Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN - Abortion is a Civil Rights Issue for the Unborn
April 8, 2008
By Marilyn Loeffel, Commercial Appeal, Memphis,
TN
On Friday, the 40th anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., all eyes were on the Lorraine Motel and visiting VIPs Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
While few were watching, a high-powered Jewish lawyer from New York slipped into our city. He convened with a select group of clients to examine the testimonies of victims, and to share observations from his past arguments before federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a man steeped in the legacy of civil rights. His grandfather emigrated from Russia. A monument in New York is dedicated to his family, 187 members of which were murdered in Auschwitz.
Mercifully, Adolf Hitler didn't exterminate that family, or the Jewish race. A descendant, Jay Sekulow, is alive, as are his two sons.
Sekulow is chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice. He was in Memphis to speak for Life Choices, a crisis pregnancy center. I serve on their advisory board. Life Choices is one of the proud answers we pro-lifers give when pro-choicers ask, "What are you going to do about all the unwanted pregnancies and unwanted babies?" We say: Let us help. Let us show you the truth about abortion and the alternatives. Let us help you choose life for your child. Let us help you decide if you should raise the child or assist in selecting adoptive parents. Let us, nonjudgmentally, give you the full facts that you need to make an informed decision.
Jay Sekulow noted that the most significant impact on the abortion movement comes from crisis pregnancy centers, like Life Choices, that are now becoming medical centers with ultrasound equipment and trained personnel on site. When a woman sees that beating heart, sees that baby suck its thumb in utero, sees it wave back at its mama, the mother will choose life.
Sekulow mused to me privately after the event that he thought it interesting that we would be commemorating Dr. King's death on the night of his visit. He said Dr. King was pro-life and consistently stood against the devaluing of human life. Sekulow said King was concerned about the genocide of his race due to the focus on abortions in the African-American community.
This facet of the 1960s civil rights movement was corroborated to me years ago by my former colleague on the Shelby County Commission, Walter Bailey, an attorney who is a proud veteran of Dr. King's activism.
"Abortion is a civil rights issue, civil rights for the most defenseless, the unborn," Sekulow said. He is well-known among the Christian community for his defense of the liberties that Christians once enjoyed and that have been snatched from us. As he puts it: "This is the fight for the survival of our culture as we know it."
Sekulow and many others believe that our fight has passed the age of demonstrations, protests and boycotts, and moved to the battleground of the federal court system. Sekulow's arena is the courtroom and he notes that in many cases the judge is no longer the umpire, enforcing the rules and calling the plays as he sees them, but has become the coach, telling the liberal lawyers how to win their cases.
He spoke to me with excitement about the "Ten Commandments" case he will argue later this year before the Supreme Court, a case way beyond another fight over religious displays, one Sekulow called the "biggest case in 50 years." In Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, Sekulow will be defending officials of a Utah town where a city park contains a display of the Ten Commandments that was donated to the city in 1971. Adherents of a religious philosophy known as Summum are seeking to erect another monument in the same park in honor of Summum's "Seven Aphorisms."
Sekulow calls this case the "last gasp" of the left, in which those who oppose civil rights for Christians demand equal access, so to speak. If someone donates a monument to a municipality, the liberals want to erect one that evokes the opposite point of view. Sekulow says this is the only thing left for the liberals to do -- force government to counter the perceived influence of a monument, thus confusing the key distinction between private speech and government speech. Does the existence of the Statue of Liberty mean that we must accept a monument of equal size that will stand in New York Harbor to memorialize suppression? If the local VFW wants to put up a plaque, must we put up an anti-war plaque to balance it?
I agree with Sekulow's observations about Dr. King and the civil rights of the unborn. If only those ultrasound pictures could show fetuses holding tiny signs that read "I AM A CHILD."
Marilyn Loeffel's column appears every other Tuesday.