Hundreds of Christian lawyers at a dozen largely unknown legal advocacy organizations are working to turn our democracy into a "theocracy," according to a four-year investigation by the Center for Reproductive Rights. Using sophisticated legal, lobbying and communications strategies, these groups are successfully codifying Christian Right ideology into state and national laws.

The Christian Fundamentalists' legal arm - using Pat Robertson's Regent University and the massive promotional and fundraising infrastructure of Christian broadcasting as a base - challenges separation of church and state, opposes family planning and sexuality education (unless based solely on abstinence), promotes school prayer, and restricts gay and lesbian rights (see attached analysis). However, their most successful challenge to the U.S. Constitution has been against the right to choose abortion.

"These legal activists want a Biblical Code that replaces our Constitution. They are working to achieve one nation under god - theirs," said Janet Benshoof, executive editor of the report. "Their goal is to undermine the basic freedoms on which this country is based, starting with a woman's right to choose."

Even a seemingly mainstream conservative thinker like William Kristol agrees that undermining abortion rights is the linchpin of American conservatism. "The truth is that abortion is today the bloody crossroads of American politics. It is where judicial liberation (from the Constitution), sexual liberation (from traditional mores) and women's liberation (from natural distinctions) come together ... So, challenging the judicially imposed regime of abortion-on-demand is key to a conservative reformation in politics, in morals, and in beliefs," Kristol wrote in the February 1997 issue of Commentary.

Attacks on Women's Right to Choose
The crusade to outlaw abortion has so severely restricted access that, for many women, it no longer matters that abortion is still legal. This year alone, in statehouses across the country, more than 300 anti-abortion bills have been introduced and more than 50 anti-choice measures have passed in 23 states. These tireless national and local efforts by groups such as Americans United for Life and the National Right to Life Committee have ensured that young women in 31 states must have parental or judicial permission to obtain an abortion; women in 19 states must receive medically inaccurate "counseling" and then delay for hours or days before receiving an abortion. The District of Columbia and 33 states prohibit Medicaid from covering abortions for low-income women except in extreme circumstances.

Over the last three years anti-abortion lobbyists (mostly with the National Right to Life Committee) have acted with unprecedented speed and discipline to pass so-called "partial-birth abortion" laws in 28 states. Despite anti-choice rhetoric, these laws do not merely outlaw one procedure late in pregnancy. Because they are vague and overly broad, they prohibit the safest and most common procedures at any point in pregnancy. Although laws in 19 states have been blocked or severely limited because of unconstitutional defects, women's advocacy groups must spend vast resources in the process.

Furthermore, the majority of the Christian fundamentalist groups provide free legal representation to abortion clinic terrorists - harassers, bombers, shooters. Paradoxically, this involvement ensures that these sometimes-dangerous protestors have better access to legal representation than many doctors and clinic workers whose lives are under fire. Other groups specialize in soliciting women to bring malpractice claims against providers. It is little wonder that abortion providers only practice in a mere 16 percent of the country's counties today.

Resources
The groups have a combined annual budget of over $40 million. But this figure does not begin to describe their resources. Hundreds of volunteer attorneys and the unlimited free air time of Christian broadcasting provide the infrastructure for widespread, instantaneous promotion of these groups' agenda. Because of their electoral muscle, these groups' links to prominent Republicans like Pat Buchanan, Rep. Henry J. Hyde (IL), Rep. Christopher H.Smith (NJ), Rep. Charles Canady (FL), former Rep. Robert Dornan (CA), Sen. Bob Smith (N.H.), Sen. Don Nickles (OK), and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have also helped insert religious doctrine into congressional bills and legislation.

Tipping the Scales exposes how Christian Right legal organizations have used the law to remove the taint of extremism from their endeavors to establish a theocratic government. By chipping away at the right to make reproductive choices, the Radical right has become a threat to basic values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution: liberty, religious pluralism, individual exercise of conscience, the personal right to make decisions about our own families and bodies, and the equality of all people under the law.

Or, as Norman Dorsen, President of the American Civil Liberties Union for fifteen years (1976 to 1991) puts it: "The comprehensive and detailed analysis in Tipping the Scales reveals a serious danger to American constitutional principles from a well-financed and zealous brand of radical lawyers and their supporters. Every fair-minded person should be concerned about where this might lead."

See here for information on ordering Tipping the Scales.