Georgia Right to Life picks a fight with Karen Handel
Georgia Right to Life issued its endorsements in the Republican race for governor on Thursday – and picked a major fight with former secretary of state Karen Handel, the only woman in the contest.
The anti-abortion group gave five candidates its stamp of approval: state Sen. Jeff Chapman of Brunswick, former congressman Nathan Deal of Gainesville, former state senator Eric Johnson of Savannah, businessman Ray McBerry of McDonough, and state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine.
Republican candidate for governor Karen Handel
But in its press release this afternoon, GRTL placed most of its emphasis on the unendorsed GOP candidate:
“Ms. Handel proclaims herself pro-life; however, she does not meet the 21st century demands of being pro-life.” says Dan Becker, President of GRTL.
“For instance, Handel believes that a child may be aborted based on its manner of conception. When I asked her directly her thoughts on the value of embryos, she answered that she does not believe that an embryonic human is a child.”
Based on Ms. Handel’s own statements, she does not meet the GRTL PAC’s criteria and will not be endorsed in this primary election or the November election, without a change in her positions.
The Handel campaign declared Becker’s statement to be false:
In fact, Karen does believe that an embryonic human is a child. Further, no one ever asked Karen this question, and if they had, they would know this.
GRTL’s real problem with Karen is twofold: First, they disagree with her stance regarding exceptions to an abortion ban in cases of rape and incest.
Secondly, Karen opposes the group’s push to ban invitro fertilization, which has helped so many couples realize their dream of having children. The group has proposed legislation to virtually eliminate invitro.
In a meeting with Karen, the group’s leadership told her directly that fertility treatments are immoral and that their goal is to completely ban the procedure.
Becker, in turn, says that Handel is mischaracterizing his position. The GRTL president says his group has never taken the position that all invitro fertilization is immoral.
But his group has sponsored legislation that would limit the number of embryos produced by fertility clinics to only the number actually implanted in the mother.
It is a restriction opposed by fertility experts, who turned out at the state Capitol in 2009 to block the measure. Handel, too, is against the restrictions, campaign spokesman Dan McLagan said.
From a campaign press release:
“My husband Steve and I tried for nearly ten years to have children. It is the single greatest disappointment in my life, and I can say with certainty that no one in this race cherishes human life more than I do.
“I am saddened that this group would resort to fabricating quotes and distorting my beliefs. I shared very personal information with the group’s leadership, and they are well aware of my true beliefs. I am dismayed and very disappointed by their actions….
“Further, I am absolutely opposed to severely limiting fertility treatments, including invitro fertilization, and am saddened that my opponents appear to.
“Tens of thousands of couples have been able to have children through fertility assistance. Their lives have been blessed by miracle of birth and enriched by the blessings that children uniquely have added to their lives.”
This was the reply from Becker of GRTL on Wednesday afternoon, in a telephone interview:
“Someone’s desperate right to parenthood – because they’re infertile, they’re barren, whatever term you want to use – is an emotionally fraught subject that has our highest sympathy. But it should never be attempted to be addressed where a life is taken in the process.”
The confrontation was not unexpected. The Handel campaign was ready with an endorsement from Adrianne Susong, a former director of Georgia Right to Life.
For instant updates, follow me on Twitter.
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
122 comments Add your comment
John Konop
June 4th, 2010
5:20 pm
THE GRTL ARE AGAINST:
Use of “parthenogenesis” (doubling the genetic complement of an egg without fertilization by sperm) to create new embryonic beings that can be grown in the laboratory and then dissected to provide “embryonic stem cell lines.”
WHICH CAN SAVE PEOPLE OR CURE MAJOR MEDICAL ISSUES:
AND THE GRTL ARE FOR:
Killing fertilized eggs to create a baby.
DO YOU GET THE PROBLEM?
YOU GUYS ARE PRO BS!
FultonRighty
June 4th, 2010
6:44 pm
John Konop: Huh????
Will Jones - Atlanta Jeffersonian Exegesis
June 4th, 2010
7:08 pm
G-d provides LIfe, Medicine and Science, healers and teachers and the miracles of sex, righteous sex, and divine marriage through which to bless individuals, families and nations.
Before modern medical science developed antiseptic, safe means to end conceptions created by Evil; unwanted; or, dangerous, G-d provided abortifacients http://www.ashtreepublishing.com/Book_Childbearing_Year_Herbal_Contraceptives.htm in Nature.
Why for thousands of years have ancient peoples found herbs from the field which properly administered abort fetuses safely, if not because G-d intended it as part of Creation?
Paddy O: “The actual pregnancy should be viewed as a holy benefit from the evil of rape or incest.
A satanic act visited on an innocent victim can produce “a holy benefit?” No wonder the Babylonian cult of male prostitutes King Jehosphat ejected from Jerusalem, which resettled on Vatican Hill in Rome teaming with Etruscan and Latin tyrants and assassins to perfect slave political science to become, as Jefferson said “an engine for enslaving mankind,” having institutionalized pedophilia and its concomitant homosexuality, promotes the anti-G-d lie of “Original Sin.”
Molestation of children, institutionalized “brothelization” of molested girls in Roman Catholic countries, assassination (”the Italian Solution), and myriad techniques now visited on the world, is stark, chilling evidence that Thomas Jefferson is a prophet.
Pay attention Georgia for this is G-d’s Country and we can rise again – Black, White, Jew and Gentile – the blood which built America is here in Georgia but we must recognize The Enemy Within and “deal” with it as divine Providence inspires.
Paddy O
June 4th, 2010
7:29 pm
Will – your logic is off. You seem to concur that a conception is a blessing from g-d, but then seem to contribute the conception from a rape as an act of Satan. Thus, you seem to be conferring on Satan the blessing relegated to the one true G-d. I disagree. If conception occurs, it seems to me that it is g-d’s will, and thus should not be contravened by humanity. The act of abortion is evil. Now, your deeply held anti-papist attitude I can not help. But your argument is against the failures of humans in Catholicism. It can not be against the Church founded by St. Peter. Or are you a pharisee?
Paddy O
June 4th, 2010
7:32 pm
As stated earlier, one of the tenets of Catholicism is free will, and you must come the lord g-d of you own free will. The command of the will of a slave is no accomplishment. You also appear to violate the Commandment against idolatry when you raise Thomas Jefferson to the level of prophet.
Will Jones - Atlanta Jeffersonian Exegesis
June 4th, 2010
11:11 pm
Paddy O – Your ill-formed grammar and foreign manner show ignorance of or hostility toward American Exceptionalism. Do you openly deny you are a Roman Catholic priest, witting agent of the Anti-Christ in America?
There is but one Creator, G-d of the universe, with Whom Our Founders made covenant. As you reject their divine inspiration, and particularly Thomas Jefferson’s historically proven role as Our Prophet (which his extant writings corroborate for any reasonable, sentient person), the Creed’s three mottoes, full and sufficient for any historic, scientific, or theologic consciousness of Social Order, Reason, and the sovereign Individual’s relationship with divine Providence in the United States of America, is also rejected by you as a papist committed to the homosexual priesthood of Babylon’s “Earthy Evil:” The sick, satanic, and misogynistic views you express in keeping with the institution, culture, and false elite Our Founder recognized as “the real Anti-Christ.”
While successful in having run the global slave trade for 2,000 years, committing the Holocaust, and subverting Our Constitution through bribery, corrupt judges, assassination, false war, debasement of our currency and illegal immigration, your Roman masters and its “Fifth Column,” America’s “Enemy Within,” shall never manage to kill G-d Almighty, the Spirit of the American People, as its catechism insanely projected onto the Jews for so many centuries, and will soon, in fact, be “cast into the Pit” by the outraged American People once the truth of the Anti-Christ (”Amalek” to true Jews) is politically, socially, economically, and religiously fully understood.
Come out of Babylon or be accursed.
Death for Treason and May G-d Bless America once more.
Rome out, NOW!
SWGA Politics » Karen Handel Vs Georgia Right To Life
June 5th, 2010
7:32 am
[...] the last couple of days, a war has emerged between former Secretary of State (and current Governor candidate) Karen Handel and Georgia Right [...]
Paddy O
June 5th, 2010
12:19 pm
Will – you are a pontificating BS artist. YOu have violated one of the ten commandments, so the rest of your rant must be considered as manipulation, which you clearly attempted in previous statements. The Catholic Church was founded by whom? And whom did the son of G-d state “I will build my rock on?” Most of the slave trade was run by the British & Dutch – neither of whom was aligned with the Church. Most Germans are Lutheran, and many are Norse oriented, so how does the RC Church get stuck with that holocaust? As stated, those who run amok violating blatantly one of the 10 commandments can not be perceived as having any credibility. If you were molested by a Priest, I am sorry and will pray for you. But do not confuse the shortcomings of humans exercising the RC Church business with the institution itself. My understanding of Jefferson, and most of the founding fathers, is that they would be considered “unitarians” in this day & age. Most would say that unitarians are not typical Christians, as they do not respect the trinity. Also, under my historical knowledge – there is a broad chasm in the space-time continuum between Babylon, it’s destruction, and the rise of Christianity. Does this not fit in your reality of bias and hate?
Paddy O
June 5th, 2010
1:35 pm
You should contemplate that Christians are simply “enhanced jews”; which is why so many scholarly pursuits refer to the “judeo-christian” philosophy.
Paddy O
June 5th, 2010
1:35 pm
However, my understanding of hebrewism is that there is no hell, and no Satan.
Paddy O
June 5th, 2010
1:36 pm
The Catholic Church also considers Christian faiths that have no connection to the apostolic origin of Christianity to lack authenticity – but that is a religious bicker.
T Knight
June 5th, 2010
2:58 pm
Paddy O…. we are closer in thought than you think. I am a woman and a mother. Under no circumstances would I ever give any credibility to GRTL or any other RTL group. They represent an extreme, unrealistic, head in the sand, judgemental, group of so called religious people. In their world, a woman and her body are property. Ray McBerry gets their approval? Please explain how anyone in their right mind can give a pedophile a political endorsement while denying Mrs. Handel an endorsement because she’s had IVF and she’s a “barren woman”.
John Konop
June 6th, 2010
7:51 am
Dan Becker and the GRTL attacking Karen Handel and other woman who have medical issues having kids to win an election demonstrates a new level of NO CLASS!
Dan Becker and the GRTL Platform:
Help create miracle for woman with IVI is murder
Help save a person and or cure a disease with stem-cell research is murder
Force 13 year old girls who are rape victims to have children or charge them with murder
Barnes will have a field day with this issue in the general.
Will Jones - Atlanta Jeffersonian Exegesis
June 6th, 2010
8:44 am
John Konop, a “Republican,” in good-standing in the Roman Anti-Christ’s Gay Old Pervert party, wants Barnes as the Democratic candidate for governor. “Smart” guy…but not a good Georgian.
Come out of Babylon, Georgia, let’s go with DuBose Porter and his Perfect Example of Georgia’s Finest as Lt.Gov, for the WIN!
Paddy O
June 8th, 2010
9:58 am
T Knight – you may be correct. The GRTL should never have given any type of endorsement to McBerry. The evidence of his inappropriate relationship with a student is fairly convincing. You would think he would consider himself unqualified for any publicly elected position. I would vote for Porter – but if Chapman gets the nomination, I will probably vote for him. I just understand GRTL position. If you believe conception is a blessing from the lord g-d, then even if it occurs due to rape or incest, it should not be aborted – why should the future child suffer death? 2 wrongs do not make a right. However, if the mother’s life is medically threatened, then abortion is a reasonable option. But then, the mother should also have a hysterectomy (sp).
The Return of Your Daily News Links (and witty side notes) « Columbus, Georgia: Theresa Style…
June 8th, 2010
12:03 pm
[...] running for governor with the exception of Karen Handel. You can read Jim Galloway’s “Political Insider” column from the AJC and the full press release from the Handel [...]
Is it Just Me… «
July 10th, 2010
2:28 pm
[...] Georgia Right to Life picks a fight with Karen Handel [...]
Say Anything › Blog for Democracy
July 15th, 2010
4:29 pm
[...] she makes clear her support for benefits for domestic partners, and equivocate as she might about her support for abortion rights under certain circumstances, when it comes to social issues, the real Karen Handel is, dare I say it, [...]
Georgia On the Mind | Progressive Fix
July 16th, 2010
3:54 pm
[...] And all the candidates are hard-core conservatives on cultural issues, though Handel got into a fight with Georgia Right-to-Life by opposing its proposal to restrict IV fertilization [...]
Doug Venice
July 22nd, 2010
10:53 pm
Whether GRTL worded their concerns correctly or not, Handel is clearly NOT pro-life. Her own flyers say she makes exceptions for rape, incest, or where the life of the mother is at risk. Once you add that third one, the value of the kid is not completely subjective and there are plenty of doctors willing to claim the mother’s life is at risk if she wants to get rid of the child.
Handel was the ONLY candidate out of the top 4 on Tuesday that claimed pro-life and then added on all those exceptions. Nathan Deal is a much better candidate and has my support.
Palin to Make Georgia Campaign Appearance - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com
July 30th, 2010
6:08 pm
[...] also been endorsed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has seen her anti-abortion bona fides challenged by Georgia Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, during the campaign. Meanwhile, Mr. Deal, who is [...]
Georgia’s worrisome intramural fight over abortion | Kyle Wingfield
August 27th, 2010
7:01 pm
[...] defends its stance as “the 21st-century demands of being pro-life,” a tacit acknowledgment that one exception hasn’t always been the rule. For decades after the [...]