FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Chicago, Illinois — Americans United for Life (AUL) today released its sixth annual ranking of the most and least pro-life states.  Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and South Dakota top the ranking, while California, Hawaii, and Vermont ranked lowest.

“AUL’s annual ranking highlights the significant progress we are making each year toward a more pro-life America,” said Dr. Charmaine Yoest, AUL President & CEO.  “There is every reason for optimism even in the face of new challenges.  Since the election, we have seen a huge outpouring of grassroots support for our work opposing the radically pro-abortion Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) as well as hundreds of inquiries about life-affirming legislation.”

While AUL’s criteria covers states’ treatment of all life issues, final rankings depend largely on each state’s enactment of prudent and well-supported laws.  Such laws fence in the abortion license granted by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade.  Among the laws AUL looks for are informed consent, parental involvement for minors, medically-supported regulation of abortion providers, and limitations on the use of taxpayer dollars for abortion.

“We are making progress — state by state and law by law — to build a culture of life in America,” said Denise Burke, AUL’s Vice President of Legal Affairs.  “In states that have passed common-sense limitations on abortion, abortion rates have declined by nearly 20% over the past 10 years.  These laws also underscore the growing and irrefutable evidence of the negative impact of abortion on women.”

The complete state rankings are available at http://dl.aul.org/your-state and will be featured in the soon-to-be-released Defending Life 2009.

About Defending Life 2009
AUL’s annual publication, Defending Life 2009: Proven Strategies for a Pro-Life America, is the definitive legal guide to abortion, bioethics, healthcare freedom of conscience, and the end of life.  Cutting through the murky cloud of media chatter and controversy, Defending Life provides comprehensive, timely, and thought-provoking information to anyone who wants to understand key pro-life issues and utilize proven strategies to address them.

America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts — a child — as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically-dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.

– Mother Teresa

AUL Vice President & Legal Director Denise Burke has a column in today’s Human Events: “The Demise of the ‘Sisterhood of Single-Issue Feminists.’”

If you listened very carefully to Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s dynamic speech to the Republican Convention last Wednesday night, you could plainly hear the death cry of single-issue feminism. The nomination of Governor Palin, a pro-life feminist, for Vice President of the United States has put the final nail in the coffin of an increasingly discredited and narrow-minded worldview that believes that women cannot thrive in a world without unrestricted abortion-on-demand. Equally importantly, her historic candidacy promises to transform the tone and complexion of American feminism.

Read the entire article at Human Events’ website.

As someone who has given her professional life to pro-life public policy, I am always mindful of the ability of one person to make an important difference in the fight to defend, protect, and honor all human life.  But, every so often, a story of one person’s life is so powerful that it touches me deeply and reinvigorates me for the important battles ahead.  Such is the story of Agata Mroz.

Agata was a member of the Polish national volleyball team, a team that won the European championships in 2003 and 2005.  Given their successes, one can readily imagine that Agata and her teammates were dreaming of Olympic glory in Beijing.  But, that was not to be for Agata.

Agata was pregnant with her first child when doctors discovered that she had leukemia.  Agata and her husband decided to delay a bone-marrow transplant until after the birth of their daughter, Liliana, on April 4, 2008.  Sadly, Agata died just two months later, on June 4, 2008, but her love for her child and her brave defense of life will not soon be forgotten.

Auxiliary Bishop Marian Florczyk of Kielce, Poland said that Agata’s testimony is an example of “love of life, motherhood, the desire to give life, the heroic love of an unborn child.”  And, just a few hours after her death, Polish President Lech Kaczynski announced that Agata would be awarded the Polonia Restituta, one of Poland’s highest awards for extraordinary and distinguished service.

Agata’s heroic sacrifice should motivate all of us to continue to speak, with our words and with our actions, in defense of all human life.  That will be her greatest legacy.

Spain’s parliament recently passed a nonbinding resolution granting apes legal rights.  The New York Times discussed the trend toward granting animals human-like rights at length here and here.

According to columnist Adam Cohen, “[s]trip away the goofier rhetoric of the ape-rights activists, and their claim is straightforward. Great apes are biologically very close to humans; chimps and humans share about 98 percent of their DNA. Apes have complex communication skills and close emotional bonds. They experience loneliness and sorrow. They deserve some respect.”  He also argues that giving apes the right to humane treatment will make it “harder to deny that same right to their human cousins.”

The trend toward granting animals “human” rights, which some have extended even to granting plants rights, is dangerous, particularly because it results not in the elevation of animals but in the devaluation of humanity.  The devaluation of humanity to an animal level puts all living creatures at risk because animals are not moral beings.  Defending human life at all stages, from the embryo to natural death, will be harder if humans are not viewed as exceptional.

In a column in the Weekly Standard, Wesley J. Smith discusses the importance of maintaining not only a distinction among species but the truth of human exceptionalism.

Even absent a theistic view of humanity, that God created people in His image and that humans have intrinsic worth from conception to death, arguments can be made for human exceptionalism (for more, visit Smith’s blog)

• Humans are the only moral, intellectual, and creative beings.  These intrinsic characteristics make humans markedly different, despite any common DNA, from animals.
• If human exceptionalism is denied, there is no longer a universal human moral equality.  Without the notion that humans are universally equal, there can be no universal human rights.
• Being human is not just about having rights but owing duties and obligations to other creatures, both human and animals.  Humans are the only beings that owe duties and rights to others.  If granted rights, animals would not owe rights to humans or to other animals.  The mere existence of having an obligation toward other creatures makes humans exceptional.
• Only humans are having this discussion, or are capable of having this discussion.
• Being human is what gives people the obligation to treat animals humanely.  If being human does not give us this obligation, nothing would.  The lion does not treat the gazelle “humanely,” and the zebra doesn’t care if it does or doesn’t, because they are not moral agents.

Granting animals “human” rights devalues humans and creates an equivalency among humans and animals that results in no moral standards, and thus no obligation of humane treatment, rather than more humane treatment of animals.  Smith says that “[t]hese and other concerted efforts to knock ourselves off the pedestal of exceptionalism are terribly misguided. The way we act is based substantially on what kind of being we perceive ourselves to be. Thus, if we truly want to make this a better and more humane world, the answer is not to think of ourselves as inhabiting the same moral plane as animals–none of which can even begin to comprehend rights. Rather, it is to embrace the unique importance of being human.”