National Right to Life Committee

National Right to Life Committee
Formation	1968
Headquarters	Washington, DC
President	Carol Tobias
Website	www.nrlc.org

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.

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

Founder and former president Dr. Mildred Jefferson

The National Right to Life Committee was formed in 1968 to coordinate information and strategy between emerging state pro-life 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 president 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.

Ron Paul at the 2007 National Right to Life Committee Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, 2007.

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.

Affiliates

Mary Boyert, past president of Georgia Right to Life

Its Virginia 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.

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-life
• Susan B. Anthony List
• Right to life
• National Pro-Life Religious Council
• Eclipse of Reason

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
• ProlifeProfiles.com/NRLC, criticism from within the pro-life movement