Press Room



Back To Top
Pro-Life Wisconsin Urges Rep. Wasserman to Retract Analogy Comparing Pro-Life Movement to "Islamic Jihad"
PLW Letterhead

Tuesday, June 24, 2003


Contact:
Matt Sande, Director of Legislative Affairs
Katherine Ribnek, Director of Communications
262) 796-1111, (262) 352-0890, or info@prolifewisconsin.org


Pro-Life Wisconsin Urges Rep. Wasserman to Retract Analogy
Comparing Pro-Life Movement to “Islamic Jihad”


Statement from Peggy Hamill, State Director, Pro-Life Wisconsin:

Despite Representative Sheldon Wasserman’s public clarification of his analogy in Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel comparing the pro-life movement in Wisconsin to the “Islamic Jihad,” Pro-Life Wisconsin is compelled to set the record straight on the beliefs and tactics of our organization.

Pro-Life Wisconsin’s mission is to help restore and protect the inalienable right to life for all citizens of our state, whether born or preborn, young, old, disabled or terminally ill. We affirm that the right to life exists at the moment of fertilization and extends until natural death. As a Christian organization, we rely on God to change hearts and minds toward His most precious creation of human life. We are a peaceful movement. Pro-Life advocates are dedicated and compassionate people willing to lend a helping hand to those in need. Many pro-lifers volunteer at pregnancy care centers, work with the disabled, adopt children, open their homes to pregnant mothers, and serve as hospice volunteers.

Having elected officials resort to name-calling of Wisconsin's grandmothers, parents, college students, and teens is very hurtful, offensive, and completely unacceptable. While we appreciate Representative Wasserman’s clarification of the term Jihad as implying a “divinely sanctioned struggle,” we urge him to fully retract his use of the term as it leaves in the mind of the reader an association of peaceful pro-life advocates with those who would blow up innocent women and children and fly airplanes into buildings killing thousands. Nothing could be further from the truth.

-End-
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Article

Rep. Wasserman Clarification concerning comments as reported in the June 21st Milwaukee Journal Sentinel