Texas Now Pondering Pro-Life License Plate
by Rusty Pugh
(AgapePress) – A recent petition drive has shown strong support for a pro-life specialty license plate in the Lone Star State.
Similar to plates in Florida and Louisiana, the State of Texas is considering a bill to create a license plate that bears the message “Choose Life.” Greater Austin Right to Life director Joe Pojman says an online petition drive has yielded overwhelming support for the plate. As a result, Pojman says the bill is moving through the legislature and has a good chance of being passed.
Pojman says the plate simply promotes a positive message. “Everyone knows that the choice of abortion exists, and we're learning now that the choice … exists throughout all nine months of pregnancy,” he says. “We wanted to have a positive message for people to see, and that's why we wanted a license plate to simply have the words 'Choose Life.' In other states that have these license plates, it's a tremendous seller.”
Proceeds from sales of the plates would go toward helping couples adopt a child, a process which Pojman says costs from $18,000 to $30,000. “[That] cost takes [adoption] out of the possibility for many very worthy parents,” he says.
by Fred Jackson and Rusty Pugh
(AgapePress) – “We're ecstatic!” That is how one pro-life group is reacting to news that retail giant Target is going to stop giving money to Planned Parenthood.
For the past ten years, Target has been the focus of a boycott by pro-life groups who objected to the company's contributions to the pro-abortion Planned Parenthood. The Minneapolis Star Tribune quotes a statement from the Target Corporation foundation which says the decision to stop that funding has nothing to do with the boycott, but rather is the result of a “reshuffling of priorities.”
Brian Gibson, executive director of Pro-Life Action Ministries, says he does not care what reasons Target gives. He says the outcome his organization sought when the boycott began has taken place.
The Star Tribune notes that in 1990, the Target Corporation — known then as Dayton Hudson Corporation — cut off its funding of Planned Parenthood in an effort to distance itself from abortion controversies. But the company reversed that decision after protests from pro-abortion forces. That is when pro-life groups announced their boycott. Gibson says that campaign was stepped up last year with more information packets and rallies aimed at drawing attention to the Target-Planned Parenthood relationship.
Elsewhere in the pro-life debate, an effort to let voters in 2006 define abortion in Tennessee has passed its first hurdle. If the proposed language navigates through two successive general assemblies, Tennessee citizens could vote to include the following assertion in the state constitution: “There is no fundamental right to an abortion in this state.”
The constitutional amendment is being pushed by State Senator David Fowler in response to a September ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court that struck down pro-life legislation on abortion. Pro-life advocates criticized the decision because it misinterpreted the “right to privacy” clause in the state constitution to allow for an unlimited “right” to abortion.
However, the language that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in a 5-4 vote last week was not what Fowler proposed. Fowler preferred to say that any right to an abortion in Tennessee shall only be that protected under the U.S. Constitution. Knowing that the U.S. Constitution has no right to abortion, and therefore there would be no right to abortion in Tennessee, Senator Jim Kyle of Memphis proposed the new language, but voted against the resolution. Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life, said Kyle's language is clearly an attempt to weaken the resolution's chances at the polls.
(This update courtesy of Agape Press.)
