American Right To Life Action Statement on Bob Schaffer

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Press Release

by ARTL president Brian Rohrbough

August 8, 2008

With his pronouncement that he opposes equal protection under the law for unborn babies, Republican Bob Schaffer confirmed what many in the pro-life community have long known: he believes that unborn babies are expendable, and he lacks the moral clarity and courage to defend their God-given right to life.

Ten years ago, Schaffer's indifference to the plight of Asian women forced to undergo abortions while working in American factories in the Marianas Islands proved him to be a politician without principle.

Schaffer has long given lip service to the truth that human life begins at fertilization, as stated in Personhood Amendment 48. Now that he has the chance to enact that truth in law, he opposes it. Actions speak louder than words.

Schaffer's refusal to stand for life at this historic opportunity leaves the Republican candidate at polar opposites with the 131,000 petition signers who put Amendment 48 on the ballot, and with the groups endorsing this personhood effort, including American Right to Life, Focus on the Family, Colorado Right to Life, American Life League and committed pro-life, pro-family Catholics and Protestants across Colorado.

Schaffer is unfit to represent Colorado in the U.S. Senate.

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Editor's note:

Many of us have felt for a long time that Bob Schaffer was on our side on abortion issues. He's even stated belief that life begins at conception - the foundation of Amendment 48! But he's now said on KHOW radio (Caplis & Silverman) that "I just don't support that initiative."

By first understanding that human life begins at conception, but secondly being unwilling to solidify that belief in law, Schaffer is saying he won't stick his neck out to save babies who he knows are babies! He's said all these years he believes in life at conception, but the first opportunity he has to establish that principle in law, and he balks! What kind of pro-lifer is this?

Bob Schaffer, this year, has established over and over again that he is no longer the pro-lifer he used to be:

1. He sneered at a petitioner at a GOP event this spring who asked if he would sign the Personhood petition.
2. He immediately refused to meet with Colorado Right to Life when asked if he would like to discuss his experience in the Marianas Islands (CRTL had refused to talk to a reporter when asked until we had heard Schaffer's side!) - If he had a good answer, he had his chance to offer it, but he refused.
3. Dick Wadhams, Schaffer's campaign manager (and GOP Chairman), called Personhood supporters "the fringe of the pro-life movement," and both he and Schaffer emphasized he did not support Personhood.
4. Wadhams then refused any pro-life tables at the State GOP Convention, but allowed not one but two pro-abortion tables! Both tables distributed literature reviewed and approved by Wadhams which repeated his claim that Personhood supporters were "the fringe".
5. Wadhams then came out and called on all Republicans (having obviously already given this advice to Schaffer) to "avoid social issues" like abortion and marriage.
6. Schaffer now explicitly said on the radio he does not support Personhood.

Bob Schaffer makes a big deal about his past pro-life record. But his claims fall flat, even from the past. His list of legislation on his website are all abortion regulations, none of which are fundamentally anti-abortion. He's supportive of attacking abortion around the edges, like National Right to Life, which is why he has a 100% rating from NRTL -- something which does not impress us. The key question, when he brings up his past record, is where does he stand now? Not with us! And we believe, based on his statements, that he would also oppose Personhood at the federal level. The legislation on his website doesn't include any past support of Human Life Amendments, and he's served at times when he could have supported those. He apparently did not!

The old Bob Schaffer -- the man we knew and loved as close to our hearts on issues like the Right to Life -- is no more! He has renounced his old "extremism" and now calls himself a "centrist" (his words!).

Who is this new Schaffer, who associates with pro-aborts and anti-Christian political hacks like Wadhams? We don't know. But whoever he is, he's NOT on our side, and he opposes the very values we hold dearest -- like saving the lives of unborn children.

Dick Wadhams Rejects Christians, Begging for Defeat

Media: Pro-lifers Blast Colo GOP Chairman
Colorado RTL's warning to the state Republican Party of a catastrophic loss in November has been reported (click for articles) by LifeNews, the Rocky Mountain News, and the Denver Post. Those articles are based upon this CRTL guest editorial:

Right To Life Warns Colorado Republican Chairman
by Leslie Hanks
CRTL V.P.

Colorado Right To Life is warning Dick Wadhams, the state Republican Party chairman, that by shunning their pro-life conservative base they're headed for another election defeat in November, three election-cycle catastrophes for the Colorado GOP, and two U.S. Senate losses for Wadhams.

Wadhams banned the nation's oldest Right To Life organization from their state convention while he welcomed a pro-abortion group. The state's top Republican is out of touch with his own party's base, where 4 out of 5 Republicans at the convention voted to defend life beginning at fertilization.

The thousands of convention delegates passed all forty resolutions offered, except for the only one that failed, the pro-abortion Resolution #21. Convention rules require literature to be approved by the party chairman. Wadhams allowed the misnamed Republican Majority for Choice to distribute flyers quoting him about the Personhood Amendment 48 sponsors as "on the fringe of the pro-life movement, and they do not represent by any stretch of the imagination the hundreds of thousands of pro-life Coloradans."

130,000 pro-lifers signed the Personhood petition. Delegates overwhelmingly passed all uncompromising pro-life resolutions including the 78% vote affirming that "life begins at conception." 20-year-old Personhood Amendment sponsor Kristi Burton was elected among the top ten most popular of the 46 national delegates.

The Denver Post last week reported Wadhams' assessment (Wadhams: Dobson's lack of support won't hurt McCain, June 11, 2008) regarding conservative leader Dr. James Dobson's refusal to support the Republican presidential candidate. "Dobson's comments that he would not vote for the party's presumptive nominee, John McCain, won't hurt," and that the party should "avoid social issues," and the liberal ColoradoPols.com headlined their report about the state Republican chairman: "Wadhams: Dobson Is So Yesterday."

While social issues have motivated Republicans in every presidential cycle since 1980, Wadhams is more accommodating to pro-abortion lobbyists than to Dobson and pro-life voters. In sharp contrast, our own ColoradoRTL.org candidate questionnaire has identified many heroic leaders running for office. But Wadhams has moved U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer to the liberal middle, and he's trying to drag the Colorado GOP to the left.

The party's affinity for abortion supporters will be the straw that elects Democrat Mark Udall. Why would Colorado elect a pretend liberal rather than a real one? And this move to the left helps explain the Rocky Mountain News report that Bob Schaffer's convention speech received, "the loudest applause... when he criticized his own party."

Virginia's George Allen could have been re-elected as a Republican U.S. Senator in 2006 despite his infamous macaca comment. With Dick Wadhams as his campaign manager, Allen had only given lip service but did not significantly support their state's marriage amendment. Salon magazine reported "a popular sentiment" that defeat came "when Allen failed to make the anti-gay marriage amendment, which passed handily, a centerpiece of his campaign." Just before that election New Jersey's Supreme Court gave homosexual partners the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. So in the last desperate days of the campaign, Wadhams, generally inclined to avoid social issues, hoped to hitch his candidate to the values momentum. According to the New York Times, "In Virginia, the [New Jersey] court decision could not have come at a better time for Senator George Allen, a Republican whose campaign for re-election had been thrown off course... The Virginia ballot includes a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Mr. Allen supports it... 'It's an issue that's going to play a big role in the next 12 days,' Mr. Allen's campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, said in an interview."

According to the Roanoke Times, "Less than two weeks away from Election Day, U.S. Sen. George Allen spent Thursday... making sure [voters] knew he supported a proposed amendment to... prohibit gay marriage." A bit late, no? The marriage amendment won by 328,000 votes, and Allen lost by a mere 9,000, squandering countless values votes because Wadhams restrained Allen from giving the amendment more than lip service.

In Colorado, Wadhams is begrudging 130,000 petition signers even lip service for Amendment 48, which is virtually identical to Schaffer's formerly claimed pro-life position, that personhood begins at fertilization. Now Schaffer is allowing the party boss to position the candidate's previous pro-life belief as a negative, so Schaffer, more than Wadhams, will be blamed for the Colorado GOP's third election strike out and game over.