On Thursday evening abortionist Carhart gave a talk at the annual "Celebrate death" dinner held at Castle Barrett. Below is the article that appeared in Friday's World Herald (www.omaha.com)

Two things.

1- Pay particular attention to Carhart's quote at the end of the article. I think it will raise your eyebrows.

2- The Barretts (Frank, Karen, Pat etc.), owners of Castle Barrett, are a well known CATHOLIC family. I'm encouraging folks to write them and tell how scandalous it is for Catholics to associate themselves with child-murderers. I talked to Pat Barrett personally the night of the event (Rescue The Heartland picketed) and he said he didn't know it was an abortion group. I asked, if that were the case, why he didn't answer the letter we sent to them asking about it? He answered there wasn't enough time, but we mailed at least a week before the event, so that doesn't wash. Also, they are well known Democrats and no stranger to political advocacy. But whatever they say, I feel it is good to hold their feet to the fire.

Castle Barrett, 4330 Leavenworth, Omaha NE., 68105

OMAHA WORLD HERALD Friday January 26, 2001

Carhart Says Choice Is in Danger

BY DAVE MORANTZ

The guest of honor at Wednesday night's Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice dinner took the podium and spoke simply.

"I am LeRoy H. Carhart, and I am an abortionist."

The Bellevue doctor, demonized by anti-abortion groups across the nation, told a crowd of about 75 people that never in the 28 years since the U.S. Supreme Court made its landmark Roe vs. Wade decision has abortion been so close to being illegal.

"And I think it will be overturned in the next four to six years unless we get pro-choice people in to replace the radical-right fundamentalists that control local offices," Carhart said.

The dinner at Castle Barrett celebrated the 28th anniversary of the controversial court decision. It was a far cry from the boisterous anti- abortion rally marking the anniversary Saturday in Lincoln that organizers estimate was attended by 2,000 people. But Carhart drew strong support in his comments on topics ranging from U.S. attorney general nominee John Ashcroft to calls for abortion-rights Republicans like himself to become more politically active.

A group of protesters standing along Leavenworth Street had thinned to about three people by the time participants sat down to eat, though the protesters held graphic posters and yelled, "Think about that dead baby while you eat!" to those arriving.

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice also honored Carhart's staff and wife, Mary.

Carhart told the group that he would not perform abortions if they became illegal.

But unless abortion is kept legal, he said, the country will return to the days when many women became sterile at the hands of back-alley abortion doctors and others, too desperate to get to such doctors, perished.

Carhart's voice grew stronger as he discussed radical anti-abortion activists who physically target doctors like him and staffs like his.

"To hell with them," he said. "I know this is a religious function, but literally, to hell with them. We're going to do what is safe for women in the United States."

Although he called Ashcroft, a conservative Republican supported by anti-abortion groups, "an abomination," Carhart said it appeared inevitable that he would become attorney general. The opposition by Ashcroft and others on the far-right wing of the Republican Party to abortion comes from their objection to women's basic rights, he said.

"Women's rights is really the issue. And abortion is the only one they can really attack," he said.

Carhart also reaffirmed his opposition to Nebraska's ban on so-called "partial-birth" abortions, which the Supreme Court struck down this past summer. The law would have outlawed all abortions, Carhart said, not just the the procedure known medically as dilation and extraction.

"We're not asking for the right to suck the brains out of every child that walks down the street," he said. "We need to continue to offer safe abortions to women who need them to be done."

Back to