The Pre-Roe Pro-Life Movement in Minnesota and New York

nationwide effort organized by the Catholic-sponsored group, but rather drove them to
develop a wholly new and improved one themselves.
A handwritten memo, apparently written shortly after the convention, explains
how Marjory Mecklenburg, Joseph Lampe, and Dr. Paul Andreini met in Rochester, MN
to compile a proposal for “a more independent,…effective and representative national
pro-life organization.” 8
With regard to the 1970 meeting in Chicago, MCCL leaders
claimed “[e]ven at this early date it was obvious to those attending that Msgr. McHugh
totally dominated the NRLC and that it was a façade, not a national right to life
organization.” 9
The memo-writer, likely Marjory Mecklenburg or Joseph Lampe (from
similarities with their other handwritten notes, also included in consulted archives),
described how delegates raised issue with how both the meeting and the national
organization at large were run, while “no changes were made by Msgr. McHugh and no
alternative plans were offered…[T]here was great sentiment for a commitment to an
independently structured and funded NRLC, but to no avail.” 10 After three years of such
incidents, MCCL activists saw the NRLC as an organization completely dominated by
Msgr. McHugh and the Catholic Church, as an “autocratic organization” that could not
sufficiently meet the desires of the broadening base of the anti-abortion movement. 11
The
draft for a new group stated the improved national organization would be modeled after
the most successful statewide groups, which were on the whole older and more
established than the existing nationwide ones. MCCL was specifically mentioned as one
such model group. Marjory Mecklenburg certainly knew the NRLC, its tactics,
8 Untitled Memo, ACCL Records, Box 4, Folder: National Right to Life Convention June 16-18,
1972, Gerald R. Ford Library.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
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