"NRLC" redirects here. For other uses, see Northwest Regional Learning Center.
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) is the oldest and largest national pro-life organization in the United States with affiliates in all 50 states and more than 3,000 local chapters nationwide.[N 1] The organization, through legislative and educational activity, works against induced abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia and assisted suicide.
In 1966 the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) asked (then Rev.) James T. McHugh to begin observing trends in the reform of policy on abortion. The National Right to Life Committee was founded in 1967 as the "Right to Life League" to coordinate its state campaigns under the auspices of the NCCB. To appeal to a more broad-based, nonsectarian movement, crucial Minnesotan leaders proposed an organizational constitution that would separate the NRLC from the direct supervision of the NCCB, and by early 1973 NRLC Director (then Rev.) James T. McHugh and his executive assistant, Michael Taylor, proposed a different plan to move the NRLC toward independence from the Catholic Church.
National Right to Life Victory Fund, an independent expenditure political action committee, i. e., a "SuperPAC".
In 1966 the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) asked (then Rev.) James T. McHugh to begin observing trends in the reform of policy on abortion. At the time then Fr. McHugh was Director of the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) Family Life Bureau, and later became the Bishop of Camden and then of Rockville Centre. The NCCB asked Fr. McHugh during its annual conference in April 1967 to organize the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and fund the established NRLC with $50,000 to "initiate and coordinate a program of information" with state affiliates that would inform stakeholders of the wave of proposed state legislation to liberalize statutes prohibiting abortion.
The National Right to Life Committee was formalized in 1968, the same year that [[Pope Paul VI]|Pope Saint Paul VI] issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae that reaffirmed the Catholic doctrine that contraception is immoral.
NRLC held a meeting of nationwide pro-life leaders in Chicago, Illinois in 1970 at Barat College. New Jersey attorney Juan Ryan served as the first President of NRLC. In the following year NRLC held its first convention at Macalestar College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. From 1968 to 1971, the organization published a newsletter that informed member organizations of state legislation on abortion.
"The only reason that we have a pro-life movement in this country is because of the Catholic people and the Catholic Church", stated the Executive Director of NRLC in 1973.
The NRLC was formally incorporated in May 1973, partially in response to the Roe v. Wade ruling of the US Supreme Court. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops launched a campaign to amend the United States Constitution by enacting a Human Life Amendment that not only invalidated Roe v. Wade but also prohibited both the US Congress and the States from legalizing 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 founding members was Mildred Jefferson, the first African-American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Jefferson subsequently served as President. Conventions have been held in various cities in the United States every summer since the first convention.
After incorporation, NRLC began publishing National Right to Life News, which has been continually published since November 1973, and is presently published daily online as the news and commentary feed National Right to Life News Today.
On April 1, 1979, the American Life League (ALL) was founded by Judie Brown and 9 others after a schism within the NRLC. Within less than a year of its foundation, ALL had 68,000 members and received assistance from Howard Phillips, publicity from Paul Weyrich, a co-founder of Heritage Foundation, and the benefits of extensive lists of membership provided by the direct mail specialist Richard Viguerie.
In 1980 NRLC had an annual budget of $1,600,000 and a membership of 11 million.
In 1984 the Committee co-produced the documentary The Silent Scream on abortion with Bernard Nathanson. In 1985, following 2 years of a boycott of a product of the Upjohn Company that NRLC coordinated, the Company ceased all research on abortifacient drugs. Three years later, NRLC joined other pro-life organizations in notifying drug companies that if any company sold an abortifacient drug the millions of Americans who opposed abortion would boycott all the products of that company.
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 permitting its abortion drug, mifepristone, into the United States. The U.S. National Right to Life Committee announced a 1994 U.S. boycott of all Hoechst pharmaceutical products including Altace, targeting the abortion pill RU-486.
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 at a meeting of herself, Charles T. Canady, and NRLC lobbyist Douglas Johnson.
In 1997, Concerned Women for America participated in the NRLC's press briefing at the National Press Club in support of the boycott against the U.S. subsidiaries of Hoechst AG & Roussel Uclaf, the developer and manufacturer of the abortion pill mifepristone, whose new drug was Allegra. The NRLC boycott specified the following branded pharmaceutcial products of Hoechst Marion Roussel of Kansas City, Missouri, except for Altace: Allegra, Cardizem, Seldane, Claforan, Lasix, DiaBeta, and Nicoderm. King Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Monarch Pharmaceuticals, Inc., both of which were headquartered in Bristol, Tennessee, acquired ownership of the distribution and marketing rights in the United States for Altace and other Hoescht products from the subsidiary of Hoescht AG, Hoechst Marion Roussel of Kansas City, Missouri on December 18, 1998, and maintained a working business partnership with Hoechst Marion Roussel to market and sell Altace and other Monarch Pharmaceuticals branded prescription drugs in the United States.
The NRLC joined disability rights advocates in 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 US senators and representatives to resolve differences and immediately enact "Terri's Law", which would have permitted Floridian Governor Jeb Bush to intervene in the matter.
The NRLC is a federation of state pro-life organizations. It has 50 state affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters nationwide. State affiliates operate independently and cooperatively with NRLC, whose Board is representative by having a director from each state affiliate and also eight members who are elected at-large.
Its Virginia affiliate, the Virginia Society for Human Life, was founded in 1967 as the first state right to life organization. Other early affiliates included New York State Right to Life in late 1967, Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life in 1968, Florida Right to Life in 1971, Georgia Right to Life in 1971, Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Human Life of Washington in 1971, and Montana Right to Life in 1972. Other state organizations were rapidly organized or became formally incorporated entities in the months immediately following the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton rulings that purported to nationally legalize abortion, including Illinois Federation for Right to Life, North Carolina Right to Life, Arizona Right to Life, and Texas Right to Life.
In 2007, Colorado Citizens for Life successfully challenged Colorado Right to Life's affiliation and representation to the NRLC Board, after Colorado Right to Life ran a full-page ad in The Gazette criticizing the founder of Focus on the Family, James Dobson and co-signed a series of open letters to Dr. James Dobson exposing that the Gonzales v Carhart U.S. Supreme Court ruling on partial-birth abortion (PBA) is not even a hollow victory for anti-abortionists.
^ The oldest state pro-life organization in the US is Virginia Society for Human Life which was founded in 1967.
• Nation's Oldest Right to Life Organization Supporting Thompson Standard News Wire.com, December 20. Retrieved: September 9, 2013.
• Fred Thompson Receives the Endorsement of Virginia Society for Human Life Presidency Project UCSB.EDU, December 20, 2007. Retrieved: September 9, 2013.
^ a b http://www.christianlifeandliberty.net/RTL.bmp K.M. Cassidy. "Right to Life." In Dictionary of Christianity in America, Coordinating Editor, Daniel G. Reid. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1990. pp. 1017,1018.
^ "National Right to Life Convention kicks off in Jacksonville". Florida Independent. Archived from the original on July 9, 2012. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
^ http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DA-SORT&inPS=true&prodId=GPS&userGroupName=tel_s_tsla&tabID=T002&searchId=R3&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=10&contentSet=GALE%7CA262387307&&docId=GALE%7CA262387307&docType=GALE&role=ITOF&docLevel=FULLTEXT "The national right to life committee: its founding, its history, and the emergence of the pro-life movement prior to Roe v. Wade". Robert N. Karrer. The Catholic Historical Review. 97.3 (July 2011): p. 527. From General OneFile.
^ "God's Own Party: The Making of the Religious Right", pp. 113–116. ISBN 978-0-19-534084-6. Daniel K. Williams. Oxford University Press. 2010.
^ a b http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DA-SORT&inPS=true&prodId=GPS&userGroupName=tel_s_tsla&tabID=T002&searchId=R3&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=10&contentSet=GALE%7CA262387307&&docId=GALE%7CA262387307&docType=GALE&role=ITOF&docLevel=FULLTEXT "The national right to life committee: its founding, its history, and the emergence of the pro-life movement prior to Roe v. Wade". Robert N. Karrier. The Catholic Historical Review. 97.3 (July 2011): p527. From General OneFile.
^ "The National Right to Life Committee: its founding, its history, and the emergence of the pro-life movement prior to Roe v. Wade". Cathol Hist Rev. 97 (3): 527–57. 2011. doi:10.1353/cat.2011.0098. PMID 22069796.
^ http://www.christianlifeandliberty.net/RTL.bmp K.M. Cassidy. "Right to Life." In Dictionary of Christianity in America, Coordinating Editor, Daniel G. Reid. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1990. Pp. 1017-8.
^ "God's Own Party: The Making of the Religious Right", p. 116. ISBN 978-0-19-534084-6. Daniel K. Williams. Oxford University Press. 2010.
^ Staggenborg, Suzanne (1994). The Pro-Choice Movement: Organization and Activism in the Abortion Conflict. Oxford University Press US. p. 188. ISBN 0-19-508925-1.
^ Greenhouse, Linda (2010). Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate before the Supreme Court's Ruling. Kaplan Publishing. ISBN 1-60714-671-1. Archived from the original on January 14, 2013.
^ https://books.google.com/books?id=B9nFwo5B1BQC&lpg=PA170&ots=oFavSHR8Mu&dq=%22National%20Right%20to%20Life%20Committee%22%20%22National%20Conference%20of%20Catholic%20Bishops%22&pg=PA170#v=onepage&q=%22National%20Right%20to%20Life%20Committee%22%20%22National%20Conference%20of%20Catholic%20Bishops%22&f=false The Catholic Voter in American Politics: The Passing of the Democratic Monolith. Pp. 169-170. William B. Prendergast.
^ Hevesi, Dennis (October 18, 2010). "Mildred Jefferson, 84, Anti-Abortion Activist, Is Dead - Obituary (Obit)". NYTimes.com. Archived from the original on June 12, 2014. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
^ "Founded". Archived from the original on March 30, 2014. Retrieved March 30, 2014.
^ http://www.clmagazine.org/article/index/id/MTM1NDE Archived May 2, 2014, at the Wayback Machine A saintly influence: Pope John Paul II's impact on American Life League—and me. Judie Brown. Celebrate Life Magazine.
^ Smith, Peter (May 6, 2013). "Catholics Bid Farewell to Pro-Life Lion Howard Phillips". National Catholic Register. Archived from the original on May 2, 2014. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
^ "Right Wing Watch - American Life League". People for the American Way. Wayback Machine. April 2006. Archived from the original on June 12, 2008. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
^ Alesha E. Doan (2007). Opposition and Intimidation: The Abortion Wars and Strategies of Political Harassment. University of Michigan. p. 90.
^ "Abortion Drug Draws Boycott - ''New York Times''". New York Times. July 8, 1994. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
^ http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/RUBOYCOT.TXT Archived September 24, 2015, at the Wayback Machine Now's the Time to Defend Our Borders - A Pro-Life Boycott Could Keep RU 486 out of the U.S.
^ Gorney, Cynthia. Gambling With Abortion Archived January 6, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Harper's Magazine, November 2004.
^ https://web.archive.org/web/20030630050537/http://www.cwfa.org/articles/1317/CWA/life/index.htm Concerned Women for America. Boycott of New Drug 'Allegra' Aimed at Protecting Women & Children from Dangers of RU-486. Retrieved from the Internet Archive.
^ https://web.archive.org/web/20010425235800/http://custservices.com/news.asp?up=8 News Update- Monarch Pharmaceuticals Acquired, April 25, 2001. Hoechst Marion Roussel. Retrieved at Internet Archive.
^ "URGENT ACTION ALERT: National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) :: Terri Schiavo's Life Counts". Hyscience. March 19, 2005. Archived from the original on May 19, 2012. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
^ "Colorado RTL open letter to Dr. James Dobson". Coloradorighttolife.org. Archived from the original on September 18, 2010. Retrieved June 25, 2012.
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. 527–57, in Project MUSE.