Conference Report

The Midwest Personhood Conference was a wonderful opportunity to meet with Personhood advocates from other states and to talk about strategy. Personally, I enjoyed meeting prolife leaders like Cal Zastrow, Rebecca Kiessling, Flip Benham, Gualberto Garcia-Jones, and Walter Hoye. Here is PersonhoodUSA co-founder Keith Mason's press release:

Pro-life advocates from ten states including Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin gathered in Wichita, Kansas last Saturday, September 11th for the Midwest Personhood Pro-life Conference.

The event sponsored by Personhood Kansas and Right to Life of Kansas featured representatives Keith Mason and Cal Zastrow from Personhood USA and Johanna Dasteel from the American Life League. Other participants included Gualberto Garcia Jones, Attorney and President of Personhood Colorado; Rev. Walter Hoye, leader of the California Human Rights Amendment Initiative Drive; Rebecca Kiessling, Attorney and International Pro-life Speaker; and the Rev. Flip Benham, National Director of Operation Save America.

The theme of the conference was answering the distortions and legal objections to personhood measures and focusing on the strategic significance of the movement in ending abortion.

Attendees from Colorado were pleased to report on their successful efforts to place a constitutional amendment on the November, 2010 ballot. Amendment 62 would define the word "person" to include all human beings from their biological beginnings.

More than a dozen in attendance traveled from the great state of Oklahoma. They utilized the opportunity to network with national personhood leaders and are excited to report that they will be launching a personhood initiative drive soon.

"We're grateful for the wonderful personhood leaders in attendance who were able to share both their legal expertise and their experience in working on successful personhood campaigns. The conference bore much fruit, and we go forth with a renewed spirit to pursue personhood measures, protect the preborn, and end the institution of abortion throughout the nation," said Keith Ashley of Personhood Kansas.