National Right to Life Committee
Encyclopedia
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) is the oldest and largest pro-life
organization in the United States
with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide. The group works through legislation and education to work against abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide. It was founded in 1968 and is a non-partisan political group.
groups. These groups were forming in response to efforts to change abortion laws based on model legislation proposed by the American Law Institute (ALI). New Jersey attorney Juan Ryan served as the organization's first president. NRLC held a nationwide meeting of pro-life leaders in Chicago in 1970 at Barat College. The following year, NRLC held its first convention at Macalestar College in St. Paul, Minnsota.
NRLC was formally incorporated in May 1973 in response to the US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade
decision which legalized abortion in the United States. Its first convention as an incorporated organization was held the following month in Detroit, Michigan. At the concurrent meeting of NRLC's board, Ed Golden of New York was elected president. Among the organization's founding members was Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first African-American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Jefferson subsequently served as persident of the organization. Conventions have been held in various cities around the country every summer since the Detroit convention.
In 1984 the Committee co-produced the abortion documentary, The Silent Scream
with Dr. Bernard Nathanson
. In 1985, following two years of an Upjohn product boycott
by the National Right to Life Committee, the Upjohn Company
stopped all research on abortifacient drugs. Three years later, NRLC joined other pro-life
groups in serving notice to drug companies that if any company sold an abortion-inducing drug, millions of Americans who opposed abortion would boycott all the company's products.
In the 1990s, the NRLC began a nationwide grassroots lobbying campaign against the "Freedom of Choice Act," and announced a boycott of the French pharmaceutical company Roussel Uclaf
and its American affiliates for allowing its abortion drug, mifepristone
, into the United States.
According to Keri Folmar, the lawyer responsible for the language of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act
, the term "partial birth abortion" was developed in early 1995 in a meeting among herself, Charles T. Canady, and NRLC lobbyist Douglas Johnson.
In 1997 Concerned Women For America
participated in the National Right to Life's press briefing at the National Press Club in support of the boycott against the U.S. subsidiaries of Hoechst AG & Roussel Uclaf (developer and manufacturer of the abortion pill mifepristone) whose new drug was Allegra
.
National Right to Life Committee joined disability rights advocates in actively advocating for intervention in the Terri Schiavo case
in 2003. On March 19, 2005, the NRLC issued an urgent congressional action alert requesting help in urging senators and representatives to resolve differences and pass 'Terri's Law' immediately, which would allow Florida Governor Jeb Bush
to intervene in the matter.
The next year, the National Right to Life Committee commended President Bush
's veto (the first ever veto of his Presidency) of funding for embryonic stem cell research, and rebuked lawmakers who rejected alternatives.
The Committee evaluates Federal officials and gives them a ranking based on their support for the pro-life position.
affiliate, the Virginia Society for Human Life
, was founded in 1967 as the first state right-to-life organization. Georgia Right to Life
, Georgia's largest pro-life organization and founded in 1971, became the Georgia affiliate in 1973. In 2007, the NRLC ousted Colorado Right to Life
after it ran a full-page ad in The Gazette criticizing Focus on the Family
founder James Dobson
.
Pro-life
Opposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...
organization in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide. The group works through legislation and education to work against abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide. It was founded in 1968 and is a non-partisan political group.
Organization
The national organization of National Right to Life is composed of three separate entities: the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) which is categorized as a 501c(4) by the IRS, the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund, a 501c(3), and the National Right to Life Political Action Committee (NRLPAC).History
The National Right to Life Committee was formed in 1968 to coordinate information and strategy between emerging state pro-lifePro-life
Opposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...
groups. These groups were forming in response to efforts to change abortion laws based on model legislation proposed by the American Law Institute (ALI). New Jersey attorney Juan Ryan served as the organization's first president. NRLC held a nationwide meeting of pro-life leaders in Chicago in 1970 at Barat College. The following year, NRLC held its first convention at Macalestar College in St. Paul, Minnsota.
NRLC was formally incorporated in May 1973 in response to the US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, , was a controversial landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion,...
decision which legalized abortion in the United States. Its first convention as an incorporated organization was held the following month in Detroit, Michigan. At the concurrent meeting of NRLC's board, Ed Golden of New York was elected president. Among the organization's founding members was Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first African-American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Jefferson subsequently served as persident of the organization. Conventions have been held in various cities around the country every summer since the Detroit convention.
In 1984 the Committee co-produced the abortion documentary, The Silent Scream
The Silent Scream
The Silent Scream is a 1984 anti-abortion documentary video directed and narrated by Bernard Nathanson, an obstetrician, NARAL Pro-Choice America founder, and abortion provider turned pro-life activist, and produced in partnership with the National Right to Life Committee. The film depicts the...
with Dr. Bernard Nathanson
Bernard Nathanson
Bernard N. Nathanson was an American medical doctor from New York who helped to found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, but later became a pro-life activist.-Early life and education:...
. In 1985, following two years of an Upjohn product boycott
Boycott
A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons...
by the National Right to Life Committee, the Upjohn Company
Upjohn
The Upjohn Company was a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm founded in 1886 in Kalamazoo, Michigan by Dr. William E. Upjohn, an 1875 graduate of the University of Michigan medical school. The company was originally formed to make friable pills, which were specifically designed to be easily digested...
stopped all research on abortifacient drugs. Three years later, NRLC joined other pro-life
Pro-life
Opposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...
groups in serving notice to drug companies that if any company sold an abortion-inducing drug, millions of Americans who opposed abortion would boycott all the company's products.
In the 1990s, the NRLC began a nationwide grassroots lobbying campaign against the "Freedom of Choice Act," and announced a boycott of the French pharmaceutical company Roussel Uclaf
Roussel Uclaf
Roussel Uclaf S.A. was the second largest French pharmaceutical company before it was acquired by Hoechst AG of Frankfurt, Germany in 1997, with pharmaceutical operations combined into the Hoechst Marion Roussel division...
and its American affiliates for allowing its abortion drug, mifepristone
Mifepristone
Mifepristone is a synthetic steroid compound used as a pharmaceutical. It is a progesterone receptor antagonist used as an abortifacient in the first months of pregnancy, and in smaller doses as an emergency contraceptive. During early trials, it was known as RU-38486 or simply RU-486, its...
, into the United States.
According to Keri Folmar, the lawyer responsible for the language of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 is a United States law prohibiting a form of late-term abortion that the Act calls "partial-birth abortion", often referred to in medical literature as intact dilation and extraction...
, the term "partial birth abortion" was developed in early 1995 in a meeting among herself, Charles T. Canady, and NRLC lobbyist Douglas Johnson.
In 1997 Concerned Women For America
Concerned Women for America
Concerned Women for America is a conservative Christian public policy group active in the United States best known for its stance against abortion...
participated in the National Right to Life's press briefing at the National Press Club in support of the boycott against the U.S. subsidiaries of Hoechst AG & Roussel Uclaf (developer and manufacturer of the abortion pill mifepristone) whose new drug was Allegra
Fexofenadine
Fexofenadine is an antihistamine drug used in the treatment of hayfever and similar allergy symptoms...
.
Terri Schiavo case
The Terri Schiavo case was a legal battle in the United States between the legal guardians and the parents of Teresa Marie "Terri" Schiavo that lasted from 1998 to 2005...
in 2003. On March 19, 2005, the NRLC issued an urgent congressional action alert requesting help in urging senators and representatives to resolve differences and pass 'Terri's Law' immediately, which would allow Florida Governor Jeb Bush
Jeb Bush
John Ellis "Jeb" Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd Governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. He is a prominent member of the Bush family: the second son of former President George H. W. Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush; the younger brother of former President George W...
to intervene in the matter.
The next year, the National Right to Life Committee commended President Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
's veto (the first ever veto of his Presidency) of funding for embryonic stem cell research, and rebuked lawmakers who rejected alternatives.
The Committee evaluates Federal officials and gives them a ranking based on their support for the pro-life position.
Affiliates
Its VirginiaVirginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
affiliate, the Virginia Society for Human Life
Virginia Society for Human Life
The Virginia Society for Human Life is a non-profit organization advocating an end to abortion in Virginia. VSHL is the Virginia affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee. It was founded in 1967 and is the oldest pro-life organization in the country. The group has a political action...
, was founded in 1967 as the first state right-to-life organization. Georgia Right to Life
Georgia Right to Life
Georgia Right to Life is a pro-life advocacy organization that is non-profit, non-partisan, and non-sectarian. It was incorporated in 1971 by Jay and Cheryl Bowman. In 1973, it became the state affiliate of the Washington, D.C. based National Right to Life Committee in response to the Supreme...
, Georgia's largest pro-life organization and founded in 1971, became the Georgia affiliate in 1973. In 2007, the NRLC ousted Colorado Right to Life
Colorado Right to Life
Colorado Right to Life is an American pro-life advocacy group based in the state of Colorado. CRTL believes all human beings not convicted of a capital crime have a right to life from the moment of fertilization until natural death...
after it ran a full-page ad in The Gazette criticizing Focus on the Family
Focus on the Family
Focus on the Family is an American evangelical Christian tax-exempt non-profit organization founded in 1977 by psychologist James Dobson, and is based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Focus on the Family is one of a number of evangelical parachurch organizations that rose to prominence in the 1980s...
founder James Dobson
James Dobson
James Clayton "Jim" Dobson, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian author, psychologist, and founder in 1977 of Focus on the Family , which he led until 2003. In the 1980s he was ranked as one of the most influential spokesman for conservative social positions in American public life...
.
Past Presidents
- 1968-1973 - Juan Ryan, Esq., New Jersey
- 1973-1974 - Edward Golden, New York
- 1974-1975 - Kenneth VanDerHoef, Esq., Washington
- 1975-1978 - Mildred F. Jefferson, M.D., Massachusetts
- 1978-1980 - Carolyn Gerster, M.D., Arizona
- 1980-1983 - John C. Willke, M.D., Ohio
- 1983-1984 - Jean Doyle, Florida
- 1984-1991 - John C. Willke, M.D., Ohio
- 1991-2011 - Wanda Franz, Ph.D., West Virginia
- 2011-present - Carol Tobias, New Mexico
See also
- Pro-lifePro-lifeOpposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...
- Susan B. Anthony ListSusan B. Anthony ListThe Susan B. Anthony List, or simply SBA List, is a 501 non-profit, non-partisan organization that seeks to eliminate abortion in the U.S. by supporting pro-life politicians, primarily women, through its SBA List Candidate Fund political action committee...
- Right to lifeRight to lifeRight to life is a phrase that describes the belief that a human being has an essential right to live, particularly that a human being has the right not to be killed by another human being...
- National Pro-Life Religious CouncilNational Pro-Life Religious CouncilThe National Pro-Life Religious Council is an educational 5013 corporation representing numerous Christian pro-life denominations and organizations. Its goal is to promote the view that Christianity is a pro-life faith...
- Eclipse of ReasonEclipse of ReasonEclipse of Reason is a 1987 documentary video about abortion directed, filmed, and narrated by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, with an introduction by Charlton Heston. Eclipse of Reason is a follow up to Nathanson’s first film The Silent Scream...
Further reading
- Karrer, Robert N. "The National Right to Life Committee: Its Founding, Its History, and the Emergence of the Pro-Life Movement Prior to Roe V. Wade," Catholic Historical Review Volume 97, Number 3, July 2011 pp 527-557 in Project MUSE
External links
- National Right to Life Committee, official website
- National Right To Life News Today, online newsletter
- The Silent Scream, streaming video
- "National Right to Life Commends Sustained Veto of Funding for Research that Kills Human Embryos, Rebukes 154 House Members for Rejecting Ethical Alternatives." National Right to Life Committee. July 19, 2006.
- FOCA petiton