Throwback: Rally for Life 1990

Thirty years ago on April 28, 1990, an estimated 700,000 pro-lifers gathered in Washington, D.C. for the Rally for Life.

Americans traveled by plane, car, and chartered buses for the event—including four busloads of Arkansans.

All told, about 300 people from Arkansas attended the rally in Washington.

The rally at the Capitol Mall featured several guest speaker — including President George H. W. Bush, who addressed the crowd via telephone. In his remarks, President Bush called abortion on demand “a tragedy.”

Dr. John Willke, President of the National Right to Life Committee, talked about a proposal to permanently ban the use of body parts from aborted babies in transplants. Failure to do so, he said “would create a huge demand for ‘spare parts’” from unborn children.

Dr. Willke passed away in 2015, just months before undercover videos showed Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of organs and tissue harvested from the bodies of aborted babies.

Jacki Ragan with National Right to Life in Washington, D.C. played a key role in the event.

“I was in charge of the Rally for Life in 1990,” she said. “In 1989, Congressman Henry Hyde came to our office the week following a fairly large pro-abortion march in Washington, D.C.” Congressman Hyde told Dr. Willke that pro-lifers had to have a rally of their own. That’s how the 1990 Rally for Life came about.  

Jacki said Right to Life spent a year working with volunteers and churches to promote the event.

In many ways, the 1990 Rally for Life represented a milestone in the modern pro-life movement.

At a time when the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress, and state legislatures generally had not handed America any pro-life victories, pro-lifers still turned out by the hundreds of thousands to defend the unborn.

That’s something worth remembering.

Coronavirus Pandemic Continues to Shine a Light on Evil

The following blog post is by Family Council’s Director of Governmental Affairs Ken Yang.

Throughout the last few weeks Little Rock Family Planning Services, the surgical abortion clinic in Arkansas, has continually attempted to defy the health directives set forth by the Arkansas Department of Health and the Governor. Arkansas Attorney General and her staff have successfully defended the health directives in court and won at the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, a new directive goes into effect today (April 27th) to allow elective procedures to occur in Arkansas. This of course comes with certain guidelines to protect the well-being of health care providers and patients around the state. One of the guidelines is that any patient that is a candidate for a procedure has to have at least one negative COVID-19 test within 48 hours prior to the beginning of the procedure. Seems reasonable right?

Not to the ACLU and the surgical abortion clinic.  Protecting the health and safety of their patients and staff has taken a backseat. They believe testing patients for COVID-19 will prevent them from performing abortions. Once again they believe they should operate above the directives set forth for all clinics in the State of Arkansas. On Friday, the ACLU issued one of the most horrendous statements one can imagine about the new directives.

“Arkansas is the only state in the nation that is barring a pregnant person from getting an abortion even if their time to do so is about to expire. Forcing people to stay pregnant and have a child against their will is always unconscionable and unconstitutional. But doing so now, when people are already struggling just to keep their families safe and to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads – is just unimaginable.”

This statement makes my stomach turn. Can you imagine if your child told someone that mom was “forced” to keep me? My family struggled, my parents at times could only put food on the table enough for their children and not for themselves too. But never did I feel like my life was a regretful decision to them. The main basis of the pro-abortion movement is based on “choice,” but now that taking the life of an unborn child is being inconvenienced, it is no longer a “choice” but a necessity. So which one is it? To me what is truly unconscionable is that any human being or organization would insinuate that you should abort your child because it is inconvenient to your lifestyle. The true colors are once again shown to the public that the abortion industry and the ACLU do not care about women’s “choice,” but only about how convenient they can offer abortion to women. Well, at least in their statement they call the human life a “child.”