Judith A. Brown is the president and cofounder of

American Life League American Life League, Inc. (ALL) is an American Catholic activist organization which opposes abortion, all forms of contraception, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia. Its current president is co-founder Judie Brown and its headquarters is ...

, the oldest Catholic grassroots

anti-abortion Anti-abortion movements, also self-styled as pro-life or abolitionist movements, are involved in the abortion debate advocating against the practice of abortion and its legality. Many anti-abortion movements began as countermovements in respons ...

organization in the United States.

Early life and education

Brown was born in Los Angeles, California on March 4, 1944. Her father abandoned his family a year and a half later, leaving her mother and her younger sister Sheila, who had just been born, to fend for themselves. Brown's mother had remarried during 1952 to Chester Limbourne when she was six years old. Judie's grandparents took them in and were very influential in molding her character and resolve and her grandparents insured that she received the proper Catholic education and then paid for her to attend the Catholic all-girls St. Mary's Academy in Inglewood by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. After graduating St. Mary's Academy in 1962, Brown worked at Kresge's as a bookkeeper while attending

El Camino Junior College El Camino College (Elco or ECC) is a two-year public community college located in the unincorporated area of Los Angeles County known as Alondra Park.Associated Arts degree during 1963 and completed a bachelor's degree program at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

two years later.

Kmart

By the time she turned 21, Browne was an office manager for the

Kmart Kmart Corporation ( , doing business as Kmart and stylized as kmart) is an American retail company that owns a chain of big box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was inc ...

western region. Brown was later transferred by Kmart Seattle, where she met a young man named Paul Brown who was interviewing for a retail job with Kmart. Judie Limbourne and Paul Brown were eventually married on December 30, 1967 in the same church in

Hawthorne Hawthorne often refers to the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne may also refer to: Places Australia *Hawthorne, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane Canada * Hawthorne Village, Ontario, a suburb of Milton, Ontario United States * Hawt ...

, California where Judie had received her

First Holy Communion First Communion is a ceremony in some Christian traditions during which a person of the church first receives the Eucharist. It is most common in many parts of the Latin Church tradition of the Catholic Church, Lutheran Church and Anglican Communi ...

. Both of the Browns had worked for K-Mart at this time when she opted to stay home to begin a family. Their first child was Hugh Richard III born on November 23, 1968, followed by Catherine Marie. In 1970, Brown began handing out

literature at the request of her parish priest, and over the next several years, she became more and more involved in the

movement. As her husband had been transferred by Kmart during 1973 to

Savannah A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the Canopy (forest), canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to rea ...

, Georgia, Brown got involved with helping organizers of the

Georgia Right to Life Georgia Right to Life (GRTL) is a 501(c)(4) anti abortion organization that is non-profit, non-partisan, and non-sectarian. It was incorporated in 1971 by Jay and Cheryl Bowman. In 1973, it became the state affiliate of the Washington, D.C.-based ...

stuff envelopes and mail out anti-abortion materials following the U.S. Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade decision. Her third child Christina Lee was born on June 19, 1974 and eight months later the Brown family moved with Kmart again, from Georgia to Kannopolis, North Carolina and later to

Steubenville Steubenville is a city in and the county seat of Jefferson County, Ohio, United States. Located along the Ohio River 33 miles west of Pittsburgh, it had a population of 18,161 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. The city's name is deri ...

, Ohio.

American Life League

With her husband Paul Brown having been transferred again by Kmart to the Washington D.C. area in 1976, Brown began working with the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). American Life League was founded on April 1, 1979 by Brown, her husband Paul, and eight other

Americans after a

schism A schism ( , , or, less commonly, ) is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization, movement, or religious denomination. The word is most frequently applied to a split in what had previously been a single religious body, suc ...

with the

National Right to Life Committee The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) is the oldest and largest national anti-abortion organization in the United States with affiliates in all 50 states and more than 3,000 local chapters nationwide. Since the 1980s, NRLC has influen ...

allowing for legal abortion in the case of rape, incest, and health of the mother. Brown reportedly stated in 1981 that the NRLC had been "trying to destroy my husband" by absorbing his Life Amendment Political Action Committee. Within a month of her split with NRLC, she began the American Life Lobby (dormant since 1991) and the American Life League through contacts made by her husband who had previously founded the Life Amendment Political Action Committee or LAPAC. The stated purpose of the American Life League (ALL) was to promote

positions to the public and Brown began developing ideas for ''ALL About Issues'' printed newsletter and within less than a year of its founding, ALL had 68,000 members and received assistance launching the organization from Howard Phillips, virtually free publicity from

Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presiden ...

co-founder

Paul Weyrich Paul Michael Weyrich (; October 7, 1942 – December 18, 2008) was an American religious conservative political activist and commentator associated with the New Right. He co-founded the conservative think tanks The Heritage Foundation, the Free ...

, and the help of extensive membership lists provided by right-wing

direct mail Advertising mail, also known as direct mail (by its senders), junk mail (by its recipients), mailshot or admail (North America), letterbox drop or letterboxing (Australia) is the delivery of advertising material to recipients of postal mail. The d ...

specialist

Richard Viguerie Richard Art Viguerie (; born September 23, 1933) is an American conservative figure, pioneer of political direct mail and writer on politics. He is the current chairman of ConservativeHQ.com. Life and career Viguerie was born in Golden Acres, T ...

. The American Life Lobby that had begun in the basement of the Brown's residence had by September 1981 ALL moved into regular office space and earned legitimate notice on Capitol Hill during October of that year when ALL played a positive role in defeating the Hatch Amendments pertaining to the

Human Life Amendment The Human Life Amendment is the name of multiple proposals to amend the United States Constitution that would have the effect of overturning the Supreme Court 1973 decision ''Roe v. Wade'', which ruled that prohibitions against abortion were uncon ...

legislative proposals.

ALL street tactics

In 1994 ALL filed suit to challenge the

Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE or the Access Act, Pub. L. No. 103-259, 108 Stat. 694) (May 26, 1994, ) is a United States law that was signed by President Bill Clinton in May 1994, which prohibits the following three things: ...

. In ''American Life League v. Reno'', ALL lost in the

4th Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (in case citations, 4th Cir.) is a federal court located in Richmond, Virginia, with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts: * District of Maryla ...

, and the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

refused to hear the case.

Author

Brown has written 12 books, including an autobiography entitled ''Not My Will but Thine'' (2002), ''Saving Those Damned Catholics: A Defense of Catholic Teaching'' (2007), and her most recent ''The Broken Path: How Catholic Bishops Got Lost in the Weeds of American Politics'' (2011). In 2013, Brown wrote a short booklet on Pope Francis entitled ''Pope Francis: Portrait of Holiness''.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Judie Living people American anti-abortion activists 1944 births People from Indio, California Activists from California University of California, Los Angeles alumni