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Waiting for the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally on Capitol Hill to begin on Friday, David Bereit, founder of the anti-abortion group 40 Days for Life, explained to me, with the patience of a dedicated crusader accustomed to repeating talking points, why he is proud to be standing with the coalition of groups who are protesting, relentlessly, that the contraception coverage requirement under the Affordable Care Act infringes on their religious freedom. But while Bereit, who is not Catholic, said he is opposed to the government mandating contraception coverage, he would not give me a straight answer on whether he is opposed to contraception.

As the religious freedom wars have heated up over the United States Department of Health and Human Servicess contraception mandate, and as non-Catholic groups have taken up the mantle of the Catholic Churchs opposition to abortion, there has been a blurring of lines between activists whose primary objection is to end abortion and those who are also opposed to contraception. Under the religious freedom banner, and in particular the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies, are a wide array of organizations that include those once considered fringe, such as Bereits former employer, the anti-contraception American Life League, and Operation Rescue.

Before Lila Rose started making her deceptive guerrilla videos at Planned Parenthood clinics, before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops started investigating the Girl Scouts, before it became essential for any God- (and base-) fearing Republican to call for defunding Planned Parenthood, David Bereit was at the forefront of the spiritual and political warfare against what he has called Planned Parenthoods abortion empire. His 40 Days for Life organization organizes local activists to protest outside of Planned Parenthood and other medical clinics. In talking with me, he accused Planned Parenthood of systematically destroying innocent lives through abortion and through many of its other projects and programs, of devaluing human life, and of leading people into lifestyles where they will later feel the need for abortion.

Bereit cut his teeth as an anti-abortion activist in Brazos County, Texas, a state that has become, particularly under Gov. Rick Perry, a hotbed for spiritual warriors who believe they are carrying out Gods calling to fell the mighty Planned Parenthood. A federal courts injunction of the states latest effort to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving federally subsidized funding under the states Womens Health Program is currently on appeal.

In 2002, as head of the Brazos County Coalition for Life, Bereit, a former pharmaceutical salesman, developed a list of local companies targeted for a boycott over their donations of goods and services to a fundraiser for the local Planned Parenthood. The clinic was the communitys only abortion provider and one of only a few facilities where low-income women could obtain healthcare. Local business owners called the boycott a threat and blackmail. In Houston, activists made similar efforts to boycott local contractors who worked on a new facility that opened in 2010, which has been continually protested by anti-abortion forces as the largest abortion facility in the Western hemisphere.

Following his successes with the Coalition for Life in Brazos County, in 2004 Bereit launched the first local 40 Days for Life campaign 40 days being a biblical number of prayer and fasting outside medical clinics, or abortion mills as activists call them.

A year after launching 40 Days for Life, Bereit joined the American Life League, long considered one of the fringe players in the anti-abortion movement, serving as national director of its project STOPP, or Stop Planned Parenthood.

Shortly after joining STOPP, Bereit blamed the Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which ruled state bans on contraception unconstitutional, for a tragic moral breakdown in our culture, adding, It is time for Americans to take a long, hard look at the real legacy of theGriswolddecision. Although we cant undo the consequences overnight, we can begin to take back our society one step at a time. The first step is to put an end to the destructive influence of Planned Parenthood, the organization that forced this tragedy upon our nation 40 years ago.

At the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally, Bereit told me he opposed the legal precedent that Griswold set, as it laid the groundwork for Roe v. Wade. But when I pressed him about whether he agreed with ALLs opposition to contraception generally, he paused and said, I still agree with the position that anything that directly causes the destruction of human life, and there is evidence suggesting that certain birth control devices can have an abortifacient property. I do have opposition to those things, which he said included birth control pills. He, like other speakers at the rally, repeated the false charge that the emergency contraceptives ella and Plan B, which are covered by the HHS rule, are abortifacients.

In an online discussion titled Ending Abortion, Bereit interviewed Jim Sedlak, his former colleague and the current executive director of STOPP, calling him the most credible expert I have ever heard on the topic of Planned Parenthood. STOPPs petition web page to end federal funding of Planned Parenthood charges, among other things, that Planned Parenthoods top goal for the next 14 years is to push its agenda of promiscuous sex everywhere in our society, and that it pushes pornography to children, covers up for rapists and child predators, and is openly hostile to Christianity.

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V-word vs. P-word