Wisconsin Right to Life in the News Big Time

Wisconsin Eye filmed the entire Wisconsin Right to Life Education Fund dinner on April 24 with Fred Barnes of Fox News Channel as our featured speaker. With over 700 in attendance, the event was a huge success. See for yourself by visiting http://wiseye.org/wisEye_programming/ARCHIVES-april08.html. Look for the April 24 Wisconsin Right to LIfe dinner.

The Milwaukee Common Council, hardly a bastion of right-to-life support, unanimously passed a resolution on April 9 commending Wisconsin Right to Life on our 40 years of advocacy in defense of human life and wishing us well in future endeavors. Kudos to Alderman Jerome Dudzik for introducing the resolution and steering it through the Council.

Right-to-life Democrat and respected columnist, Nat Hentoff, an acknowledged agnostic and liberal, recently wrote a column stating that he cannot support Barack Obama for president. While expressing admiration for much of Obama’s legislative agenda, Hentoff changed his mind when learning that Obama supports continued partial-birth abortion and voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act as an Illinois senator. Hentoff was especially offended by Obama’s statement that he wouldn’t want his daughters “punished” with a child.

Hentoff wrote, “Among my children and grandchildren are two daughters and three granddaughters; and when I hear anyone, including a presidential candidate, equate having a baby as punishment, I realize with particular force the impact that the millions of legal abortions in this country have had on respect for human life.”

What’s the Wisconsin Right to Life connection to all of this? To buttress his argument, Hentoff included a quote in his column by 15-year-old Mariah Smet, a Wisconsin Right to Life teen leader, from her testimony before the Wisconsin Senate Committee on Health and Human Services asking that our Wisconsin abortion ban be preserved.

“Whenever we talk about abortion, suddenly it’s not an unborn child anymore,” stated Mariah. “Instead, people use words like ‘fetus’ or ‘embryo’ or ‘blob of tissue’….After an abortion, there is nothing except death…22 percent of all pregnancies end in abortion, and 47 percent of women having abortions have had more than one.” Mighty impressive words from one so young. Impressive enough to catch the eye of a national icon.

Barbara