Anti-Abortion Group to Protest Palin

When she was running for governor of Alaska in 2006, Sarah Palin reportedly said that even if her then-14-year-old daughter were raped, she would "choose life" and force her to bear a child. Comments like that that have endeared the fiery Alaskan politician to most pro-life voters, who lionized her for not aborting her Down's Syndrome baby. But Trig isn’t enough to protect Palin from a phalanx of anti-abortion activists who plan to protest her appearance on Thursday to promote her book in the conservative heartland of Indiana. Their reason? They think she's not really pro-life.

For the Denver-based American Right to Life, when it comes to abortion, Palin is as impure as any godless feminist. “[H]er words and actions prove that she is officially pro-choice and stands against the God-given right to life of the unborn,” they write in a new report. ARTL members plan to educate reporters about Palin’s many alleged failings as a true believer, particularly her March nomination of a former Planned Parenthood board member to the Alaska Supreme Court and her refusal to call for a ban on the morning-after pill.

ARTL has claimed credit for ousting Mitt Romney from the 2008 presidential race by exposing his pro-life "conversion" as a fraud with TV ads in the key primary states of Iowa and South Carolina. The group has grown exponentially over the past two years since it split from the National Right to Life Committee over its belief that the evangelical powerhouse had sold out to the GOP by trading candidate endorsements for thousands of dollars worth of donations from the party.

Palin is emblematic of that compromised relationship, according to ARTL. "The pro-life movement has sunk to such a low level that if you don't kill your own child you qualify as a leader," says ARTL spokesman Bob Enyart, referring to Palin’s decision to give birth to Trig.

While it does not condone violence against abortion providers, ARTL may be the nation’s most radical anti-abortion group. It promotes the simple logic that "either abortion is murder or it's not, and if it is, you don’t support those who'd kill some children," says Enyart, explaining why they don't like efforts by more established pro-life groups to simply regulate the practice with such restrictions as the partial-birth abortion ban. ARTL wants abortion to be a crime—and it doesn’t countenance compromise.

As a 527 group, ARTL cannot formally endorse candidates. But as Enyart points out with a chuckle, "We can't say don't vote for Mitt Romney, but you can say Romney is the son of the devil and if you vote for him you'll go to hell." The group’s president is Brian Rohrbough, who once served as the running mate to hardline conservative presidential contender Alan Keyes. (Rohrbough is perhaps better known for having lost a son in the Columbine massacre.)

One of the organization's goals is to expose politicians who claim to be pro-life but fall short of supporting anything less than legal rights for the unborn and full criminalization of abortion. ARTL launched a new website this week called Prolife Profiles that prominently features a report calling Palin’s record on abortion "shocking to the conscience." ARTL has given Palin a "Tier 4" designation that lumps her in with other allegedly fake pro-lifers like Romney, George W. Bush, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and Rep. Ron Paul. Tier 4 members "use the pro-life title but deny the personhood and God-given right to life of the unborn." By that measure, Palin has many strikes against her, according to ARTL, including:

* Her failure to endorse legislation and amendments that would extend equal protection laws to unborn children