#534: Judie Brown and the American Life League

Judith Ann Limbourne ”Judie” Brown is the president and co-founder (with her husband Paul) of the American Life League (ALL), reportedly the largest Catholic pro-life organization in the United State and an enthusiastic supporter of Operation Rescue, which augments its pro-life stance with being opposed also to birth control, stem cell research and euthanasia (and opposition to universal health care because of some garbledly messy conspiracy theory about super-death panels). Her and her organization’s arguments belong to the, shall we say, less well-hinged side of the debates. Here, for instance, is ALL representative Jim Sedlak arguing that by supporting Planned Parenthood, Obama is also supporting genocide against African-Americans. ALL has also argued that Notre Dame should no longer be allowed to be considered a Catholic university (i.e. be removed from “The Official Catholic Directory”) after allowing Obama to speak there, and here is Brown claiming that Obama isn’t really a Christian since he’s not rightwing. She has also said that the Catholic Church must drive out liberal groups since these groups are under “demonic deceit”, which is apparently the best explanation for their support “anti-family militant homosexuality and the destruction of marriage”. Yes, being ”militant” means failing to line up with Brown’s way of viewing the world, and those militant dissenters must be banished and excommunicated.

ALL also went appropriately unhinged when Krispy Kreme gave away free doughnuts on Inauguration Day because the company's press release says it is celebrating “the freedom of choice,” which ALL says is a “tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand.”

As for stem-cell research, Brown herself has stated that embryo research is like “throwing away” a 1-year-old since “size and age; [t]hat’s the only difference,” an argument that must rank among the most abject failures to reach even the status of “wrong” ever made.. As for euthanasia Brown actively warns people not to be organ donors since doctors apparently routinely hasten along brain death in comatose people who have volunteered to be organ donors to harvest their organs while their heart still beats. I.e. sacrificing the lives of people who need organ transplants in the cause for the perceived greater good is entirely unlike throwing away one-year-olds because of something to do with Jesus, even when “the greater good” in this case is a figment of Brown’s incoherent and delusionally paranoid imagination.

Brown has also supported the idea that Obama’s stance against AIDS is incoherent because he is so pro-death in other areas. Her position presumably reflects the same sentiment that fuelled her reaction to the Gates Foundation’s teaming up with Warren Buffet to donate billions of dollars to improve global health; Brown said that the Gates Foundation is heavily involved in bankrolling “women's health” initiatives in Third World nations, that “most of those reflect or are directly a result of the efforts of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.” Hence, ALL is “extremely concerned that millions and millions of dollars are going to go to the ultimate goal of ending the lives of millions of preborn babies – and jeopardizing the health of millions of women and men,” a reference to the Gates Foundation’s contributions to distributing birth control measures, which in Brown’s bizarro world is a health risk. The rant ends in an account of how the efforts of Gates and Buffet will eventually destroy these countries because of their effect on the birth rate. Which, of course, is so far removed from any semblance of a foundation in reality that it is even hard to respond to (hint: a lack of increase in the population due to birth control is not among the most serious challenges the countries in question are currently facing). At least Brown’s overall stance emerges, bright and shining: sacrificing the life and health of millions and millions may be necessary to stop the use of birth control.

Brown was also enraged by the West Point Combating Terrorism Center’s 2013 report Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right, which catalogued the many threats posed by far right movements with a long history of domestic terrorism, apparently because bomb attacks against innocents aren’t terrorism when Brown agrees with the cause.

There’s a good ALL resource here.

Diagnosis: The world corresponding to Brown’s projected causal relations is a world pretty far removed from the actual one. Given that she’s somewhat influential, that discrepancy is rather worrisome. Delusional, morally bankrupt, and dangerous.