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Retired Pro-Life Senator Nominated as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

ROME, June 8, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - U.S. President George W. Bush nominated retired Republican Senator and former Missouri Attorney General, John Danforth, as ambassador to the United Nations Friday. Danforth is a well-known advocate for the pro-life cause, receiving a 100 percent pro-life voting record for his several years in politics.

In a 1974 speech to a right-to-life audience, while acting as Attorney General of Missouri, Danforth describes his legal battle with the U.S. Supreme Court in Rogers v. Danforth. Filed in 1970, Danforth argued that Missouri's abortion law violated individual protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

"Now, when it became known that I was coming down here I received a few telegrams and letters from people who said, 'Look, it is your duty to be the Attorney-General, not to speak out and give us your own philosophy on this subject,'" Danforth explained. "But, I think, I am more than an Attorney-General . . . I am also a man. And, as such, I have my own views. And I believe that abortion is wrong! I believe that abortion is the taking of a human life and, as such, is morally wrong. And, granted that when a person has an unwanted pregnancy it can be a very sad situation for that individual; however, no sadness in any human situation justifies the taking of human life, and that's what's involved."

Danforth expressed hope in his bid to overturn the abortion law, " . . . what we are seeking to do is what never has been done in any Court before, and that is to present medical evidence which, I believe, if presented to a Court, would demonstrate, quite strongly, that an unborn child is, as a matter of medical fact, human life before it is born."

"Now, if we lose in Court, we have lost the battle but we have not lost the war, because we must still continue to work for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to protect the unborn," he emphasized. " . . . And that it is never permissible . . . it is never a permissible exercise of human freedom . . . to kill what annoys us and what causes us trouble."

Danforth, also an ordained Episcopalian priest, will preside over the funeral service of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan this week.

Read the speech Danforth gave to the right-to-life in 1974: http://pages.slu.edu/student/poellja/Danforth.html

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