Column:

Anti-abortion rights groups promoting lawsuit with town halls

MOR2L and MOR4L are totally different, y'all.

By Nate Kennedy

Published Feb. 12, 2009

On Feb. 5, I was trying to decide what political event I would attend. I had three choices: The League of Women Voters' "Meet Your Legislators" event, a young Democrat-turned-Republican speaking on campus or the Missouri Roundtable for Life (henceforth referred to as MOR4L) town hall meeting.

I decided to attend the MOR4L meeting for several reasons. First, I wanted to see what their latest spin on stem cell research (aka "cloning") was, and secondly I wanted to see how MOR4L would differ from the Missouri Right to Life (henceforth referred to as MOR2L).

For those of you who don't know, MOR4L is a new group and splintered from MOR2L. They split over MOR2L's rankings of legislators on a certain vote pertaining to MOHELA and stem cells.

I found MOR4L and MOR2L are essentially the same animal. I was familiar with MOR2L and the epic battle over Amendment 2 in 2006, and their stranglehold of the choice and stem cell issues on the General Assembly. What's going to be interesting to watch is how MOR4L operates when MOR2L is a well-established interest group doing exactly the same thing with nearly the same name. It might get confusing.

It became obvious what MOR4L's objectives were and how they were going about achieving them when I arrived and signed in. After giving my regular contact information on the sign-in sheet, I was then asked for the church I attend (I made one up) and if I would be willing to hold a coffee (check), make phone calls (check), write letters (check) and be an organizer at my church (check).

After the sign-in, I was handed a 44-page booklet entitled "Citizens, Voters, and Taxpayers of Missouri: Missouri Roundtable for Life wonders So Why Did The Cloners Spend $30 Million On Amendment 2, The So-Called 'Missouri Stem Cell Research And Cures Initiative?'"

As you could imagine it was a pure propaganda designed to raise suspicion towards the proponents of Amendment 2 (Ch. 2: Who has ever heard of the Missouri Technology Corporation?), attack the lawyers hired by Robin Carnahan and the Secretary of State's office to write the legal ballot language (Ch. 8: Has anyone ever seen or read the 2000-word text of Amend. 2?) and go after "activists judges" for exercising their constitutional checks (Ch. 17: Judicial power supersedes legislative control).

The former chief of staff to former Gov. Matt Blunt, Ed Martin and state Sen. John Loudon were leading the presentation. They elaborated on how Carnahan's lawyers changed the proposed ballot language of their new initiative petition and supposedly allowed for cloning while at the same time obfuscating the language. Apparently it is a travesty to pay attorneys sufficient amount of money to research precedents and the latest biological sciences to write a referendum that will hold up in court.

But neither the courts nor the constitution matter to the Missouri Republican Party, as is evident by some of their legislation over the last several years -- such as the voter ID bill -- so what does it matter?

The basic purpose of MOR4L's statewide town hall campaign was to frame the lawsuit that was filed Monday against Carnahan, State Auditor Susan Montee and Attorney General Chris Koster. The suit concerns the language of MOR4L's initiative petition for 2010 that is intended to end the "cloning loophole" in Amendment 2, but what their opponents say would actually ban abortion in public hospitals.

My prediction is the Missouri Republican Party will try to say Carnahan politicized the Secretary of State's office and is a "cloner" who pals around with "activist judges" and those low-down trial attorneys.

Nate Kennedy is the chairman of the Young Democrats of Missouri College Federation. He can be reached at nkennedy@themaneater.com.