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Right to Life of Michigan News - The Primary Issue 1998




	*Right to Life of Michigan*


	Suicide Group Buys a Spot on the Ballot

	It took a year and a bounty of $1.50 per signature, but Merian's Friends (MF) turned in a reported 379,000 signatures for review by the state. MF is a suicide group named after one of Jack Kevorkian's early victims, Merian Fredericks. The ballot proposal would make Michigan the second suicide state -- along with Oregon -- and potentially encourages residents of other states to come here to be killed. "This flawed and dangerous bill would make Michigan a fatal haven for the suicidal," said RLM President Barbara A. Listing. "However, judging by the hundreds of thousands of dollars they needed to get signatures, Michigan does not embrace suicide. Kevorkian has shown us where that path leads."

The state will determine whether enough signatures are valid (the group needs nearly 250,000 valid signatures to be placed on the fall ballot.) However, the hiring of out-of-state signature gatherers has raised some questions about residency requirements. Also, many signature gatherers were uninformed about the nature of the bill.

"This initiative will only succeed through misrepresentation," said Listing. "They will ignore our legislation to revolutionize pain management, they will ignore the hope for curing cancer and they will try to brainwash us into believing that killing is a new form of healing."

Merian's Friends turned in its signatures at 2 p.m. on May 26, claiming to reporters that the initiative would do everything except kill people. They said it would somehow advance pain management.

The group's media message consisted largely of misrepresentation of killing as healing, as Listing mentioned. There was also a significant attempt to bash RLM and our efforts on behalf of the disabled and the ill. But behind the scenes, chaos ruled. At one point, when the group could not account for five of the boxes containing signatures, a




		Carol Poenisch celebrates the apparent victory (above) and Bob Alexander brings in boxes (below).wwp


					(See MF, page 18)C


	Our Work for Life Bears Fruit

	Lawmakers give women greater protection, create a ban on clone 'em and kill 'em research

	During the last election season, RLM's grassroots members put these prolife legislators in office. And the compassion of Michigan's prolife lawmakers never has been more evident, with the crafting of prolife legislation -- designed to protect and save lives -- allowing Michigan to set standards for the nation. Two "prenatal protection" bills received overwhelming votes ( 77-27 and 80-24) in the Michigan House of Representatives, affording expectant women with greater protection in their most vulnerable months of pregnancy. State Sen. William VanRegenmorter, the author of one of the prenatal protection bills, moved quickly to push the bill through the senate. VanRegenmorter introduced the legislation after reviewing the case of People v. Guthrie. In that case, Thomas Guthrie was alleged to have recklessly and carelessly driven his pickup truck across four lanes of traffic and crashed into a vehicle driven by Brenda Tucker. Tucker was at the time nine months pregnant and scheduled to deliver her baby by Cesarean section the next day. In the impact, Tucker's abdomen was slammed into the steering wheel, causing the unborn child to bleed to death. The Wexford County Circuit Court dismissed a charge of negligent homicide against Guthrie because the unborn child was not "born alive" and therefore not a "person" under Michigan law. If the truck had hit Brenda's car a day later, after the child had been born, the child's killer could have received a life sentence in prison. Sen. VanRegenmorter recognized the gross disparity in this sentencing, and nearly three years of work have born fruit. "This legislation ensures justice for both mother and child in such instances," VanRegenmorter said. Prenatal protection creates enhanced penalties when pregnant women are attacked so viciously that the unborn child is either harmed or killed.



								*(see "lawmakers," page 2)*