By CHRISTOPHER MANION
Chris Slattery stands out as one of the country’s most intrepid front-line pro-life veterans — he’s a veteran of hand-to-hand combat on the streets of New York, an American abortion capital.
Slattery, once a successful marketer fresh out of Boston College, changed gears early on and chose to market for life — and devoted his life to it. He founded Expectant Mothers Care (EMC) some forty years ago, and his centers have saved thousands of lives by parking mobile ultrasound units in front of Planned Parenthood abortuaries, organizing sidewalk counseling brigades, offering free ultrasounds and counseling at several locations — all while enraging two generations of pro-abortion pols (I think he’s been sued by every attorney general of New York since the 1980s, and that’s a lot of lawyers).
Today, fighting stage-four cancer, Chris fights on. He’s survived, and so have countless New York babies.
Earlier this week the New York Federal Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a major ruling in Slattery’s favor. It might well become a landmark in the fight for life, religious freedom, and freedom of speech.
“In the spring of 2020, during the height of the pandemic,” Chris writes, “I sued the State of New York over their ‘Boss Bill’ law, which stipulated that organizations like EMC Frontline cannot terminate pro-choice employees.
“The New York bill, which passed with bipartisan support, made women who have had abortions a protected class under New York’s employment nondiscrimination laws, which Evergreen Association argued was a violation of its First Amendment right to expressive association.
“How absurd!” Chris writes. “But this law affected almost every employer in the state, meaning every pro-life group — including almost all religious schools, churches, dioceses, and more.”
“Every one of them “would be forced to retain abortion advocates who later ‘come out’ to their bosses, clients, principals, or parishioners.
“We stood up to them and ‘plausibly argued’ that the Boss Bill violates our First and 14th Amendment rights to freedom of ‘expressive association,’ he wrote.
The Court of Appeals agreed. Its unanimous opinion reads, in part:
“[W]e conclude that Evergreen plausibly alleged that § 203-e imposes severe burdens on Evergreen’s right to freedom of expressive association. The statute forces Evergreen to employ individuals who act or have acted against the very mission of its organization. . . . The right to expressive association allows Evergreen to determine that its message will be effectively conveyed only by employees who sincerely share its views. . . .
“It may be the case that preventing discrimination based on one’s choice to engage in certain, legally authorized conduct is a compelling state interest. But we need not decide that question here. Even if we answer in the affirmative, that interest cannot overcome the expressive rights of an association dedicated to outlawing or otherwise opposing that specific conduct. . . .
“Evergreen’s [EMC’s corporate entity] beliefs about the morality of abortion are its defining values; forcing it to accept as members those who engage in or approve of that conduct [abortion] would cause the group as it currently identifies itself to cease to exist.”
“This is a major ruling,” writes Slattery, “coming from the second most prestigious court in the United States. It means that we have a right to associate for the purpose of engaging in First Amendment-protected activities, the Second Circuit said, like the right to worship and to petition the government free from state interference.
“It also means that we have the right to communicate anti-abortion messages, which the Boss Bill sought to ‘impair.’ Ultimately, the goal of these laws was to silence churches and the pro-life community about Life.”
The case (Slattery v. Hochul) will have an impact far beyond the pro-life community, and it might well wind up on the docket of the Supreme Court.
That’s because Joe Biden’s tyrannical “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) diktats demand that abortion “rights” be mandatory and “included” in the adoption of all DEI programs. And those programs are quickly becoming mandatory at every level of government, the economy, and the culture.
Joe Biden and the Abortion Party aren’t finished. But neither is Chris Slattery.
March Madness
Kinney County, Texas, is “under siege by illegal aliens and smugglers,” Sheriff Brad Coe testified last Wednesday during a House committee hearing. Committee Democrats boycotted the hearing in defense of Joe Biden, who has opened the border to millions of illegals since 2021.
Biden and the Democrats have a vital supporter in their efforts. On March 10, Virginia Allen reports, “Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (a/k/a AMLO) threatened to interfere with U.S. elections, promising to persuade Mexicans and Hispanics living in the U.S. not to vote for Republicans.
“Lopez Obrador warned the GOP that he would launch an ‘information campaign’ against the party unless U.S. lawmakers change their treatment of Mexico — a response from the president after Republicans called on the Biden administration to crack down on Mexican cartels smuggling fentanyl over the southern border,” Allen writes.
Cartels run both side of the border, and that’s fine with AMLO and Joe. Both of them pretend to criticize the cartels, but both benefit from them. Mexican families receive billions in “remissions” from relatives working in the U.S., legally or illegally. And the cartels’ silent partners in America’s vast nonprofit and NGO networks get billions in taxpayer funding to secretly send those illegals to unsuspecting communities all over the country.
They all know they have Joe to thank for the swag.
But Joe isn’t finished. Last week he lashed out at the Administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The crime? DeSantis had reined in “transgender medical care” for children.
It’s “close to sinful,” Joe told Daily Show guest host Kal Penn. “What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful. I mean it’s just terrible what they’re doing.”
Curious, isn’t it, how Catholic Joe’s mom taught him to choose his words so carefully? He doesn’t consider mutilating and doping minors in the name of “transitioning” to be evil. No, calling the practice child abuse is “evil” for Joe.
I wonder what his mother would tell him now?
Well, we’re off to Notre Dame for graduation weekend in May, and on the drive, we’re going to devote serious time to memorizing the new version of the Notre Dame Fight Song that was announced last spring.
Yes, as part of the university’s aggressive campaign for “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” (DEI), Fr. Jenkins announced the new text last June, as a celebration of the school’s fiftieth anniversary of accepting women undergraduates (I recall it well: I had a couple in my Political Theory class that year).
So May’s graduation ceremony will be the first ever to sing the brand new and improved victory march. Here’s the old version:
Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame.
Wake up the echoes cheering her name.
Send a volley cheer on high.
Shake down the thunder from the sky.
What though the odds be great or small,
Old Notre Dame will win over all.
While her loyal sons are marching
Onward to victory.”
Going forward, the last two lines will be sung as follows:
“While her loyal sons and daughters
March on to victory.”
I pray that the ladies are pleased after these fifty years of oppression. And Notre Dame’s DEI Kommissars aren’t finished.
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