Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
Posted on 03/02/2004 12:03:12 PM PST by chance33_98
NARAL Pro-Choice America: Santorum-Linked Group Succeeds in Pushing Total Abortion Ban in S.D.; Presents Most Direct Challenge to Roe
3/2/04 2:46:00 PM
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To: National Desk, Legal Reporter
Contact: David Seldin of NARAL Pro-Choice America, 202-973-3032
WASHINGTON, March 2 /U.S. Newswire/ -- NARAL Pro-Choice America, the leading national advocate of personal privacy and a woman's right to choose, today criticized Pennsylvania's U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum for his close connection to an organization pushing a direct Supreme Court challenge to a woman's right to choose. Last week, South Dakota's state legislature passed a total ban on legal abortion - with wording that may also outlaw many forms of contraception -- setting up the most direct legal challenge yet to Roe vs. Wade, thanks in large part to the efforts of a group that counts Santorum among its leaders.
NARAL Pro-Choice America President Kate Michelman said: "It's no surprise that Rick Santorum is bent on overturning the right to choose, and the right to privacy that underlies it. But now it is clear just how far he and his allies will go to achieve their far-right agenda. He's taking his extreme anti-choice activism beyond the Senate and beyond Pennsylvania, trying to engineer a Supreme Court challenge that could succeed if President Bush gets the chance to add new justices as he'd like to."
The Thomas More Law Center, a Michigan-based organization where Santorum serves on a seven member Board of Advisors, helped draft the South Dakota bill, which declares that life begins at conception, making abortion a criminal felony. South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds is expected to sign the bill into law either this week or next. Bill proponents admit that its purpose is to create a legal challenge to the Supreme Court decision that guarantees the right to choose. The President of the Thomas More Law Center, Richard Thompson, told The Los Angeles Times, "This bill directly confronts Roe v. Wade."
The South Dakota law is one of several challenges to Roe under consideration at the moment. The New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has agreed to accept a case that would reopen the landmark decision. Anti-choice activists in Michigan are circulating petitions that could result in passage of a near-total ban on legal abortions. And President Bush has continued his campaign to place judges on federal courts who oppose a woman's right to choose. Most recently, he bypassed the Senate with a recess appointment of William Pryor, the former Attorney General of Alabama, who described the Roe decision as "abominable."
Michelman added: "Across the country, the threats to choice and privacy are rising. We're calling on pro-choice Americans to stand up and be counted - at our March on Washington April 25, and throughout this critical year."
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NARAL Pro-Choice America is joining with other pro-choice organizations to sponsor the March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C., on April 25, when a record number of pro-choice Americans will come to the nation's capital to raise their voices in support of privacy and reproductive choice.
They wish. What there's going to be a record number of is counter-protestors lining the route. I have hopes of more pro-lifers than pro-aborts.
Alarm bells will ring, as every abortion-seeking woman in America will become aware that her "private" abortion could be material for a front page story in a few decades. A guy like Flynt doesn't have to name her, all he has to do is provide a detail or two that an investigator could use to track her down.
That fear should really cut back the number of abortions across the country.
We here in the Mitten know fully well that our CINO of a governor would never let such a thing come to pass.
She must go, fellow FReepin' Michiganians! She must go!
I would love to know if there are going to be similar marches at state capitols on the same day. I live a few blocks from the capitol building here in Michigan. Time to start planning a major FReepfest, methinks.
Yes!!
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
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