeat to 2-to-1. Everyone needs to fight for the God-given right to life of every innocent child.

For years we have extended this to offer $1,000 to the first person in the general public to provide evidence that a single one of the hundreds of Republican judges in the federal judiciary has ever held, in a ruling, dissent, or otherwise, that the unborn child has a right to life. On 9/17/20 Jason Troyer provided ARTL with evidence that Donald Trump's nominee David Dugan may merit this distinction. ARTL will investigate this promising development and, despite Dugan's strong stand, hopefully will not find any indication that he would uphold regulations legislating how, when, or where an unborn child can be "legally" killed. In the meantime, we renew the offer of $1,000 to the first person who provides evidence of another federal judge (we do, of course, hope there is more than one) who has ever held that the unborn child has a right to life.

Worst Abortion Video Yet

A TEACHABLE MOMENT
Outrage Over Body Parts Videos Squandered by Defunding Efforts
Defund Planned Parenthood Bills Typically Fund Abortion
Politicians Against PP Funding Give Record Funds to Abortion 

 

Lesson from Presidential History: Former president George W. Bush claimed to be against tax funding of abortion yet the Bush administration increased funding to Planned Parenthood by nearly a billion tax dollars over and above what Bill Clinton had been able to give them, and this was true even though for four years Bush and the Republicans had a historic monopoly on power with the trifecta of control over the executive branch, and the legislative branch, and the U.S. Supreme Court. And G. W. Bush gave Planned Parenthood all that money even though it is fungible, and even though in a typical year 98% of Planned Parenthood's pregnancy "services" consist of abortion. Further, just like Roe v. Wade was a Republican ruling, written by Republican Justice Harry Blackmun and passed by a Republican majority, so too, Republican George H.W. Bush initiated Title X funding, amounting to many millions of dollars per year, to Planned Parenthood.  

Lesson from Baby Body Parts Videos: With the public outrage over Planned Parenthood selling baby body parts, what should pro-lifers do now? Do we provide political cover for "pro-life" politicians and talk show hosts like FNC's Megan Kelly who can grandstand against harvesting body parts from "potential life" by urging them to call for the defunding of Planned Parenthood? Of course not. Instead, CRTL offers this response:

"With the viral body parts videos, America has run out of excuses. The abortion clinic says that they are merely removing tissue. But 'tissue' does not have a heart, lungs, arms and legs. Planned Parenthood is killing babies. Everyone knows that. And they're even selling the body parts. A baby is a person made in God's image so we must all fight to protect each child by love and by law."

NBC's Law & Order: "Rape Doesn't Justify Abortion"

American RTL is remembering NBC's only pro-life Law & Order episode, titled Dignity, which is excerpted below. This episode is pastor-approved and you can view it online. Law & Order excerpts:

From Detective Kevin Bernard, played by Anthony Anderson: "You got it backwards, man. The horrible thing is the rape, not the bringing of a life into the world."

Assistant District Attorney (ADA) Connie Rubirosa says, "I grew up thinking Roe v. Wade was gospel. … But [now] I don't know where my privacy ends and another being's dignity begins."

Executive ADA Michael Cutter, played by Linus Roache, was quoting real-world surveys when he said, "The tide has turned. Most Americans are pro-life now."

Cutter virtually quoted the co-sponsor of Colorado's 2010 Personhood Amendment, Gualberto Garcia Jones, who launched the statewide ballot initiative holding his 10-day-old son at a press conference and saying, "Two weeks ago, my son had less rights than a dog or a cat." Speaking to District Attorney Jack McCoy, Cutter says, "My God, cats and dogs have more rights than the unborn."

Republican Party: We Don't Need No Social Issues

DENVER, Election Day, Nov. 6, 2012 -- Republican "moderates" like Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney lose elections, while candidates that have at least appealed to the party's pro-life core, like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, win by energizing the base.

So, disdaining their pro-family base, the Republican Party has bragged that it is moving away from what they call the "social" issues, the sanctity of life and of marriage. Of course however, the very foundation of human civilization is the non-negotiable God-given right to life and the sanctity of marriage.

Republican power brokers hostile to biblical values surrender presidential election after election to big-spending socialist Democrats because they actually would rather risk that outcome than nominate a candidate who will invigorate the base by fighting for the life of the unborn child and for the sanctity of marriage. And predictably, such RINO Republicans will argue the exact opposite, that if Republicans want to win, they need to become increasingly liberal, that is, pro-homosexuality, pro-abortion, pro-socialist, anti-marriage, etc. However, if the country is offered a candidate like Mitt Romney, who is a government health care reformist, implementer of homosexual marriage, pro-abortion, socialist, well then, why not just stick with the openly liberal party, because it's hard to out-Democrat a Democrat. The party leaders have moved so far to the left, that they're competing with the Democrats on the liberal agenda.

DonateThose who know that the battle is not R vs D, but good versus evil, and right vs wrong, and that the innocent child's life must not be relegated to a second-tier negotiable issue, please donate to ARTL. For of course, even Ronald Reagan let down the pro-lifers who trusted in his leadership by funding some abortion (as in the Mexico City Policy, etc.) and by nominating known pro-abortion judges including Sandra Day O'Connor. And George W. Bush, while he would claim to oppose abortion, increased funding to Planned Parenthood by hundreds of millions of dollars more than even Bill Clinton was able to give them, and Bush ended up killing, by his own policies and approval, more than three million children during his term in office. So this is no longer your grandma's pro-life movement. To get the support of the personhood movement, any alleged conservative candidate is going to have to be willing to sacrifice his own career in defense of the unborn child, or he's as worthless as a soldier unwilling to face the battle.

ARTL Launches RepublicansAgainstRomney.com

American RTL Launches RepublicansAgainstRomney.com
ARTL Action: Obama is the Lesser of Two Evils

DENVER, Aug. 28, 2012 -- "Mitt Romney is the architect of Obamacare," said Jefferson George, the president of American Right To Life Action, a conservative 527 group. "Romney has already implemented what Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton only dream of: homosexual marriage, tax-funded abortion on demand by health care reform with the individual mandate, robbing religious freedom from pro-life hospitals. The list is long. If anyone believed the 'lesser of two evils' con, they'd have to vote for Obama."

"Strategists say that independents decide elections," said Darrell Birkey, the ARTL research director overseeing the new RepublicansAgainstRomney.com site. "So the only way for pro-lifers to get candidates who won't kill unborn children is to become independent enough to oppose liberal, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, politicians like Mitt Romney."

ROFL Agreeing with ARTL is the longtime vice president of the nation's first "right to life" group. "The Republicans Against Romney site documents that the excuses the campaign makes for Mitt's anti-child, anti-free-market, anti-family actions are nothing but lies," said Colorado Right To Life's Leslie Hanks. "Sadly, conservative talk show hosts lap it up and repeat the lies. This website even offers a $100 reward for corrections to errors of fact."

'Legitimate Rape' Issue is Romney, Not Akin, Policy

For Immediate Release:

'Legitimate Rape' Issue is Romney Policy, Not Akin's
American Right To Life Shows Absurdity of Rape Exception

Denver, CO 8-24-2012 – "Ironically, it is the implementation of Mitt Romney's abortion policy," says the American Right To Life research director Darrell Birkey, "that would require determining whether or not there was a 'legitimate' rape."

"Missouri's U.S. Senate Candidate Todd Akin advocates the personhood position of killing no child, regardless of whether or not her father was a criminal," says ARTL Action president Jefferson George. "However, Mitt Romney himself wrote an op-ed recently in National Review saying that he opposes abortion but not for 'instances of rape'. So it is not Akin, but Mitt Romney, whose unworkable policy would require determining whether there was a 'legitimate' rape."

See also: On the So-Called Rape "Exception"
and ARTL's Burning Buildings and Half-a-Loaf

Agreeing with American Right To Life is the longtime vice president of the nation's first-ever "right to life" group. "Mitt Romney's criticism of congressman Akin was self-condemning," said Colorado Right To Life's Leslie Hanks. As campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said, "Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin's statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape." Hanks added, "So the Romney campaign admits that their own policy, unless it's just phony, requires some kind of determination of rape. They're the 'legitimate rape' team."

American Right To Life agrees with Rep. Akin that he "used the wrong words in the wrong way." Birkey points out that, "Perhaps without realizing it, Todd repeated the Ron Paul-ism that was said to Piers Morgan on CNN earlier this year about legitimate rape. With a similar view to Romney's, Paul put it even worse, and called it an 'honest' rape. Likewise, Mitt Romney's policy means that if a woman was actually raped, then he would not oppose her killing the child."

"The new Republican-In-Name-Only GOP is reduced to being the conservatives who want to save social programs created by liberals," said George, head of the 527 group. "And Todd Akin could become the awkward hero from Missouri if he brings his actions in line with his principles and refrains from voting for bills, like H.R. 3, that authorize the use of tax dollars to kill the very children that we believe Aiken wants to protect."

Lastly, Mitt Romney's unworkable 'rape exception' also violates the God-given right to life.

ARTL Unfurls World's Largest Protest Sign

Size of world's largest protest sign by ARTL compared to the Statue of Liberty

Size of world's largest protest sign by ARTL compared to the Statue of Liberty

DENVER, Aug. 26, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- An official Guinness Book of World RecordsTM attempt to display the largest ever protest sign has succeeded. The 530-foot tall and 666-foot wide message is being shouted from the mountaintops overlooking the Democratic National Convention with the leading 2008 protest message.

Depending on their location, thousands of DNC delegates and journalists can look out their hotel windows to the west to see the sign. Sponsored by American RTL Action, the message initially appeared with three enormous 160-foot tall, bright yellow letters, D-N-C, stacked on top of each other.

After those letters suddenly appeared on a mountain just west of Denver, the actual full message of the sign began to unfurl. Three lines of white text, built on the vertical yellow letters read, D-N-C:

  Destroys
uNborn
  Children

"The tiniest boys and girls should be loved and protected," said American RTL Action president Steve Curtis, "but as nominating Barack Obama emphasizes, the DNC even supports killing kids in the womb old enough to know their mother's voice, sleep and dream, suck their thumbs, and play with their toes."

Photo from 7 miles away shows enormity of ARTL sign

Photo from 7 miles away shows enormity of ARTL sign

Many Pro-aborts: Acid is Life; Embryo is Not

Many "pro-choicers" will say that an amino acid is life, and yet, a baby growing in the womb is not life, when in reality, the amino acids are not life, and the baby is. Consider that many "pro-choicers" are also evolutionists. And Darwinists are frequently confused about many things. For example, textbook authors and museum curators will claim that  the famous 1952 Miller/Urey experiment created life. In reality, all they did was to synthesize some amino acids. Once such instance in Colorado is at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in their exhibit titled: Replicating Life in the Lab? Why does that title end with a question mark? It’s been sixty years. Don’t they know yet if they made life or not?

Most Pro-aborts: Life, Not Life


The baby, on the right, is alive. The amino acids, on the left, are not alive. And that question mark at Denver museum is insufficient to counterbalance their misleading title, since amino acids are the building blocks of biological life, but they are not life. They're acids.

"We Don't Know When Life Begins" Ten thousand times over, the Roe v. Wade opinion has been quoted approvingly by those who advocate the killing of unborn children: "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins." Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, for example, both indicated that even "scientifically," it is not known when life begins. With such hard hearts, how can they possibly understand personhood when they pretend to be so confused regarding even biological life itself.

Breast Cancer Link Suspected as Reason Komen Pulls Abortion Chain Funding

For Immediate Release:

American Right To Life Suspects the Breast Cancer Link
Is the Real Reason Komen Pulled Abortion Chain's Funding

UPDATES: See this on Times Square in NYC. Also Fox News ran two reports based on this press release: Groups cite alleged cancer-abortion link to explain Komen's split with Planned Parenthood and Does science support abortion-cancer link? And Rush Limbaugh cited the ABC Link.

Denver, CO 2-1-2012 – "Now that the lead National Cancer Institute researcher on the abortion/cancer link has reversed herself and warned of abortion as a significant risk factor for breast cancer," says Lolita Hanks, nurse practitioner and president of American Right To Life, "the pro-life pressure on Planned Parenthood and Susan G. Komen is increasing."
Komen/Planned Parenthood logo
"Louise A. Brinton was largely responsible for getting the government-funded NCI to deny the abortion-breast cancer link," said Darrell Birkey, research director for ARTL, "and she has now reversed herself and co-authored a study which includes 'induced abortion' as a significant breast cancer risk factor."

Brinton and her co-authors wrote in the peer-reviewed Cancer Epidemiology journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, "Specifically, older age, family history of breast cancer, earlier menarche age, induced abortion, and oral contraceptive use were associated with an increased risk for breast cancer."

See this message on Times Square in NYC (not photoshopped)Endocrinologist Joel Brind, Ph.D. of Baruch College in New York City, dissented at the NCI's conference that rejected the abortion link to breast cancer, a conference organized by Brinton. Professor Brind says, "The 2003 conference of the National Cancer Institute which denied abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer refused to allow attending scientists to present the opposing position of the scientific research establishing the link, showing that abortion was declassified as a cancer risk for political and not scientific reasons."

"Following that political correctness," says Hanks, "Komen is claiming they have halted funding to Planned Parenthood because a Republican chairman of a House sub-committee has inquired into their financial practices. We suspect the real reason is the growing evidence that abortion significantly increases the incidence of breast cancer."

"The NCI's own statistics show that breast cancer has increased, and only in women who were of child-bearing age when abortion was legalized in 1973," said Brind, "so much so that nationally, cancer would have steadily declined, except it has held steady at the expense of women getting breast cancer." And Prof. Brind suggests that Komen now correct a factual error on their website which claims that, "the breast is mature after puberty." Actually, "third trimester pregnancy hormones begin the final maturation process and the differentiation of mammary gland cells," said Brind, a recognized expert in the field. "Abortion prevents this, leaving the woman with more undifferentiated cells vulnerable to carcinogens, increasing her risk of breast cancer."

ARTL Rejects Ron Paul's Pledge

Ron Paul Tragically Agrees With Central Finding of Roe v. Wade

Denver, CO  /PRNewswire/ -- American Right To Life calls it politics as usual when Ron Paul tried to mislead pro-life voters by signing a pledge that he actually rejects. Just in time for the 2012 Iowa caucuses Paul pledged that he will "endorse legislation to make clear that the 14th Amendment protections apply to unborn children." But then he contradicted his pledge by stating, "I can't agree that the Fourteenth Amendment has a role to play here."

"Shockingly, Ron Paul agrees with the central finding of Roe v. Wade itself," says Darrell Birkey, director of research for American Right To Life, "that the constitutional protection of human rights does not apply to unborn children." And Birkey adds, "Ron Paul as president would defend a fictitious right of states to legalize the murder of children, but any country that permits kids to be intentionally killed is not even civilized."

"Ron Paul is not who he claims to be," says Lolita Hanks, president of American RTL. "Paul is pro-choice, state-by-state. He believes states should be allowed to keep abortion, which is like allowing states to keep slavery." Thus as president, Paul would refuse to enforce the 14th amendment, which declares, "No State shall… deprive any person of life… without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Legislator runs on moral issues, shows how to win

Iowa legislator Tom Shaw defends the right to life of all innocent persons from fertilization to natural death.

Oct. 19, 2011

Photograph of Tom Shaw

DES MOINES, IA — For legislator Tom Shaw, protecting innocent human life is not just a check-list item or a political platform plank. It is a personal passion.

Shaw, who is the chief of police in Laurens, IA, ran for the Iowa House of Representatives in 2010 in Iowa House District 8. He put moral issues at the forefront of his campaign. Defending the right to life of all innocent persons was his top priority.

He said, "I have chosen to run for the Iowa House as I feel that the values that Iowans hold dear are under attack. Our rich heritage and pioneer spirit have always made Iowa a great place to live and to raise our families. We take great pride in our communities, schools and churches."

At his campaign website Shaw made eight pledges. The first was to "Defend the right to life of all innocent persons, from fertilization to natural death." He ran as a Republican in a district controlled for 30 years by Democrats. He won by a two-to-one margin.

ARTL Supporting Louisiana Personhood Bill

For immediate release (see also in Charisma Magazine's LA Personhood story):

Louisiana's HB 645 Will Protect All Human Beings
ARTL urges support of Rep. LaBruzzo's Personhood Bill

 

Pro-life Louisiana Rep. John LaBruzzo

June 8, 2011 UPDATE: The Louisiana Personhood Bill was killed yesterday by opposition including from anti-personhood pro-life organizations. "Opposition to our 2011 Personhood bill came from Louisiana's National Right To Life affiliate, the state's Catholic Bishops, and the state's Focus on the Family affiliate," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. John LaBruzzo. "And the personhood oppositon to HB 645, of course, also came from Planned Parenthood and the ACLU."

The HB 645 pro-life opposition came from attorneys and other representatives of the Louisiana Family Forum, Louisiana Right To Life, the Louisiana's Roman Catholic Church. Regardless of all this, because personhood is based on the God-given right to life of every child and the truth will win as the personhood movement continues to march across the land. So some day, ARTL will say to these groups, "Welcome aboard!"

Feb. 2, 2016 Update: In a Denver radio interview, Juda Myers of Choices4Life.org confirmed that she spoke with representatives of the organizations above which were named by Rep. LaBruzzo, including for example Benjamin Clapper of the misnamed Louisiana Right To Life, and that they all worked to kill this pro-life bill because it had no "exceptions" and she reported on a $5,000 fundraiser designed to raise the funds to lobby to kill this no-exceptions anti-aboriton bill.

New Orleans, LA 6-7-11 – American Right To Life thanks Louisiana's Rep. John LaBruzzo for his courage to make Louisiana the first state in the nation to protect all innocent human beings from being intentionally killed by recognizing the Right to Life for all persons, regardless of age, size or dependency.

"The proposed law HB 645, would protect the right to life of unborn children from fertilization," said Joe Riccobono, ARTL's Louisiana spokesman. "It defines feticide as the killing of an unborn child whether surgically or by a lethal drug," said Riccobono, who as a temporary Katrina transplant to Denver played a leading role in Colorado's statewide personhood amendment campaigns in 2008 and 2010.

Despite the state's many abortion regulations, nearly 100,000 Louisiana children have been killed by surgical abortion in the last decade and the rate of loss of children may actually be increasing due to the proliferation of chemical abortifacients. This is consistent with the nationwide trend in which pro-lifers have passed hundreds of abortion "regulations," yet the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reports that neither the total number of abortions nor the rate of abortions have decreased in the last decade. Our research at AmericanRTL.org/abortion-regs-dont-work shows that abortions have only "appeared" to decrease in number whereas they have actually increased, including by chemical abortifacients.