11/9/2011 - November 2011 SLI Newsletter
November 2011
Dear Friends and Supporters,
Since gambling is not such a big issue in Alabama these days, we are able to give more attention to one of our most important issues, the sanctity of life. This is particularly true since we have a legislature which will favorably entertain legislation to protect human life.
As you will recall, the 2011 Alabama Legislature passed only one pro-life bill. Many of us questioned their commitment to the issue.
Given a little time and the opportunity to talk with legislators after the session, I believe they had good intentions but were just not able to carry them out. It was the very first year for Republicans to actually be in control and it was the very first year for many of them to even be in the legislature. They had made many campaign commitments which they referred to as the “Handshake with Alabama.” They mostly kept those commitments.
Even though the Republicans are very much in control, there is still significant resistance by Democrats to protecting the sanctity of life. All these factors coalesced to make it difficult in that first year to pass a number of bills. However, we have now received commitment from leadership in both the Senate and the House to pass bills. We are working on a package of bills, which we hope to pass early in the session. When we have our package finalized, we will let you know what we will do.
As we mentioned in our last newsletter, a recent opinion by the Alabama Supreme Court utilized one of our sanctity of life bills to recognize the value of unborn life. This month, we provide a full report in our Educational Update on the Baby Mack case.
On October 29th, I had a chance to speak to the Alabama Federation of Republican Women on constitutional issues. We focused on religious and patriotic freedom in public schools, the religious freedom of churches under the immigration law and possible effects of foreign law on Alabama courts and individual rights. Please keep in mind we are always available to speak on the issues that we hold dear. Let us know if we can speak to your group.
Thank you very much for your financial support. We count on you to make our work possible.
Yours very truly,
A. Eric Johnston
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