By DONALD DeMARCO
In the prologue of her autobiography, It Is I Who Have Chosen You, Judie Brown advises her readers that she is merely an ordinary person who is willing to be a servant of God. Mother Angelica and St. Teresa of Calcutta have said the same thing. Recognizing one’s ordinariness, however, sets a person on the road to meaning since, as Mrs. Brown avers, “there is no aspect of life that is without purpose in God’s plans.”
The title of her book comes from John15:14-16: “I have called you friends because all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You have not chosen me, it is I who have chosen you.”
While living in Kannapolis, N.C., she came face to face with her ordinariness in a most dramatic way. At the urgency of her parish priest, she agreed to debate one of the most highly respected obstetrician/gynecologists in the area. She had no training in debating. Moreover, the only pro-life experience she had had at that time was stuffing envelopes and carrying items to garage sales.
She — pregnant with her third child, a housewife from a rental district in Kannapolis — was hardly an intimidating opponent for the learned doctor. When it was her turn to speak, she merely described what happens to a baby during an abortion. This so unnerved the doctor that he got up and walked out of the room. It was a re-run of the David and Goliath confrontation. She had similar encounters with Phil Donahue and Faye Wattleton, a one-time president of Planned Parenthood.
Judith Ann Limbourne Brown was born in Los Angeles on March 4, 1944. She was a “breech” baby. As she would later say, “Even when I was still in the womb, I was giving others a challenge!”
Her father abandoned the family a year and a half after Judie was born, leaving his wife and two young daughters to fend for themselves. Judie’s maternal grandparents took the family in and made sure that Judie would receive a proper Catholic education. It was later revealed, unbeknownst to her mother, that she was her husband’s fifth wife.
In 1952, Judie’s mother married Chester Limbourne.
After graduating from St. Mary’s Academy in Inglewood, Calif., Judie Limbourne earned an associate of arts degree from a junior college and, in 1965, completed her bachelor’s degree program at UCLA. At age 21 she was an office manager at Kmart where she met her future husband, Paul Brown. They married on December 30, 1967.
On April 1, 1979, the Browns together with eight other pro-life Americans founded the American Life League (ALL). The purpose of the league was to educate the public about pro-life issues. Thanks to astute marketing and the assistance of a number of professionals in the field, ALL gained 68,000 members within its first year of existence.
From a kitchen table operation, ALL has emerged as a full-fledged professional organization with more than 30 full-time employees and 120 associate organizations throughout the nation. The indefatigable Mrs. Brown, in addition to raising three children, found time to author a dozen books, including a critique of the American hierarchy: The Broken Path: How Catholic Bishops Got Lost in the Weeds of American Politics (2011). She and her husband currently look after their eleven grandchildren.
Judie Brown has written numerous articles for magazines and newspapers, including The Washington Post and USA Today and has also appeared on numerous television programs, including The Phil Donahue Show, 20/20, 60 Minutes, Mother Angelica Live, The O’Reilly Factor, Good Morning America, Oprah, and Larry King Live.
The news from throughout the world concerning the advance of the Culture of Death supplies Mrs. Brown with more information than anyone can handle. Undaunted, however, she does her best in her twice-a-week columns to apprise her readers of what is going on, without the slightest concession to political correctness.
In her May 10, 1917 column, she alerts people to the fact that in Australia, human embryos left over from in vitro fertilization as well as various embryo parts are being transformed into jewelry. She cites Amy McGlade, the company founder of Baby Bee Hummingbirds who states: “I don’t believe there is any other business in the world that creates jewelry from human embryos, and I firmly believe that we are pioneering the way in this sacred art, and opening the possibilities to families around the world.”
“Business enterprises like Baby Bee Hummingbirds,” Judie Brown writes, “gain traction in society because the bearing of a child has become nothing more than a mechanical function. And that, my friends, has taken the jewelry business to a new hellish low.”
Mrs. Brown will never run out of grist for the mill, which includes some questionable statements and appointments made by none other than Pope Francis.
I count Judie Brown as a dear and valued friend, both personally and academically. She is unassuming, cordial, and dedicated. We were both corresponding members of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
As editor of Celebrate Life, she has published many of my articles. As president of the American Life League, she invited me to be a member of her newly formed American Bioethics Advisory Commission and then supplied me with a generous flood of pertinent articles. She graciously responded when I invited her to write the foreword to Architects of the Culture of Death and promoted the book in Celebrate Life while offering the following challenge to its readers:
“If you can finish this book and remain totally unchanged by what you learn, then you really didn’t pay attention. Read it again.”
She is the recipient of numerous awards, perhaps the most extravagant coming from The Daily Catholic that named Judie Brown #49 on the list of “Top Catholics of the 20th Century.” No doubt she found this selection rather amusing, if not laughable. Who in the world is in a position to create such a list?
Nonetheless, given her résumé for the current century, we may find, when the next such list comes out, that she may be moving up the ladder.
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