New pro-life organization: Created Equal
Mark Harrington, former Exec. Dir. for the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform Midwest, has launched a new organization called Created Equal. Mark’s 12 year tenure with CBR ended April 8.
The words “Created Equal” are found in our Declaration of Independence and were restated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. This phrase summarizes the pro-life message well. Abortion is age-based discrimination. As Dr. King said, “Men should be judged not by the color of their skin” – nor whether they are born or preborn – but “by the content of their character.”
From Harrington’s press release:
“I owe CBR a debt of gratitude for helping to pioneer some of the most effective projects in fighting abortion,” Harrington said. “The experience of applying the proven methods of historical social reform to the abortion battle has uniquely prepared me for the next phase of my service in the pro-life movement.”
“Created Equal’s goal is to train the next generation of leaders to take on the culture of death and win,” Harrington continued. “We will specialize in youth training and outreach at the high school and college level. In addition, we will be more agile in our use of prenatal and abortion imagery. The use of new media and various other cutting edge display technologies will permit us to train and reach more students than ever before. Our projects will be easily transferable to students all across America so they can win the abortion debate on campus now and into the future.”
Here’s interesting video of Created Equal’s Seth Drayer asking pro-aborts a simple question, “What is abortion?” Note his nonconfrontational approach…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP_eRTSwomo[/youtube]
I’ve known Mark for years, and he is a very effective pro-life advocate. I’m a monthly donor to Created Equal. Please consider donating to Created Equal yourself and help Mark get a great launch.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
This is so cool. Great video.
Wow, I would love to see more videos like this one. Just asking, “What is an abortion?” Seeing the pro-choicers avoid words like pregnancy, even fetus for the most part, is telling. You can see the hesitation in their minds. They know what it is, but cannot say it because they know exactly how it sounds. You can see the mental gymnastics they go through to rationalize what happens. It is mental deception.
The only thing more I would like to see in the video, since the pro-lifer is very non-confrontational, is thanking the pro-choicer at the end for her time. I don’t know, something about the interview. Perhaps it was the fact that despite the obvious tension between Seth and the women, all kept it very civil.I respect those the two women who spoke with him much more than the ones who simply blew him off. There’s more hope for those who will discuss their views than for those who simply chant angry slogans.
The pro-life protests have become so calm, prayerful and positive. Years ago (and when it still happens more rarely today) when pro-life protests were full of anger and yelling it really hurt the movement. I find it interesting that as pro-life has moved to prayerful, peaceful protests pro-aborts have become increasingly ugly. They use a level of vulgarities that pro-lifers never did.
Do they think that is a good strategy? I mean, pro-lifers learned our lesson. Plus, the numbers increase when it is so positive. More people are comfortable being a part of it.
As a pro-lifer I really appreciate it when the pro-aborts do these ugly protests because it doesn’t reflect well on them.
Yes all men are created equal… Women on the other hand are not, so we need to strip them of their liberty and free will by taking away the rights they fought so hard to obtain over 40 years ago…
Isn’t it a bit ironic that this assertion was made by a group of white slave owners who were at that moment denying all women regardless of race the ability to vote or have any say in politics except what their husbands would listen to over breakfast… Well I’m glad to see the spirit of denying women’s rights is still alive and kickin in the bible belt…
Women are inherently equal to men, the phrase “all men are created equal” is using ‘men’ in the same way we still use ‘mankind’ today, as a gender neutral pronoun. In modern English ‘gender neutral’ uses masculine pronouns. And, as a women, I do not need drugs or surgery to be equal to a man. I was born, just like a man, with everything I need to be equal. Saying women ‘need’ abortion to be equal to a man is calling them inherently inferior. The abortion ‘rights’ group is the worst mysogeny there is, insisting women need dangerous and life altering chemical or surgerical intervention to place us on equal footing with a man. Are we mindless that we can not control our urges? Are we thoughtless that we can not choose between raising a child or giving it to another? Are we helpless that we can not raise a child if that is our wish? The abortion industry say ‘yes’. Pro-life says ‘no’! WE mean to empower women, while the pro-aborts simply want women to believe we are so inferior that we must lie back, spread our legs, and let them save us from our choices.
Looking on American Right to Life’s list of Tier 3 Pro-lifers,
whose “leaders and organizations are waiting to advocate for personhood until our immoral and godless courts and governing officials approve of such advocacy”
I see they list Gregg Cunningham of CBR listed there. Could this be why Mark left. The video of Seth Dreyer on “Created Equal’s” Facebook page is making a very strong Personhood statement.
I’ve always loved CBR and welcome Mr. Harrington’s move to the Personhood approach, if that is one of the reasons he’s formed “Created Equal”. The title highlights the Human/Civil Rights identity – the way the kids in their 20s are defining the pro-life movement. The way Black pro-life leaders are defining the movement. Second generation pro-lifers are moving on to the real fight. Created (not born) Equal means equal from our biological beginning.
Bravo for taking things to the next step, Mark! (If that is what this is).
Jespren – AMEN
LittleZ,
Just a suggestion, but maybe, just maybe if you truly entered into the realm of post-abortive women you would understand how toxic and dehumanizing this “right” truly is.
How blithely you mention slavery, yet fail to mention that this too was a Constitutional “right”. Did slavery being a right make it right?
Did segregation being a right make it right?
Did forced sterilization of the disabled by the taxpayers make that right, right?
Did the right of Americans to have Japanese-Americans thrown into internment camps make that right?
Each of these “rights” was the result of a Supreme Court ruling. But just because a majority of jurists on the highest court in the land decide on a right (based on prevailing societal sentiment) doesn’t make that right acceptable in morally or intellectually enlightened circles. Each of those monstrous decisions was deplored by substantial segments of American society in it’s day, just as Roe is today.
Sure, plenty of slave owners ended up impoverished after they lost their right to domination and subjugation of others, but then, that’s a pretty poor reason for ruining the life of the weaker or minority, now isn’t it?
You need more than the morally bankrupt talk of constitutional rights rooted in the branch of government that has visited one atrocity after another on this land.
I like the name. Their first point can be: “Just when are we created?” (From the joining of cells to trigger a new life form – or from nothing??!)
Because we sure can’t be created/started at any point afterwards. We are only older.
I love love love what Jespren said! “Saying women ‘need’ abortion to be equal to a man is calling them inherently inferior. “
Biggz – I’m a woman and I’m really offended by the notion that I need to have the legal right to kill my unborn children in order to be free or equal to men. Why should one group of people (women) have to oppress another group of people (the unborn) in order to be free? Why must there be a loser?
Thank you CT and Amber. :)
Awesome posts, Jespren and Kristina! I fully agree!
From Serrin Foster’s The Feminist Case Against Abortion, The American Feminist, Summer-Fall 2004
“They say that access to abortion is ‘the most fundamental right of
women, without which all other rights are meaningless.’
“Really?
“Will our property be seized?
“Will women be tossed out of college? Sarah Weddington thought so.
She argued in Roe v. Wade that a woman couldn’t possibly complete
her education if she were pregnant. Why not? Is she suddenly stupid?
“Will our votes not count? Will our right to free speech suddenly
disappear?”
A few more feminist quotes:
“When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873, recorded in Howe’s diary at Harvard University Library
“When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society – so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged.”
Mattie Brinkerhoff in The Revolution, 4(9):138-9 September 2, 1869
“[This] subject lies deeper down in woman’s wrongs than any other…I hesitate not to assert that most of [the responsibility for] this crime lies at the door of the male sex.”
Matilda Gage, The Revolution, 1(14):215-6 April 9, 1868
“Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth.”
Victoria Woodhull, Wheeling, West Virginia Evening Standard, November 17, 1875
“Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women… How can one protect and help women by killing them as babies?””
Alice Paul, as recalled by colleague Evelyn Judge
“Women deserve better than abortion”
“Refuse to choose”
Feminists for Life of America
FeministsForLife.org
Funny as Civil War buff I can say that much of abort mantra on privacy, property, choice and don’t force your morals arguments mirror alot of pro-slavery arguments not to mention dehumanizing their victims.
Jespren – You are 100% wrong. Pro-choice people don’t say women need abortions… We say you cant take that CHOICE away from other women. HUGE difference. Trying to equate abortion to slavery is ridicules and a bit insulting. Also I might mention that a woman’s right to choose when and how she wants to be a mother was won long after slavery was abolished.
Kristina – No one says you need an abortion to be equal to men, we say “You are your own person and you and only you should have the final say in your medical decisions because you and only you knows how these decisions will effect yours and your families lives. Even doctors just give medical advice about treatment not infallible laws. There is a HUGE difference between Pro-choice and Pro-abortion. We don’t advocate for abortion we advocate for freedom of choice for every person involved. Notice I said PERSON not zygotes or fetuses. They do not get to make choices because they can’t and even if they could it would not matter as they have no legal standing from which to make a case. In fact legally it would be closer to a parent who was making medical decisions for a incapacitated child in a hospital who was physically unable to have a say and is not mentally developed enough to make an informed decision. You guys seem to forget that abortion is a legal procedure and is protected under United States federal law. It’s not a crime. It is an approved and practiced medical procedure according to the American Medical Association. You cannot take way the freedom and rights women fought so hard to secure over 40 years ago.
I do find it very ironic that a group whose goal is to take away women’s reproductive rights, would use a quote from a group of men who were denying women even the most basic American rights and would continue to do so for the next 150 years…
Gerard:
Amy R:
Your comments were superb. Though the troll littlez chose not to respond (no surprise) we know in the end the truth wins out.
@ Biggz: there is no linguistic, logical, or functional difference between saying a ‘choice’ is needed and the answer to that is needed. If women require the right to choose abortion to be equal that is exactly the same as saying women require abortion to be equal. I’m guessing you are likely intelligent enough to know this basic concept of logic and language and were just hoping someone didn’t call you on your attempts to play word games.
Furthermore anyone who thinks the Founding Fathers were ‘denying women even the most basic American rights’ by instating voting only for (white) male landlords over the age of 25 is either A) being disingenous or B) a poor student of history. Given that most of the U.S. is a product of a failed educational system I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the 2nd instead of the former. Yes, in today’s society and culture women do need the right to vote to be equal with men, but thinking they did then assumes their culture was simliar to ours, it wasn’t. Winston Churchill knew ‘the hand the rocks the craddle rules the world’. And women were active participants in politics and rule of law before they ‘got the vote’. (Ever heard of prohibition, that would be the 18th amendment, women’s sufferage wasn’t until the 19th amendment. And while prohibition didn’t work so well it was lobbied almost exclusively by women.) Back then women controlled the two most powerful things in a man’s life, food and sex, and they knew ‘the head requires the neck to turn’. There is an old threat ‘do/don’t do X and you’ll be eating boiled straw for a month!’ It might not mean much now, but before we became a heavily industrialized society men worked all day out of the house and then came home and ate whatever their wives cooked for them. There is a great loby poster from pre-prohibition days ‘lips that touch whiskey shall not touch ours’ that women marched with. Historically, and even today in places where women still have a home-based role in society, sex-strikes or cooking-strikes were popular and effective ways of making sure women got what they needed/wanted from their ‘male dominated’ society. It took a fundemental change in societies structure from a rural based farming country to an industrialized city based one, to cause an inequality in the sexes that precipitated women asking for (and being given) the right to vote. But thinking that all the women from Martha Washington to Edith Wilson were all lesser because they didn’t have the temerity and drive to stand up and demand the ‘right’ to vote is foolishness. Our Founding Mothers were just as capable of demandin their rights as the flappers in the Roaring Twenties, and if they felt they were being forced into a lesser position by not voting you can be assured they would have done something about it! Feminism is at its base a lie, women gave up the power to ‘rule(s) the world’ for ‘equality’ in the work place. It would be laughable if so many people didn’t think that was a good trade! Now they gave up the right to control one of their most powerful bargaining chips, sex, to claim a made up ‘right’ to abortion, which does everything to damage a women but let’s the man off scot-free. Women are far worse off now with all our ‘freedoms’ then we were before we sold our power to try to chase after ‘sameness’ (not equality, we were already equal) with men.
Biggz: “We don’t advocate for abortion we advocate for freedom of choice for every person involved. Notice I said PERSON not zygotes or fetuses.”
Are you one of those who acknowledges that a human fetus is a human being, but clings to a semantic difference between “human being” and “person,” or are you just denying that first biological fact?
@Biggz: Would you advocate for women to have the legally protected choice to kill their newborn babies? If not, why?