Pro-Life Pris Feels Prodded...

Am I pro-life? Of course I am. I'm not anti-choice. I think the reasons why any woman would make a choice that's not pro-life have to be too horrible to be discussed here. But with all this current legislative activity going on, that some e-friends continue to focus on an issue that was basically decided forty years ago does annoy me. Just a little.

Also annoying is the way State Senator Carrico, otherwise a pretty good legislator I'm proud to say, listened to the road hogs last year and seems to have listened to them again this year.

So these two annoyances came together as I looked for guidance to the most urgent bills in today's e-mail, and this is the e-mail I sent to Mathew Staver's group and to Senator Carrico. I've removed some front-and-end matter, but left the text of the Liberty Counsel e-mail intact, in case anybody out there has time and energy to support what they're doing as well as what this web site's doing:

"Dear Mathew and Friends,
The abortion debate has been generating more heat than light for as long as I've been able to read. It's unwinnable. I was tired of it fifteen years ago, when I helped friends triangulate a solution that we hoped new medical discoveries would make feasible. Now I'm merely sad that second-trimester fetuses aren't as viable as we hoped.

But recent developments in the Virginia legislature have turned my attention to a whole new way of being pro-life. This way of saving lives doesn't depend on an unwinnable debate about whether people want to count fetuses as having lives of their own. I'm concerned about the lives of people who are moving around, commuting to jobs, paying taxes...who are being killed by the thousands every year, while so-called pro-lifers say nothing.

Specifically, about the victims of automobile "accidents."

This class of endangered lives is a hot potato nobody wants to touch because, let's face it, most of us like to drive; most of us are competent drivers, most of the time; and far too many of us have killed or injured, or will kill or injure, someone "by accident." As my drivers' training teacher used to say, there are very few real accidents. Most crashes are caused by someone's not having taken appropriate action while or before driving. Nevertheless, the odds against people's being able to take all the appropriate action, every time they drive, throughout their driving lives, are astronomical. We are human. We rush out to work at the last minute. We blink. We sneeze.

Why am I repeating this depressing fact? We can't do anything about being human, but we can do something about the number of lives that are lost to automobile "accidents" each year.

Specifically, as individuals, we can choose safer means of transportation. Slower, less expensive transportation devices save lives whenever we choose to use them. Plenty of "accidents" involve bicycles, mopeds, scooters, Segways, and four-wheeled small-motor golf-cart-type vehicles, but very few of these accidents are fatal; very few are even serious; and very few injure anyone but the operator of the vehicle.

You probably think that this is a personal choice that people make based on things like the weather, the distance they have to travel, and the condition of any lower-impact vehicles they happen to own. Until this week, I thought so too.

This week, my State Senator backed a vile bill intended to keep all but the deadliest motor vehicles off interstate highways.

To "see" how vile this is, you need to know that there are just two real roads in and out of my home town: a two-lane state "highway" with NO paved berm or shoulder, and a four-lane interstate highway with a paved berm and smooth gravel shoulder. Try walking or driving a pro-life vehicle on both, and I guarantee you'll agree that the berm on Route 23 is where you feel much safer than when you're right out in traffic, or picking your way through the shrubbery, on Route 58.

Plus, if you're commuting from my town, Gate City, Virginia, into Kingsport, Tennessee, which is approximately a ten-mile trip and I walk it fairly often--the only way to do that without using a four-lane interstate highway is to detour--thirty miles from Gate City to Bristol, then almost thirty miles back to Kingsport.

[Please see my CORRECTION: http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2013/02/correction-highway-system-more.html]

Basically, the effect of anti-alternative-vehicle legislation would be to ensure that nobody in my home town could rely on a pro-life means of transportation to and from a regular job, unless of course they were lucky enough to be employed in Gate City, in which case they could walk to and from work anyway.

For a few weeks, about twenty years ago, I lived in Gate City and commuted to work in a conventional 3500-pound car. I loathed that car; I drove it because it was the cheapest conventional vehicle I could get--and I still couldn't afford it, working three days a week. The last time I drove it, one of those preventable "accidents," a flat tire I was too inexperienced and ignorant to deal with, caused me to veer out in front of another car heading the opposite direction. A little girl was in that car. She might have been five or six--old enough to be terrified as her Daddy wrestled their car out of my way. I can see her face yet.

I've not owned a car since then. When asked why I walk in weather like we had today, I tell people the most obvious reason is that I don't own a car. Why don't I own a car? One of the reasons is that little girl.

Some people aren't as lucky as I was when I had my "accident." After being swerved around by the little girl's Daddy, I proceeded down a ramp, rolled across a lane, landed in a ditch, and was able to crank down the window and vault out of the car. Nobody was hurt. I know a lot of people whose last "accident" with a lethal-sized motor vehicle has left them unable to walk. These people, and others with disabilities that make it hard for them to walk ten miles, are the market for the mopeds, scooters, and other smaller, slower, safer vehicles.

I'm not saying that State Senator Bill Carrico hates people with disabilities, or people from Gate City, or any other class of people. Actually he seems to be a decent guy who generally represents our part of Virginia well. I'm saying that he's listening to the wrong sector of his constituents--he did listen to me, last year, when the road hogs in our part of the state were trying to ban walking on Route 23. He needs to hear from more people who are seriously PRO-LIFE.

So...as activists, I propose that we start thinking of pedestrian and alternative-vehicle access, and safety, on all America's highways and byways, as a Pro-Life Issue. I think it will be much more successful than this endless bickering about abortion.

Still opposed to abortion? Well, aren't we all. I feel too sorry for the women who "choose" abortion to want to say much to them, except for "There are people who would give that child a loving home."

But we all can make pro-life choices on behalf of healthy children and active citizens.

Priscilla King

--- On Thu, 1/31/13, Liberty Counsel wrote:

Subject: Christianity on trial in America: We're fighting back!

Liberty Counsel

Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman

Priscilla,

Who would have ever thought that in America it would be illegal to counsel people who want to change from a dangerous, ungodly lifestyle to a healthy and righteous one?

Or, that it would be legal to…

force Christians to pay for killing another human being, or

force Christians to act against their Freedom of Conscience, or

force Christians to call good evil and evil good?

Yet, all of these wildly improbable propositions are at the heart of cases Liberty Counsel’s legal team has been battling in January, along with many others.

++The new California “change therapy” law is a total outrage.

At the onset of 2013, Liberty Counsel filed its opening brief at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against the California ban on change therapy (SB 1172), which would ban any counseling to minors seeking to diminish or eliminate unwanted same-sex sexual attractions, behavior, or identity.

Under the new law, Christian counselors are by force of law prohibited from counseling against the homosexual lifestyle – even if the client sought help to break free!

Thankfully, in late December, the Ninth Circuit granted Liberty Counsel's Emergency Motion to temporarily block the law from going into effect on January 1, 2013, as previously scheduled.

Please continue to pray that the Lord moves on the hearts of the judges in this case, and this Orwellian “thought police” law is struck down and never implemented.

++Liberty Counsel continues its vigorous defense of natural marriage.

This month, Liberty Counsel filed two extensive amicus briefs with the United States Supreme Court on a pair of enormously significant marriage cases – the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8, the well-known state marriage amendment.

Liberty Counsel has been deeply involved in legal advocacy on both of these crucial cases for many years now. The High Court will decide both cases by the end of the term in June 2013.

++We will not allow pro-homosexual activists to destroy the sanctity of marriage in America!

Priscilla, we are at a pivotal point in our nation’s history. Nothing will define the future of America more than the Court’s upcoming decisions on marriage.

It is no exaggeration to say that America’s very existence is at stake. Marriage is not simply an artifact of law needed to regulate government benefits and determine domestic rights and duties.

Rather, it is an institution ordained of God to nurture mankind and rightly order procreation through the generations. The natural family is fundamental to our very existence!

That’s why our intense legal advocacy for natural marriage is so important and why Liberty Counsel will never stop fighting for this vital institution!

++We aggressively fight against any attempt to squash the right to publically share the Gospel!

. Last September, Doru Neamtu was peacefully passing out Christian tracts in front of the post office in Tempe, Arizona, when a police officer accused him of "Aggressive Solicitation." His constitutional rights were further violated when the police officer arrested him on a bogus “Failure to Provide Identification” charge.

After Liberty Counsel intervened, this month the Tempe City Court dismissed the outrageous charges against evangelist Neamtu.

We defended Doru, the son of a Romanian pastor who was also jailed for sharing the gospel in their native land. Who could have imagined that what happened to the father in Communist Romania could also happen to the son here in “the land of liberty”?

Yet, that is what it has come to in an America that seems to have forgotten what it is to be a “shining city set upon a hill.” May God help us!

++Christians must now pay to kill others’ unwanted children.

Encouraged by Barack Obamas’ radical advocacy for abortion, Americans have been forced to fund a “Hitler-like killing machine” through the hundreds of millions of federal taxpayer dollars given to Planned Parenthood each year, and now a direct payment-per-month through ObamaCare’s heinous “abortion mandate.”

At a time of exploding government borrowing and debt, as states slash spending to get their own fiscal houses in order, it is outlandish that the federal government would give Planned Parenthood, the largest participant in America’s abortion industry, $542 million last year alone.

Liberty Counsel has been a leading advocate of defunding Planned Parenthood – and we will continue working hard to lawfully stop the public funding of their abortion mills.

++Obamacare and the HHS mandates must not stand!

As I’m sure you know, Liberty Counsel has the most comprehensive lawsuit in the nation to rid the country of the scourge of ObamaCare.

We are in intense preparation for our upcoming appearance before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, and have an excellent chance of getting the President’s healthcare “reform” law declared unconstitutional. Among other crucial aspects of Obamacare, we will be directly confronting provisions that force employers to pay for abortifacients, regardless of the firm’s standards, beliefs, or principles.

Please mark these dates on your prayer calendar: February 27 and May 14-17, 2013. These days may well signal the beginning of the end of ObamaCare as our case heads back to the Fourth Circuit and eventually the United States Supreme Court.

++Liberty Counsel can’t win these cases without your help!

Priscilla, please let me encourage you to make a special month-end gift to help cover the cost of Liberty Counsel’s extensive litigation work.

What I’ve shared with you today is just a small portion of the legal work that we performed in January 2013. The majority of our cases are actually settled out of court – about 95% of the time in most years – but still require my team to do the necessary work to achieve a non-litigated victory for our clients.

Right now, our litigation docket is full of crucially important cases. We need your help now more than ever! Please click here to give a substantial gift to help Liberty Counsel win these battles:

http://www.libertyaction.org/7082/offer.asp

Liberty Counsel is committed to advancing life, liberty and family, and we have certainly been called upon to do that in this first month of 2013. And the fact that this month marks the beginning of the Obama administration’s second term has added a certain urgency to our vital work of defending the Constitution!

Please, give a special gift today and stand with us as we take on the leftist organizations and individuals who want nothing more than to squash our inalienable rights as Americans. Every gift – whether large or small – helps us move forward:

Thank you in advance and may God richly bless you!

Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman

Liberty Counsel

P.S. Again, please mark these dates on your prayer calendar: February 27 and May 14-17, 2013. Those are crucially important dates for our case against ObamaCare and for the future of America!

For information on the multi-faceted work in which the Liberty Counsel family of ministries engages – or to make comments – please visit our new website: www.libertycounsel.com.

Liberty Counsel, with offices in Florida, Virginia and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit litigation, education and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and family. Liberty Counsel . PO Box 540774 . Orlando, FL 32854 .800-671-1776