FIC Blog

First we defeated a pro-abortion attack on the religious freedom of Catholic hospitals. Then we defeated the pro-abortionists’ attempt to financially penalize those hospitals. Now those same pro-abortionists are trying to censor pro-life license plates:

A swirling national First Amendment debate hit Connecticut Thursday as the Department of Motor Vehicles said it will stop issuing special “Choose Life” license plates for The Children First Foundation – a New York-based pro-adoption group opposed to abortion – while it investigates, along with the attorney general, whether the foundation qualifies for the plates.
DMV Commissioner Ralph J. Carpenter agreed to reconsider the small foundation’s eligibility for the plates – a status it applied for, and was granted, in 2003 – based on a letter Wednesday from Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and a Democratic state legislator charging that the group has “negligible, if any, `operations’ in Connecticut, much less a base of operations in this state.”

The charge surprised the nonprofit group’s founder and president, Elizabeth Rex of Yonkers, N.Y. She had heard nothing from Blumenthal about such questions – but she quickly produced a series of letters from Connecticut officials who have recognized her group’s efforts in recent years. The letters came from Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Govs. John G. Rowland and M. Jodi Rell, the state’s child advocate – and Blumenthal himself…

All told, about 200 “Choose Life” plates now travel Connecticut highways – with two crayoned kids’ smiling faces on a yellow circle background, with “choose life” in childlike red-crayon lettering – as part of a DMV program that enables groups from the Knights of Columbus to at least one labor union to promote themselves.
The license plate includes the group’s web address: www.fund-adoption.org. People can apply through that website for the special plates, a process that involves annual pledges that Rex said have enabled the organization to distribute about $2,000 a year to groups that promote adoptions and safe havens in Connecticut. She said the fact that her group’s budget is low, and that it works out of its members’ homes, does not justify claims by Blumenthal that its efforts are insignificant…

The questions arose when constituents of Rep. Roberta Willis, D-Salisbury, noticed the Connecticut “Choose Life” plates and contacted her. Willis said she agrees with their concerns that “Choose Life” is part of a campaign against abortion rights, and released one of the letters she received.
“This shell game [The Children First Foundation] has been playing has gone on long enough,” Jim Young of Cornwall Bridge wrote Willis recently. “I am requesting that the `Choose Life’ license plate be pulled from the program immediately, their image and information be removed from the CTDMV website and that the issued plates be recalled until the CFF actually opens an office in Connecticut.”

The “Trainspotting” quote posted on a local pro-abortion blog gives you a sense of the mentality of some of our opponents.

The fact is, the state’s pro-abortion establishment is hopping mad over their defeats in the 2006 legislative session and they are determined to seek their revenge wherever they can, even before their inevitable next assault on religious freedom in the 2007 session.

Watch this space and your e-mail in-boxes for information on what you can do to turn back this blatant pro-abortion attempt at censorship.