The city of Burlington is being sued by a group of pro-life demonstrators who believe that the city’s “buffer zone” ordinance is unconstitutional. So reports Seven Days. And the lead attorney who brought the case is one Michael DePrimo of Connecticut.
So who is Michael DePrimo, and why is he bothering with a case in Vermont?
A quick Google search reveals that DePrimo is a staunch far-right Christian, a Special Assistant to Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, one of the most notorious of the extremely political, extremely conservative Christian pressure groups. He used to be the AFA’s chief legal bulldog, until the AFA dissolved its legal team due to lack of funds. In that role, he worked “to use legal means to oppose pornography, obscenity, abortion, and gay marriage.” Since then, he’s pursued the same agenda with funding from other far-right Christian groups and “ministries.”
In case you couldn’t guess, he got his law degree from Pat Robertson’s Regent University.
(For your reading pleasure, try a 2009 op-ed entitled “How gay activists hijacked marriage,” in which, among other things, he yearns for the halcyon days when “homosexual conduct was a felony in all 50 states.” Them was good times.)
(Or maybe this 2004 beaut, “Abortion, Perversion, Apathy: Beginning of America’s End?” which puts us in line for the fate accorded Sodom and Gomorrah.)
He’s argued legal challenges to buffer-zone laws and ordinances in other states across the country. According to a 2008 piece in the Connecticut Law Tribune, he basically spends his days trolling the online news, searching for potential clients who will give him standing to press his far-right, fundamentalist Christian view of the law and the Constitution. So now he comes to Vermont, bringing his specious legal reasoning to the belly of the Blue State beast.
Methinks the lady doth protesteth too much. Google Weissman’s law
rather than “pro-life?”
“Pro-life” is the right wing meme; and it is a misnomer, because being pro-choice does not automatically mean that one is “pro” abortion.
It just means that one believes the choice belongs to the woman, her doctor, and those with whom she chooses to make the decision.
Those who are “anti-choice” have no respect for either the woman or her conscience, and are frequently the same people who would deny a social safety net to the very children who are born from unwanted pregnancies, to unprepared mothers. Theirs is quite the opposite of a “pro-life” outlook!
Let’s begin right here, right now on GMD to refuse to use that offensive line of distinction.
We are proudly pro-choice, and they are “anti-choice.”
…I do not think it means what they think it means:
“”[t]he First Amendment does not demand that patients at a medical facility undertake Herculean efforts to escape the cacophony of political protests.” Madsen, 512 U. S., at 772-773.”
http://www.dohiyimir.org/2012/…
Ooh, good timing for the homophobes and misogynists to rally up in Burlington. Pride parade is Saturday, where all kinds of “perversions” – holy and otherwise – are likely to be represented, some even in public!
NanuqFC
The hypocrites are exactly where they belong: in the churches. No one needs to pray for forgiveness more than they. ~ Anonymous
Three comments on this important post:
1) Thanks to the reporter for writing it! It’s important to know what new meddling from out of state we need to deal with.
2) “According to a 2008 piece in the Connecticut Law Tribune, he basically spends his days trolling the online news, searching for potential clients who will give him standing to press his far-right, fundamentalist Christian view of the law and the Constitution.”
Michael DePrimo is an ambulance chaser, albeit a high tech one.
3) “…group of pro-life demonstrators…”
OK, they are demonstrators who call themselves by that term. However: Access to contraception and safe, early abortion saves the lives of many thousands of women, worldwide, every year. In parts of the world where these services are not available, women and young children (who are dependent on their mothers’ care, including breast milk) die more often–needlessly. The idea that blocking access to safe, legal abortion (or contraception, since many of the same people work very hard to do both) is nonsense.
Call them anti-abortion, call them anti-choice–but they are NOT pro-life in any more than a rhetorical sense.
Perhaps they can be referred to as “the demonstrators formerly known as PL…”