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Rift develops among Oregon evangelicals on anti-abortion strategies
By JOHN FORTMEYER
CNNW publisher
SALEM – Like millions of their fellow believers across the nation, many evangelical Christians in Oregon have long focused on seeing abortions drastically reduced, if not completely eliminated, in their home state.
But within Oregon’s evangelical community, distinct and seemingly irreconcilable differences have developed over what is the most effective and proper strategy.
For decades, pro-life Christians here have looked largely to one organization in their efforts. Yet today that organization is openly challenged by a small but fiercely committed coalition of three new groups who want a drastic change in tactics.
And the division of opinion is very sharp and, in some cases, personal.
Since early this year, the longtime efforts of Salem-based Oregon Right to Life, an affiliate of National Right to Life Committee, have been opposed by the three groups that make up the new Coalition for Abortion Revenue Elimination. Those groups are:
• Oregonians for Life, started by Amy Rabon of McMinnville, a former state legislative aide, and Mary Starrett of Newberg, a former TV and radio personality in the Portland area.
• Life Support Oregon, founded by a group that includes several members of the Constitution Party, a conservative political group.
•Believers Against Child Killing, headed by Paul deParrie, long known in the Portland area for his controversial protests of abortion.
The coalition worked this past legislative session to see all abortion funding eliminated from the Oregon state budget. Although that goal was not fulfilled, the coalition representatives say they have seen big success in one way — legislators are now well aware that they will be held very accountable for how they vote on abortion-related bills.
The coalition members say they won’t be going away. They not only intend to remain as tenacious as bulldogs on the issue, but will now also seek to defeat state legislators they believe have not been true to the pro-life cause.
But Oregon Right to Life, which has long pursued an “incremental” patient, step-by-step ap-proach to combat abortion that it claims is steadily working, believes targeting those legislators for defeat would be a stupid thing for its critics to do.
Going even further regarding one of the coalition’s specific targets —House Speaker Karen Minnis, a Republican from Wood Village — Gayle Atteberry, Oregon Right to Life executive director, says it would be “absolutely evil” for them to try to oust Minnis.
But coalition leaders say they have no choice but to confront what they see as insincere politicking that has produced no change in the State Capitol’s pro-abortion climate. They also will continue to sharply criticize Oregon Right to Life as too willing to compromise with pro-abortion forces.
“Ultimately, we need to take the legislators in Salem who call themselves pro-life, and who take money for the pro-life agenda, and we need to hold them accountable for every one of their votes,” said Starrett.
Motivated by Their Faith
While Oregon Right to Life does not promote itself as a solely Christian organization, Atteberry says it is, for all intents and purposes, a Christian group. That’s because it is faith-oriented, strongly Christian supported, and its membership is overwhelmingly Christian. Atteberry herself reflects that orientation.
“I am a born-again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ,” she is quick to affirm. “That’s why I am doing what I am doing. Ninety-nine point five percent of us are here (at the organization) because we love Jesus.”
Atteberry says she is thus grieved that any fellow believers in Christ are working in direct opposition to her organization’s efforts.
“As a believer, my first goal is to do everything I do in a Christlike loving manner. That does not change when you walk in the Capitol. You must still treat those legislators with respect, with kindness, with a realization that you do not, and cannot ever agree, 100 percent of the time on everything. You must use kindness to persuade people to vote for your bills.
“But I do not see the kindness coming out of any of the people in those other three groups.”
However, the coalition says the killing of unborn babies won’t stop as long as people worry about being nice to each other and not hurting feelings.
“Jesus didn’t come to bring peace,” says Starrett, the former AM Northwest co-host on KATU Channel 2 and former KPDQ radio talk host. “He came to bring a sword. And He came to divide. It is time to cause division among the brethren. He says He is going to divide the sheep from the goats. We have been lukewarm too long. There is a time and place for us to sit there and be complacent and compliant and also a time to say, ‘I have seen a picture of a ripped-up baby in a garbage can. I have seen enough.’ ”
Starrett and Rabon say all three of the smaller groups in the coalition are movitated by Christian ethics, Christian morality and “obedience to God’s directive.”
DeParrie says his new group marks his first involvement in any kind of organized political activity to oppose abortion. His previous years of activism have been non-political and he was “digging in his heels” about even focusing on the State Capitol until “the Lord started dealing with me on it several months earlier.”
But that doesn’t mean deParrie intends to play what he calls “the political game.”
“I don’t want to make friends with the people in Salem,” he says. “I don’t want to have cocktails with them. I don’t even want to know them that well. But I want them to know me. I want them to know that I will do what I can to ensure their defeat, if they don’t vote for the babies.”
Three Separate Groups That Cooperate
The leaders of the three groups in the coalition say there is a reason behind their not forming a single united group. They also believe that the formation earlier this year of three independent groups that stay in frequent communication and work when needed as a coalition is divinely ordained.
“It had to be a God thing,” said Starrett.
“The thing I’m most encouraged about in seeing the coalition is how obvious that the hand of God has worked on us as individuals, bringing us together to do the same thing at the same time,” said deParrie.
The fact that the three groups remain distinct is a reflection of their personalities, their preferred strategies and the specific burdens God has given them, the leaders say.
DeParrie says that while the other two groups will spend more time going down to Salem and talking to politicians face to face, he is less inclined to do that, although he is willing to testify to state committees.
DeParrie says he has a few friends who join him as volunteers in Believers Against Child Killing.
“My strategy is more of a blitz strategy,” he said, citing, for example, a picketing that was conducted outside Minnis’ home.
Brownlow is joined in Life Support by his wife, Suzanne; by Bob Ekstrom, chairman of the Constitu-tion Party of Oregon; James Luenberger, an Oregon lawyer, and Lon Mabon, former chairman of the political action group Oregon Citizens Alliance and his wife, Bonnie.
Starrett is executive director of Oregonians for Life and Rabon, an adoptee who was born to a drug-addicted 16-year-old, is the director. A handful of volunteers assist them.
Starrett says she chose not to join Life Support when it was first organized because she wanted a more confrontive approach that meant dealing less with established political protocol. The group has posted signs on highways and has sent mailings to households to educate Oregonians that tax money is being used to pay for abortions.
Dave Brownlow acknowledges that he tends to be “methodical” in his strategies, but that he, like the others in the coalition, also seeks to be direct and to openly express that his patience has run out with a go-slow political approach on the abortion issue.
“We’ve had 32 years of incrementalism,” he said. “Now we will reach 50 million abortions (nationally since 1973) in the next few months.”
While Rabon’s and Starrett’s group will not actively seek candidates to run, they will, like the others in the coalition, endorse or oppose candidates as deemed necessary.
“We all have a different personality in this fight,” said Starrett. “We all have a dog in this fight. Ours (in Oregonians for Life) are like Rottweilers. Theirs (the other two groups) might be pit bulls and German shepherds. But we agree on 99.999 percent of how to do this.”
Dismay About
Well-Established Groups
For some of the coalition participants, their involvement reflects their own personal dissatisfaction with well-established groups with which they have previously been involved. Starrett was once a board member for the Oregon Right to Life Education Foundation. Brownlow’s wife, Suzanne, was once Oregon state director for Concerned Women of America, a well-known national Christian organization founded by Beverly LaHaye. Dave Brownlow, who says he has been many years in the abortion fight, including elsewhere nationally with the activist group Operation Rescue, has been a candidate for public office here in Oregon with the Constitution Party because of his own dismay over the two established political parties.
The coalition also reflects a dissatisfaction with the lack of response from many churches about the ongoing abortion holocaust.
“This is a church issue,” says Dave Brownlow. “In the church, God’s people have become so complacent about becoming engaged in the battle. I don’t think there’s the discernment there – pastors have no passion for the unborn.”
While abortion is a huge concern for some evangelicals, it also, tragically, is not for others, Starrett notes.
":It is discouraging, according to George Barna's research, to see that Christians are having abortions at the same rate as non-Christians,” says Starrett. “We are, as a group, no different from the world in our sin.”
The Coalition’s Complaints
Within the three groups that make up the coalition, there is definitely overall anger and frustration toward Oregon Right to Life, but the intensity varies a bit according to who is speaking. Rabon was the only one of the leaders interviewed to offer a favorable comment about Atteberry, who she considers “a sweet lady.”
“I can’t stand being mean to her,” said Rabon, who otherwise is known for not mincing words about the abortion fight. “But it isn’t about her. It’s about the tactics needed to stop abortion.”
Starrett acknowledged that within Oregon Right to Life can be found sincere, good-intentioned people. “But they are ineffective. They are taking money under the guise of saving babies, and it isn’t happening in Salem.”
Brownlow says he considers Oregon Right to Life a “dangerous” organization because it draws huge resources from the pro-life community while being “totally ineffective.” As for deParrie, he simply has no use for Oregon Right to Life and firmly believes that it has “sold out.”
Specifically, the coalition is disturbed that Oregon Right to Life:
•supported a bill sponsored by Minnis that would have allowed prosecutors to bring double-murder chanrges against someone who kills a pregnant worman and her unborn child. Brown-low said the coalition could not support the bill because it included language stating that abortion is not criminal homicide. But Atteberry counters that when the time comes that abortion is no longer legal in the state – as is Oregon Right to Life’s fervent hope – that any such language would no longer be applicable.
•listed Republican Goli Ameri in its 2004 general election voter guide as a “recommended” candidate. This angered the coalition members because they believe Ameri is not at all pro-life. But Atteberry says the voter guide clearly explains the significant difference between full endorsement of pro-life candidates, and the rare times that a candidate who is not fully pro-life issues is listed as only recommended in a race against a clearly pro-abortion opponent.
•was one of the sponsors, along with abortion rights advocate and former U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood, of an “Oregon Republican Leadership Institute” in Salem that had among its featured speakers state Sen. Kate Brown, who shares Packwood’s position on abortion. Atteberry says her organization became one of the sponsors at the invitation of a pro-life legislator who felt it was “wise to understand where the enemy is and what they think.” But she says it wasn’t until after the fact that Oregon Right to Life found out that Brown was one of the featured speakers. Because Oregon Right to Life’s motives with the event have been so badly misinterpreted, the organization will not be a co-sponsor in the future, and while this has been explained fully to her critics in the coalition they deliberately choose to ignore that explanation, she says.
•described as pro-life some legislators even though they provided the margin of victory in passing a biennial budget allocating $2.87 million to the Oregon Department of Human Services for abortions under the Oregon Health Plan. The coalition sees this as a betrayal that will cost the lives of more than 9,000 unborn Oregonians over the next two years. While Oregon Right to Life back in 1999 played a part in stripping abortion funding from a state budget that passed the Legislature but was vetoed by then-Gov. John Kitzhaber, the organization hasn’t pushed the budget issue since because pro-abortion forces now firmly control the state Senate, says Atteberry. However, she says Oregon Right to Life worked closely and quietly with pro-life legislators to decrease by 17 percent Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s budget requests for tax-funded abortions, and succeeded despite incredible odds.
Oregon Right to Life Defends Its Record
Atteberry, who is a member of the governing board for Oregon Right to Life’s national parent group, says Oregon is by no means the only state where the right-to-life affiliate organization is sharply criticized. She says there are small “fringe” pro-life groups in every state of the union that mimic the views of the coalition here.
In the case of Oregon, she says, legislators in Salem who lean pro-life actually like Oregon Right to Life even more after they deal with the coalition members. That’s because they see Oregon Right to Life as far more personable and effective, Atteberry says.
“The way (those in the coalition) carried themselves in the Capitol were not ways that tend to win friends and influence people,” she said.
Atteberry emphasizes her group’s effectiveness. “We are extremely successful,” she said. “Oregon Right to Life is about way more than passing a bill in the state Legislature, which is certainly something extremely important for us and what we strive to do. But we are an extremely comprehensive organization, and we cover the whole spectrum, from education and electing pro-life politicians, to our very effective standupgirl.com web site.”
Atteberry says she knows that decades of work by Oregon Right to Life have “saved literally hundreds and hundreds of babies,” have led to a reduction in the abortion rate, and are increasingly changing attitudes statewide from pro-abortion to pro-life.
If some in the coalition find little to respect in Oregon Right to Life, Atteberry, for her part, feels the same way about the tactics pursued by those in the smaller groups. She describes as “absolutely asinine” Brownlow’s view that Oregon Right to Life is “dangerous.” She also terms an “outright lie” deParrie’s claim that her organization financially supports candidates who are known to be pro-abortion.
Atteberry said a meeting at the Capitol last January that included her and some of the coalition members was a failed attempt to find common ground.
“I said that as a Christian, the one thing in Proverbs that God says He hates, is those that cause dissension among the brethren. God has made very clear to me, very early in my work at Oregon Right to Life, that I am probably not going to agree with other tactics Christians use in the pro-life effort.”
Atteberry says she asked the coalition members present if both sides could keep from attacking the other publicly. Sadly, she said, not all agreed to her request..
But what Atteberry describes as attacks, the coalition members see as an important effort to educate the people of Oregon. They agree that even if they never succeed in halting abortion funding in the state, they must pursue what they see as a God-given task.
“We have to re-educate the pro-life public as to the reality of how we save babies,” said deParrie. “We also have to re-educate the legislators who think they are pro-life, as to how to save babies. That’s a massive task, and it could take a long time. But given time and given the grace of God, it’ll be accomplished.”
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