Read The Personhood split, Part I: Structure for background.

Aside from their structural variations, Personhood USA and National Personhood Alliance at first seemed to have similar goals – until the November 4 election.

At that time both the Colorado “Definition of Person and Child” Initiative and  North Dakota “Life Begins at Conception” Amendment failed, by 65% and 64%, respectively.

After the defeat of those two initiatives, added to the defeats in 2008 and 2010 of PUSA-sponsored personhood initiatives in Colorado by 73% and 70.5%, respectively, NPA publicly threw in the towel on state initiatives.

The hoister of the white flag was NPA National Policy Director Gualberto Garcia Jones, a former PUSA board member. Jones proclaimed in a post-election op ed, “[I]t isn’t an overstatement to say that the statewide personhood ballot measure is dead for now.”

Ironically, Jones complained in his op ed that at least one previous statewide personhood initiative had lost because it was “sabotaged” by “opposition from state leaders who should have been our allies.”

But isn’t that what Jones was doing to future statewide personhood efforts?

In fact, the personhood movement constantly criticizes - and rightfully so, in my opinion – incremental groups and leaders who publicly oppose their initiatives. Here’s one such letter… co-authored by Jones.

So I don’t understand the compulsion of one personhood group to publicly condemn a strategy spearheaded by another personhood group. You’d think they’d know better.

Pro-aborts ate it up, though.

As Jones should know, personhood efforts, like incremental efforts, are about more than winning at the ballot box or in a legislature, as this PUSA infographic shows (click to enlarge):

Keith Mason, head of PUSA, confirmed to me that PUSA now has a database of 7 million believers. 7 million. No other pro-life group can touch that.

Jones wrote that NPA is taking its efforts local – an incremental strategy, I might add (as are statewide personhood efforts, actually):

We need to start engaging in more asymmetrical tactics, and this means engaging the enemy in municipalities and counties that we know we control.

This can be done at the legislative and political level, as Georgia Right to Life and other groups have done by the endorsement of state officials, or it can be done by engaging in municipal ballot measures.

Dan Becker, former employee of PUSA and founder of NPA, expounded in an email:

We are adding a FOURTH “leg” to the NRLC (National Right to Life Committee) 3-legged stool - judicial tension through the interposition of “lesser magistrates.”

The legal doctrine of interposition is a well established principle. This is especially important as Personhood Alabama has a supportive state supreme court in Justice Tom Parker and Chief Justice Roy Moore. We are looking for various state supreme courts to issue conflicting rulings as an inducement for the U.S. Supreme Court to grant cert. The timeline for a USSC appeal would be after the 2016 election (assuming a GOP victory) and AFTER a replacement of Kennedy or the more liberal old folks.

Becker provided a link to the story of the Georgia city banning abortion clinics (which it has since walked back).

It’s fine, great, to work on any and all of the above. But we again return to the question, why the need for two national personhood groups?

In the final analysis, I think it all comes down to NPA leadership’s animus toward NRLC, with a healthy dose of personhood infighting. (Welcome to the club.) Both leaders of NPA are former employees of PUSA. As I wrote in Part I:

PA wants to formulate an organization of affiliates to compete against the National Right to Life Committee. (It helps to know NRLC disaffiliated Georgia Right to Life, of which Becker is still president, in March 2014 for a difference of opinion on strategy that culminated in GRTL’s public attempt to thwart a piece of NRLC’s legislation.)

PUSA wants to maintain a tight decision-making framework composed of a small leadership team and donor board, also with affiliates, but with no plan to rival and replace NRLC.

PUSA and NPA are working on the same efforts, some just different in scope. As Mason wrote in an email to supporters after the aforementioned op ed was published:

We have increased support for Personhood by 10% since the first initiative in 2008. Clearly, this is a social change model that works. Moreover, these initiatives are tools to build the grassroots infrastructure within a state to actually pass an amendment - it identifies people who consider themselves pro-life so that we can activate them to act pro-life. That’s how Personhood USA grew to become the largest grassroots pro-life organization in the country!

The state ballot initiative is also an educational tool that simultaneously provides a pro-life standard for lobbying and candidate endorsements.

Nevertheless, we realize the fatigue that can set in when we focus exclusively on state measures. That’s why the Personhood USA team developed the idea for regional and local personhood resolutions and measures - an idea which has now been bandied about in the media! We support “all-of-the-above” to work to pass Personhood.

PUSA and NPA share many if not most of the same affiliates. They even share the same name, over which there is now a trademark dispute.

The only real difference between the two is NPA wants to rival NRLC and PUSA doesn’t.

I saw it get personal between Georgia Right to Life/Dan Becker and Karen Handel. (And I was drawn into that, so I speak from experience as well.)

There seems to be a trend.

by Kelli

“People influence others with regard to all manner of things. In this situation, people who are supportive [of legal abortion] are hearing one thing, and people who are opposed to abortion are less likely to hear those stories,” Sarah Cowan, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of Sociology and the study’s author, told The Huffington Post. “Public opinion on abortion has remained remarkably stable, and I’m proposing that one possible explanation for that stability is the way in which individuals talk about it.”

“The jury’s still out about what would happen if there was a massive coming out campaign — if the veil was lifted and all of these secrets were revealed… but I anticipate that it would change,” Cowan said. “If someone really wanted to push me to say which direction I thought it would go in, I anticipate that it would swing more positive [toward abortion rights]. But that’s with a thousand grains of salt.”

~ Catherine Pearson, The Huffington Post, December 12

[Photo via mamamia.com.au]

by Kelli

Pro-lifers in the United Kingdom have recently come under fire for doing something very “American” in nature: protesting abortion and offering help outside abortion facilities.

In response to this new trend, UK shadow home secretary shadow Yvette Cooper has suggested that the government enact “buffer zones” around abortion facilities. In the U.S., pro-lifers have been winning against buffer zone laws in various states.

In this video, Dominica Roberts from ProLife Alliance discusses why she believes UK “buffer zones” are a bad idea:

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

by Carder

But that’s not the worst of the latest revelations. Gruber has also written extensively on his view that the abortion of “marginal children” is a “social good.” In a “scholarly” paper he co-authored titled, Abortion Legalization and Child Living Circumstances: Who is the “Marginal Child?”, he concluded that “the legalization of abortion saved the government over $14 billion in welfare payments through 1994,” referring to abortion of poor children as “positive selection.”

But is it any wonder now that in a bill written by the man with these twisted views on abortion, who bragged about the “tortured way” the bill was written, would include a plethora of deceptive funding mechanisms for abortion.

~ Matthew Clark exposing the disingenuous architect of Obamacare, Jonathan “stupidity of the American voter” Gruber (pictured), American Center for Law and Justice, December 12

Good morning, and Happy Sunday! Here were my top five eight favorite political cartoons this week. Be sure to vote for your fav in the poll at the bottom of this post!

We begin with a twofer by Michael Ramirez at Townhall.com…

 and a twofer by Gary Varvel at Townhall.com…

 by Chip Bok at Townhall.com…

 by Dana Summers at Townhall.com…

 by Gary McCoy at Townhall.com…

 by Steve Kelley at Townhall.com…

]

Every year during December I have been posting the surprising abolitionist history behind some of our most beloved Christmas hymns. Pro-lifers identify closely with those 150 years ago who fought to free another oppressed class of people.

This Sunday, Wk 2 of 4, we examine…

O Holy Night

In 1847, his parish priest asked French poet Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure to compose a Christmas poem. He wrote “Cantique de Noel” while contemplating what it would have been like to be present at Christ’s birth and asked his friend Adolphe-Charles Adam to set it to music.

The song became an instant classic in France but was later denounced by the Church after Placide himself denounced the Church and became a Socialist Communist, and it was also learned Adam was a Jew.

A decade later American abolitionist and pastor John Sullivan Dwight learned of the beautiful song and saw something more when translating it into English.

According to Ace Collins in his book, Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas, Verse 3 “supported Dwight’s own view of slavery in the South…. Dwight’s English translation of ‘O Holy Night’ quickly found favor in America, especially in the North during the Civil War.”

Here is the literal English translation of Verse 3:

The Redeemer has overcome every obstacle:
The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.
He sees a brother where there was only a slave,
Love unites those that iron had chained.
Who will tell Him of our gratitude,
For all of us He is born, He suffers and dies.

And here was Dwight’s translation of Verse 3:

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.

In conjunction with this post, here is a a link to the most memorable rendition of this classic I’ve ever seen, by David Phelps, which includes Dwight’s Verse 3.

Also read the abolitionist history behind “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”

Because in some people’s minds, “women’s rights” is abortion. They think that if you aren’t in favor of abortion on demand, then you must be opposed to “women’s rights.”

On the other hand, they think that if you favor abortion on demand, then that’s all there is to women’s rights.

~ Rebecca Hamilton, Patheos, December 12

I feel like taking a break from the heavy burden of our pro-life work for a fun community chat this weekend.

So! Let’s talk! This weekend’s question is: Do you regift?

I heard a report yesterday that even wealthy Americans regift!

Per the report, that regifting percentage is up 10% from last year.

If you regift, what sorts of items do you recycle? Here’s what the survey says…

As for me, the answer is yes, I regift! In fact, I have a box full of items to regift! (I put the giver’s name on the gift so I don’t make the mortifying mistake of regifting to the original giver.)

Last Christmas I elevated my regifting to an artform. I have a group of friends with whom I exchange presents, and I announced to them early on my gift would be to bring my regifting box to our little party and let them pick whatever they wanted from it. They loved it!

So, how about you? And there are all sorts of related questions, like: Do you regift used items? (Me? No.) Do you return used items? (Me? I don’t make a habit of it, but yes, I’ve done it with clothes I’ve tried but didn’t like.)

Also, be sure to take the poll!