Posted on 05/10/2006 2:36:17 PM PDT by Borges
Lawrence Lader, a writer who so successfully marshaled his literary and political efforts in support of abortion rights that Betty Friedan, the feminist author, called him the father of the movement, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.
The cause was colon cancer, his wife, Joan Summers Lader, said.
Mr. Lader was a major voice in the abortion debate for four decades, becoming a lightning rod for its critics as well as a beacon for its proponents. He wrote influential books and articles on the subject, organized ministers to refer women wanting abortions to doctors as well as referring 2,000 himself, helped found what was long known as the National Abortion Rights Action League and helped win New York State's repeal of abortion restrictions in 1970.
He unsuccessfully sued the Internal Revenue Service to end the Roman Catholic Church's tax exemptions on the ground that its opposition to abortion had veered into the political arena. He successfully challenged some restrictions on the drug RU-486, known as the morning-after pill, and arranged to manufacture a version of it in the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Estimated over 40 million since 1973.
Closer to 50, if you want to get technical. :-(
That's a vivid story! It is ironic that murderers sentenced to death have time to repent but very often their victims do not. The law simply must be designed to deter as many murders as possible, and that requires capital punishment.
One could equally well argue the other way, that certainty of execution by a particular date would confront the criminal on Death Row with the issue of repentance more strongly than would a sentence of "life," which is indefinite in length. As Samuel Johnson said, "Knowing that one is to be hanged in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully."
When the law elects to allow a murderer to live, or a jury votes to let one live, the law has simply elected someone else to die in the murderer's place.
I'm not sure that is a just outcome.
He better pray that he gets there an hour before the Devil finds out. Lawrence meet Satin, Satin meet Lawrence.
Satin?
He will now find himself before a different Judge.
OOPPS! spelling Satin = Satan.
I myself am more concerned with matters that the law can address in the here and now. Specifically -- reducing murders and other crimes to a minimum. The way to do that is speedy trial, sure-handed justice and swift punishment. I suppose that's hopelessly idealistic while we have living lawyers :-)
If he's meeting Satin, he'll be spending eternity in a very soft place. ;)
Lawrence Lader figures prominently in Dr. Bernard Nathanson's book "Aborting America" (Doubleday - 1979). Nathanson was the co-director of NARAL, or the "National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws", in the late '60s and says Lader was the force behind making opposition to abortion look like a strictly Catholic issue, or at least an issue dear to the Catholic hierarchy out of step with everyday parishioners. In the book Nathanson refers to him as a "virulent anti-Catholic bigot." The man was shystie and couldn't just make the case for abortion in an aboveboard way without resorting to religious prejudice.
Earlier reports that his mother was waiting with a pair of brandished scissors for his expected arrival were met with criticism by his remaining family members.
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