GRTL Responds [Jay]

I will post more on this later, but I wanted to quickly share something in regards to my last post. Dan Becker, the President of Georgia Right to Life, called me today and graciously spent two hours on the phone with me answering the questions that I asked while explaining the process that GRTL went through leading up to the failed advancement of HR536.

I will briefly say that I am encouraged by the work that was done by GRTL leading up to this and understand more fully how all of this happened. They did have reason to be optimistic that HR536 would pass and as such it is not fair to characterize the endeavor as foolish or not thought through. They are also in the midst of a campaign that though it was not designed for failure in the Georgia House, the plan did anticipate the possibility and has a clear series of progressions to continue toward a specified goal. While I am still not certain that this plan will have the results the GRTL wishes that was never the point of my confusion.

As to his answer on the timing of the Glenn Richardson press release, he acknowledges that he would have preferred that it not initially come forward through hearsay, but that Dr. Alveda King is now giving her first person accounts of the events and he was honestly trying to do the right thing as a Christian in alerting the public to what he had heard.

I maintained that the overall misunderstanding was due to a failure to effectively communicate these ideas and that as I took my information from an individual that was officially representing Georgia Right to Life then GRTL is ultimately responsible for that miscommunication. Dan acknowledged that this was a problem. It is a colossal understatement to say that talking to Dan Becker was a different experience than the lunch meeting I attended. It is almost inconceivable that they were both communications from the same organization.

Dan also rejected the idea that incrementalism is responsible for 50 million dead unborn human beings and identified himself and his organization as incrementalists. Ultimately, Dan and I agreed on the overwhelming majority of things and we were left with an honest disagreement as to the timing of HR536. I will post a more detailed account later, but I want to prayerfully consider all that Dan shared with me before doing more than clarifying where he honestly addressed my areas of concern.