WASHINGTON, D.C., January 13, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The pro-life coalition founded on securing legal protection for the human person at all stages of life has established its first full-time federal-level lobbying presence.
Personhood Alliance announced this week it will lobby full-time in Washington, D.C., with its president, Daniel Becker, at the helm of its new initiative.
The organization is in discussion with legislators on two personhood bills out of the gate for 2016.
“We are requesting a hearing on two bills which reflect a personhood approach to legal protection for all human life at any stage of development,” Becker said in a statement.
The bills are H.R. 426 (Hice-GA), the Sanctity of Life Act, and H.R. 816 (Mooney-WV), the Life at Conception Act, both of which Personhood Alliance is looking to advance before Congress for a vote next year.
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“We are actively working these two bills toward a single hearing that would anticipate a post election 2017 re-introduction and vote,” Becker said.
The National Personhood Alliance is an association of pro-life organizations and leaders that advocate for legal recognition and protection of human life at all stages. Personhood Alliance does not endorse incremental legislation such as pain-capable 20-week bills, and affiliates cannot endorse legislation that openly distinguishes a class of human being that can be specifically exempted from legal protection.
With its January 9 announcement, Personhood Alliance said it is one of just a few full-time pro-life lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill advocating the pro-personhood position.
Both of the proposed laws supported by Personhood Alliance establish personhood of the pre-born as its legal goal, Becker said in the statement. Legal personhood has been the objective of the pro-life movement since its beginning, he said.
“These two bills represent the stated historical objective of the pro-life movement, and we would like to begin the job of educating the grassroots base and setting expectations for a new bill in 2017 that firmly respects the biblical standards established by the movement in the early '70s.”
Becker listed recent legislation such as the 2015 Pain-Capable Bill and H.R. 3762, which endeavored to defund Planned Parenthood for the next year, calling them “message bills” that have confused the personhood legal objective by specifying classes of human life “that can be sacrificed for the 'greater good of the greatest number.'”
“This utilitarian approach by pro-life leaders and politicians dilutes the standard that all life is to be protected by equal protection of the law,” Becker stated.
“We want substantive protections,” he said, “and we believe that a Life at Conception Act in 2017 would assure that every baby is protected from her earliest biological beginning.”
