American RTL

Tier 1


Leslie Hanks

Leslie Hanks


Tier 1 - Personhood Now


Description
  • President of American Right To Life: From 1995 to 2012 Leslie Hanks was vice president of America's first "Right To Life" organization, Colorado Right To Life. (CRTL incorporated in 1970 even before the formation of the National Right To Life Committee and years before the Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court passed the infamous Roe v. Wade opinion which was itself written by Republican Justice Harry Blackmun. See Focus on the Strategy II for the tragic and unexpected partisan history of abortion in America.) Leslie continues her fight to abolish human abortion as the president of American Right To Life and she still helps out occasionally as a spokesperson for Colorado RTL.

  • June 2012 John Roberts Update: In 2005, before the personhood camp took over Colorado RTL, as the group's vice president, Leslie Hanks tried to release a statement warning pro-life leaders to oppose the confirmation of pro-abortion, liberal John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court. The pre-personhood CRTL leaders vetoed that press release (which you can see today at CRTL's site). Fast-forward seven years. Now that Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote, predictably, to uphold Obamacare, Leslie Hanks' suppressed press release takes on greater historical and predictive significance. For principled pro-lifers had long sounded such warnings. For example, National RTL-supported Arlen Specter, predictably, was the deciding U.S. Senator who switched parties to pass Obamacare. Likewise, NRTL-supported Justice John Roberts, predictably, cast the deciding vote to uphold Obamacare. Many pro-lifers prefer maintaining the illusion that they are electing pro-lifers over the reality of knowing the truth. Those pro-lifers who prefer illusion can stop reading here. For the rest of you, please continue. And also, make sure to also see the vitally important Pro-life Profile of Mitt Romney.

     

  • National Leader: Leslie is a nationally-respected leader in the resurgent personhood movement and has long supported state and federal legislation, Human Life and Personhood Amendments and is a pioneer in the paradigm shift from regulating the killing of children to the strategy of advocating for the God-given right to life and personhood of the unborn!

     

  • Key Personhood Activist: Leslie was a key activist in Colorado's historical statewide 2008 Personhood initiative for which her organization led the effort to gather 131,000 signatures. Conventional wisdom held that an absolute ban on abortion could receive perhaps 13 percent of the vote. Yet CRTL's support for Colorado for Equal Rights' Amendment 48 doubled that claim, garnering more than half-a-million votes even though Planned Parenthood, which gets $600 for every child they kill, outspent the personhood campaign 10 to 1, 1  and this happened in a liberal state where even many Republicans are pro-choice and the state party chairman banned Colorado's largest pro-life organization from their annual convention but welcomed in Republican for Choice. 2 And those 585,000 votes for an outright ban on abortion came with the opposition of National RTL, the major 'pro-life' Republican candidates and everyone on Tiers 3 and 4.

  • Opponent of Child-Killing Regulations: Leslie has long opposed 'pro-life' legislation that ends with, "and then you can kill the baby." 3

  • Resigned as CWA Legislative Liaison: Leslie was a longtime legislative liaison for Concerned Women for America in Colorado but has since resigned her CWA membership saying that, "CWA has repeatedly undermined the eventual re-criminalization of abortion by their continued support for abortion regulations and pro-choice candidates." 4

  • Confronts Leaders When Necessary: Leslie's effort to explain to Family Research Council's Gary Bauer that it was wrong for Samuel Alito to vote 5 to keep legal partial birth abortion in New Jersey is documented in the groundbreaking Focus on the Strategy II DVD.

  • Exposed the PBA Fiasco: Leslie's effort to expose the Partial Birth Abortion fiasco 6  is mentioned in the widely-reported Open Letter to Dr. James Dobson (which was signed by key prolife leaders including Ambassador Alan Keyes).

  • Fought to Save Terri Schiavo: In the fight to save Terri Schiavo, as part of her many years of street protesting and activism, Leslie led the effort to bring pro-lifers to Pinellas County, Florida in an attempt to peacefully but physically intervene to get water and food to Terri.

  • Fought on the Right and the Left: In the fight for Terri's life, Leslie Hanks worked to expose the moral bankruptcy of Tier 2, 3 and 4 individuals and organizations which actually endorsed assisted suicide in their misguided effort by calling for the need for "written directives" before the state can allow a person to be starved to death. 7  Leslie saw this development as tragic but predictable. A world in which 'pro-life' leaders call for the regulation of suicide was NOT a safe world for the vulnerable Terri.

  • Courage to Oppose Own Group's Effort to Legitimize Assisted Suicide: As the vice president of one of NRTL's more active state chapters, Leslie worked to oppose counterproductive efforts of her own national organization. If the Hemlock Society has proposed legislation for the federal government to abide by state pro-suicide laws, Christian activists nationwide would have protested. But in the immoral fog of Tier 3 'pro-life' strategy, NRTL committed perhaps the most immoral act of all during the Terri battle, and introduced the Incapacitated Persons Legal Protection Act which would have been the first federal law to legitimize state assisted suicide laws that permitted “the withdrawal of food or fluids” simply with “a written advance directive valid under applicable law. 8

  • Stopped the Killing of Lauren Richardson: Leslie helped prevent the murder of Lauren Richardson, another brain-injured woman slated for starvation and dehydration because of her handicap. Leslie worked with Lauren's father, Randy, to help him resist those who wanted his daughter dead.

  • Memorialized Dylan Walborn: Leslie has led the effort to expose the starvation death and memorialize the memory of little Dylan Walborn of Broomfield, Colorado who was a victim of America's "mercy-killing" euthanasia movement. As documented in an 8-page Denver Post feature. 9  10  11  12  13  14

  • Leslie Hanks is Right on the Abortion/Breast Cancer Link: After years of Leslie adding her voice to the warning about the well-documented link, finally, a leading National Cancer Institute researcher admits the abortion link to breast cancer. Louise A. Brinton, largely responsible for getting the government-funded NCI to deny the abortion-breast cancer link, now has co-authored a study which describes significant risk factors, including "induced abortion." 15  16 The study also says that these risk factors are "consistent with the effects observed in previous studies on younger women." Brinton's report also documents a 320% increase in risk for women taking the birth control pill to develop TNBC, Triple Negative Breast Cancer, a particularly aggressive and treatment-resistant cancer. 17 Through organizing annual protests with huge banners at Denver's Race for the Cure, Leslie warns tens of thousands of women that abortion creates a significantly-increased risk for breast cancer, and this effort has included a meeting with Komen officials 18 at which former Komen medical research analyst Eve Sanchez Silver and Professor Joel Brind, Ph.D. endocrinologist from NY City's Baruch College explained the reason for the abortion/cancer link. As transcribed from a recording of the meeting, CRTL asked, "Why aren't women being told about the most preventable risk factor?" to which Komen's public relations representative Dana Brandorff answered, "We tend to focus on the cure... we're focusing our energies on that, rather than the preventative." 19  20  21 Hanks also made the case that the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure is dishonest in not disclosing its financial contributions to Planned Parenthood, which was denied by Komen's Denver board member and chairman of their grants committee, J.P. Pedinielli, but which was then proven by documentation provided by Hanks and Silver. Hanks also demonstrated that the nation's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, not only bears responsibility for encouraging women to be complicit in the killing of their own children, but that they are additionally guilty of causing increasing millions of women to suffer greatly through post-abortive breast cancer. 

Abortion & breast cancer
  •  Principled Pro-life Blogger: Leslie's blogs at Prolife Blogs, the Passionate Prolifer, and at FreeRepublic.com help to document the long struggle in the fight to end child killing.

  • Stalwart for Her Organizations: As vice president of CRTL, Leslie successfully worked to stop compromise within the nation's oldest "right to life" group, which had started to succumb to regulating the murder of children. Leslie then successfully lobbied for Columbine dad Brian Rohrbough to become the president of her organization. Thereafter, Brian spoke to seven million people on the CBS Evening News the night of the Amish school murders; nationally he was voted Pro-lifer of the Year; and he was nominated in 2008 as Ambassador Alan Keyes' vice presidential running mate; and has influenced governing officials around the nation to introduce personhood legislation!) When Mr. Rohrbough left CRTL to become president of American Right To Life, Hanks helped to draft Hurricane Katrina transplant Pastor Joe Riccobono as the new president of Colorado RTL. Mr. Riccobono has actively fought against child killing since 1990 but being a relative newcomer to Colorado, in his interview he recommended that ProlifeProfiles highlight the work of Leslie Hanks.

     

  • Opposed the Immoral Fetal Pain Act: Leslie Hanks was an important part of the successful pro-life effort that prevented the National RTL Committee from passing their immoral Fetal Pain Act which would have rightly informed a woman that her child would feel pain if aborted, but then wickedly offered a 'solution' to that woman, by providing anesthesia, which in many instances would have the unintended effect of relieving the woman's guilt and helping her justify her abortion. As it was described by Steven Ertelt, editor of LifeNews.com and president of NRLC-affiliate Wyoming RTL, the Fetal Pain Act would result in the child being killed more humanely. 22 Leslie is one of the leaders who have helped thwart the pro-life industry's desire to raise funds and pursue this immoral strategy.

  • Where It Counts: As a wife, mother, grandmother and career woman, Leslie still makes the time to work as much as many full-time leaders yet she has never accepted a salary for her pro-life work.

Summary: American Right To Life and Leslie Hanks are among the leaders in the personhood wing of the pro-life movement!