By Lenny Doan
Christian Action League
June 13, 2019
Former House Speaker Pro-Tempore, Paul “Skip” Stam, sent out an email blast this week, urging friends and colleagues to purchase a North Carolina specialty license plate that touts the pro-life message: “Choose Life.”
Stam, a long-time staunch advocate for the cause of life, suggest that the specialty license plate would make a great Father’s Day gift. The Christian Action League concurs.
Stam wrote in his email:
“Only a few days left until Father’s Day on June 16. You forgot? He doesn’t wear ties anymore, and he has all the gadgets he needs. What to do?
“Something everyone can do to show appreciation for your own father is to order a “Choose Life” license plate for yourself or for a friend. There are now over 2,600 North Carolinians displaying these license plates! Every time they are seen on the highways it is encouragement to fathers that the support they give and time they spend loving their children is really worth it.
“The plates have helped raise almost $40,000 for the cause of life.
“For more information and instructions on how to order this license plate, go here.
“We have a vision to see 10,000 of these license plates on the highways in 2019.
“The latest vote on the bill to require that living survivors of abortion receive life-saving medical care ( Senate Bill 359 – Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. ) reminds us of this word from the Bible: “‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse’ (Malachi 4:5, 6).”
The Choose Life license plate movement started in Ocala, Florida, in 1996.
Proposed legislation for the plate had little traction in North Carolina until June of 2011, when the North Carolina General Assembly approved the tag.
In 2012, abortion forces challenged the plates in court and U.S. District Court Judge James Fox ordered an injunction against their production. Fox’s ruling was appealed to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and a three-judge panel of the court unanimously ruled in February of the same year that offering the pro-life plate without also offering a pro-abortion one was unconstitutional.
The Fourth Circuit, however, reversed their ruling in March of 2016 after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Justices on the Fourth Circuit to take another look at the case in light of the High Court’s 2015 decision in a Texas license plate case. The Supreme Court ruled in that case that the specialty plates constitutionally represented government speech, which also allowed Texas to refuse plates that featured the Confederate flag.
Dr. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League said the plates are definitely constitutional. “The encouragement of childbirth is a legitimate governmental objective,” said Creech, “The state is perfectly within the boundaries of the Constitution because the state has a right to a future citizenry. Therefore, it has a right, even an obligation, to adopt it as government speech.”
Creech added that he agrees with Stam that the plates would make a great Father’s Day gift.
“I hope that thousands of more pro-life North Carolinians will purchase this specialty plate. Who knows, God might use the plate’s message to change a mother’s mind or even a Father’s mind about abortion and save an unborn child’s life,” Creech said.
