Pamela Sumners is executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri. An attorney, she has served as the Director of Gay and Lesbian Rights/AIDS and Civil Liberties Projects for the ACLU of Illinois. Prior to that, she had a private law practice in Birmingham, Alabama, where she focused on constitutional and employment litigation. Among her many high-profile cases were a challenge to state court Judge Roy Moore's posting of the Ten Commandments behind the judicial bench, a suit challenging Alabama's fourth statute allowing school-sponsored prayer in classrooms, and a suit to protect the religious liberty of the only four Jewish students in a rural school system. Sumners' constitutional law practice has included several Supreme Court cases.
The right wants to allow a boss or a corporation to claim “religious” or “conscience” reasons to roll back equal rights. As a native Alabamian, I am hearing some thundering hooves over some bridges at Selma. Religion and “conscience” and employers’ and property owners’ rights were justifications for discriminating against black people in this country from the founding of the republic until the Civil Rights Act was passed. Now they are coming for you.
Forget blaming Bill O’Reilly for fanning the flames. It is the rhetoric of the militant wing of the anti-choice movement itself that is the unindicted co-conspirator in Dr. Tiller’s assassination.
Are you a woman whose husband beat you upon learning you were pregnant, after suggesting abortion? If so, Missouri is on the verge of deciding that you are incompetent to make the decision about whether to terminate your pregnancy.
NARAL Pro-Choice America’s newest report finds anti-choice groups and their allies are setting the stage in Missouri, with Governor Blunt at the helm, for a calculated attack on Roe v. Wade and reproductive rights. Voters across the nation should be concerned.
