Joe Gartlan, a Revered Founder of VSHL

 

 

It is with great sorrow to learn that Joseph V. Gartlan, Jr., a revered founder of the Virginia Society for Human Life and later a distinguished member of the Senate of Virginia from 1972 to 2000, died July 18, 2008.  Mr. Gartlan, a prominent and highly regarded trial attorney, wrote in early 1967 the epic position paper for the founding of the Virginia Society for Human Life.

 

 

Entitled Abortion and Public Policy in Virginia, Mr. Gartlan’s paper recounted the precedent-breaking efforts beginning in the nineteen sixties to liberalize the abortion law in Virginia and in all the states in order to make abortion legal, efforts that demeaned respect for the dignity and sanctity of human life.

 

The voices included the Director of the Division of Local Health Services of the Virginia Health Department who was quoted in an article by the Associated Press in the Richmond News Leader of September 8, 1966:  Performance of certain abortions as a logical and necessary expansion of the thriving program of population control was advocated Wednesday by Dr. Robert W. Jessee.  Dr. Jessee was Director of the Division of Local Health Services of the Virginia Health Department.

 

Mr. Gartlan enumerated the relatively few times Virginia’s 1849 statute had been challenged in court.  In Miller v. Bennett in 1949, the State’s highest court defined the purpose of the law:

 

“This statute was passed, not for the protection of the woman, but for the protection of the unborn child and through it society.”

 

With the formation of VSHL in February, 1967, for the purpose of defending Virginia’s abortion law from the looming onslaught, Mr. Gartlan generously responded to invitations from throughout the state to address the issue as well as to help form local VSHL chapters. The first attempt to overturn the law occurred in the Virginia General Assembly of 1968 and failed.  However, in the 1970 session, the abortion law was changed to permit abortions for what amounted to almost any reason.

 

Mr. Gartlan went on to run successfully for election in 1972 to the Senate of Virginia where he was a leader and an eloquent advocate for the unborn child.  

 

In gratitude and recognition of Mr. Gartlan’s major contribution to the history of the pro-life movement, as the first state-wide pro-life organization in the nation, VSHL will continue its efforts to open minds and hearts to protect innocent human life under law from its earliest beginnings at fertilization to natural death.

 

Founded in February 1967, Virginia Society for Human Life has chapters throughout the Commonwealth.

 

Date Published: 2008-07-21 14:20:02

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