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BDF in Rome: Hope from Benedict, Glendon |
BDF in Rome: Hope from Benedict, Glendon
11.17.2008
Hope in Action.We write with a message of hope and determination, even as the pro-life movement faces the radical pro-abortion and pro-destructive human embryo laws and policies planned by the upcoming administration.
Now, more than ever, we need you to help our non-profit legal organization stay strong so that we can do everything in the power of the law to block the culture of death in the courts and through public education.
Many have asked us the question that weighs heavy on all of our hearts and minds: “Has the pro-life movement lost?”
First, let’s remember the lament of the pro-abortion forces in April of last year:
“We've been losing fight after fight after fight.”
- Pro-abortion U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D.-CA),
reacting to U.S. Supreme Court partial birth abortion decision.
Those were the words of pro-abortion Senator Feinstein after the April 2007 U.S. Supreme Court victory that upheld the federal ban on partial birth abortion. Nikolas Nikas and Dorinda Bordlee had been involved in litigating and filing amicus briefs in partial birth abortion cases since 1997. That decade-long battle – with many struggles and intermittent losses – ended in victory.
With you standing shoulder to shoulder with us, we witnessed the U.S. Supreme Court deliver a significant blow to the abortion industry by upholding the federal partial birth ban where they recognized “[t]he State's interest in respect for life” that “finds an ultimate expression in a mother's love for her child.”
Just seven years earlier, the Supreme Court had struck down a state partial birth ban, and a future victory seemed very difficult if not impossible.
The lesson is simple. Dark days lie ahead for a season. We will experience both defeat and victory. Giving up is the only way the pro-life movement can ultimately lose.
While in Rome the week after the presidential election to meet with U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glendon, and to speak at a conference of Catholic physicians, we were blessed to have an audience with Pope Benedict XVI in the the papal apartments. This brought to mind the Pope’s wisdom from his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), 35:
“There are times when the burden of need and our own limitations might tempt us to become discouraged. But precisely then we are helped by the knowledge that, in the end, we are only instruments in the Lord’s hands; and this knowledge frees us from the presumption of thinking that we alone are personally responsible for building a better world. In all humility we will do what we can, and in all humility we will entrust the rest to the Lord.”
BDF is currently researching all avenues possible to challenge FOCA in the courts. As a faithful participants in the pro-life movement, you are well aware that President-elect Obama has promised to devastate the life-saving legal infrastructure that was built with great effort by the pro-life movement over the last 36 years.
Hundreds of state and federal pro-life laws now stand on the chopping block of Obama’s promised passage of the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act,” (FOCA), including:
laws that require abortionists to give women informed consent about the dangers of abortion and their access to public and private agencies that will help them bring their child to term;
laws that help stop sexual predators who benefit from secret abortions on minors by requiring parental notice or consent;
laws that prohibit killing a child in the process of delivery by banning partial birth abortion; and
laws that prevent discrimination against Catholic hospitals, healthcare professionals and medical students who object to using their vocation to heal in a way to destroys human lives.
FOCA is an extreme pro-abortion response the many life-protective victories of the pro-life movement. FOCA would be a federal statute that would purport to nullify each and every legitimate state and federal law passed to protect women, unborn children, and even the rights of healthcare professionals to conscientiously object to participating in abortion.
We must hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. FOCA will still have to make its way through the Congress before it gets to President-elect Obama’s desk. It may never make its way to the Oval Office if we make our voices heard loud and clear.
Bioethics Defense Fund will vigorously educate the public about how FOCA destroys not only human lives, but also the very democratic process used by “we the people” to pass these common-sense pro-life laws in our states and in Congress.
But our legal team must prepare now so that we are ready at a moment’s notice to challenge FOCA the minute it is signed. A FOCA legal challenge will require additional attorneys, legal research costs, as well as travel and a host of other expenses that must be met over the lifetime of the lawsuit.
Bioethics Defense Fund lawyers are experts in the abortion jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court. We have litigated many legal challenges regarding abortion and human embryo cloning laws. With your help, we hope to match the well-funded pro-abortion forces in a federal court challenge of FOCA.
Winning through Perseverance
“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.” - Newt Gingrich
The pro-life movement must not succumb to the short-sighted failure to understand a historic truth about social-reform movements — that it takes perseverance to achieve victory.
In another NRO article entitled “Young Battle for Life,” BDF President Nikolas Nikas reminds us that the 36-year struggle against federal court-imposed abortion on demand is still a relatively young one that we must not abandon. He points to the lessons of the long struggle for black civil rights as instructive:
246 years from the advent of American slavery to the end of the Civil War;
100 years from the ratification of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery to the passage of the Civil Rights Act;
58 years from the announcement by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” public accommodations for blacks and whites was constitutional to the reversal of that decision by the same Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education.
It is understandable that many of us have grown weary of the seemingly long 36 year battle fought by the pro-life movement. But we must remember “[t]he lesson that American social-reform movements sometimes take time. We will win the battle to overturn Roe if we do not lose heart.”
We Can’t Do This Without You.
It is a simple fact that those for whom we advocate don’t have cash. They are unborn children in the womb, or human embryos at risk of being destroyed in failed experiments. As lawyers for Bioethics Defense Fund, we will continue to vigorously advocate for these “least amongst us,” but we need your financial support and personal participation to do so.
We humbly ask you to help keep Bioethics Defense Fund strong so that we can wield the power of the law against the culture of death policies that we must be ready to face at the beginning of 2009.
With your help, Bioethics Defense Fund will continue to “Witness” to the fundamental human right to life.
Together, we are hope in action. Together, we will be their voice.
Nikolas T. Nikas
Dorinda C. Bordlee
P.S. We need your help. Please consider standing with us by making a tax-deductible donation to the unique life-protective legal work of the Bioethics Defense Fund.
· Via internet: www.BDFund.org/contribute.asp
· Via U.S. Mail:
Bioethics Defense Fund
6811 E. Voltaire Ave.
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
Or contact us at 504-231-7234 or dbordlee@BDFund.org
Bioethics Defense Fund is a non-profit 501(c)3 legal and educational organization. All donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
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