ACLU president Strossen stepping down

Posted on May 18, 2008

ACLU: Civil Liberties Luminary Nadine Strossen To Step Down As ACLU President

After almost 18 years of distinguished service as President of the American Civil Liberties Union, Nadine Strossen has announced that she will step down this year. Strossen, the first woman ever to lead the ACLU, is one of today’s most well known and respected civil liberties leaders. During her tenure as president, the ACLU has continued its role as a tireless defender of constitutional freedoms in the face of unrelenting threats.

Since the ACLU is brand without a “face,” the departure of the foul-mouthed Strossen will probably go unnoticed by the vast majority of Americans and will probably have little impact on the ACLU. Aside from presiding over the continued growth of the ACLU (a frightening thing to be sure), I’m not sure what she has contributed. “New ideas” from the ACLU under her leadership include: that thrice-convicted child molesters have a “right” to prowl children’s parks scoping their next victims, that viewing porn all day on taxpayer-funded computers in public libraries, in full view of children is a constitutional right, that NAMBLA has a “right” to publish its helpful hints on how to rape children and get away with it, that taxpayers should be compelled to pay for mentally ill inmates’ “sex reassignment” operations and hormone therapy and many other mom and apple pie causes.

A little bio section illuminates her pedigree and probably explains a lot:

Strossen says that her passion for individual freedom and social justice has its origins in the stories she heard as a child about family members who had the courage to speak out against civil liberties violations, including ones that they had endured. Her maternal grandfather, an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia, was a conscientious objector to World War I. His sentence for expressing his anti-war views was to stand against the courthouse in Hudson County, New Jersey so that “passers-by could spit on him.” Strossen’s father, who was born in Germany, spoke out against Nazism even before he was defined by Hitler’s racial laws as a “half Jew”; the Nazis forcibly removed him from school and imprisoned him in the Buchenwald concentration camp. He was liberated by American troops one day before he was to be sterilized, and he then worked with the U.S. military to apprehend Nazi leaders. Strossen’s mother was a women’s rights advocate whose own career options had been thwarted by gender discrimination; a charter member of NOW and a Planned Parenthood supporter, she would describe Strossen and her brother as “my two planned children.”

Wow. That story about her draft-dodging grampa sounds like a whopper! Good for her dad! He was one of the few Leftists then that opposed Hitler at the time (most had a warm and fuzzy for AH for quite a while until the Soviets told them it wasn’t cool anymore)! Yeah, her mom was a real winner. What does that even mean — “my two planned children”? Does it mean that she had more who were “unplanned” or is that a way of bragging about regular trips to the abortuary? Either way, what a bizarre statement. But if it’s the latter, at least she acknowledges that whatever babies she slaughtered in her own womb were children.

I look on with great interest about who will be named to succeed Strossen. She has certainly further radicalized an already extremist organization. And I’m sure the ACLU won’t be reaching for moderation, like considering any of the the former board members silenced and purged under the Strossen/Romero regime for daring to dissent from some ACLU practices that clearly exposed the ACLU as do-as-I-say-not-as-I-doers.

» Filed Under ACLU, Abortion, News, Socialism

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One Response to “ACLU president Strossen stepping down”

Zoe Brain on May 21st, 2008 1:24 am

Planned Parenthood had a very different meaning back then.

“Planned Parenthood dates its beginnings to 1916 when Sanger, her sister, and a friend open America’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. In Sanger’s America, women cannot vote, sign contracts, have bank accounts, or divorce abusive husbands. They cannot control the number of children they have or obtain information about birth control, because in the 1870s a series of draconian measures, called the Comstock laws, made contraception illegal and declared information about family planning and contraception “obscene.”

In 1936 Sanger and other birth control proponents win their first major judicial victory. Sanger is arrested after leaking information to postal authorities that she illegally ordered birth control products through the mail. Her case triggers a review of the issue by the courts. Judge Augustus Hand, writing for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, orders a sweeping liberalization of federal Comstock laws, ruling that contemporary data on the damages of unplanned pregnancy and the benefits of contraception mean that contraceptive devices and birth control could no longer be classified as obscene. Because Judge Hand’s decision applies only to New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, it is almost 30 years before married couples throughout the country have the right to obtain contraceptives from licensed physicians.”

Think condoms, not abortions.

“By the 1960s, Planned Parenthood is a respected and powerful voice in the movement for women’s rights, fighting successfully for increased access to birth control, pushing for the creation and funding of domestic and international family planning programs, and playing a crucial role in the development of the pill and IUD (intrauterine device).”

It was only in 1962 that that changed.

“In 1961, Estelle Griswold, president of Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, opens a birth control clinic to dispense contraceptives and to put the state’s ban on birth control to the test. Her act of civil disobedience is rewarded: In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, removes one of the last serious barriers to family planning when it strikes down state laws prohibiting the use of contraceptives by married couples.”

That is the context.

As for 1962?

In 1962, Alan Guttmacher, M.D., begins his 12-year tenure as Planned Parenthood president. He is a strong advocate for a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion at a time when Americans are increasingly angered by the dire consequences of abortion restrictions.

* From 1956 to 1962, hundreds of women in the U.S. and Europe who took the drug thalidomide while pregnant give birth to children missing arms and legs. Sherri Finkbine, an American mother of four who used thalidomide, is refused an abortion. More than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the refusal. Mrs. Finkbine flees to Sweden for a safe, legal abortion. (The fetus is gravely deformed.) Her case and others involving women who have taken thalidomide convince many Americans that anti-abortion laws need reform.

* In 1966, an epidemic of rubella, which, like thalidomide, causes a high incidence of fetal deformity, heightens public anger against abortion bans.

These two tragedies, combined with women’s growing demands for the right to control their own fertility, bolster public support for legal and safe abortion.