Scott Fischbach is the new executive director of the National Right to Life Committee. He replaces David N. O’Steen, who stepped down Dec. 31 after nearly 40 years at the helm of the nation’s oldest and largest pro-life organization.
Fischbach has served as executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life since 2001. Prior to joining MCCL, he served on the campaign staff for former Minnesota Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, as National Right to Life field coordinator, as coalitions director for Sen. Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign and as an advisor to numerous pro-life public officials including former North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole and former Mississippi Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, among others.
More recently he has overseen National Right to Life’s annual oratory and essay contests that are designed to reach out and mobilize and inspire more young people to become outspoken pro-life activists.
“It is an incredibly humbling honor to be chosen to lead National Right to Life as its new executive director,” Fischbach said. “Ours is the greatest human rights cause of our time and National Right to Life, with our national network of state affiliates and local chapters, is at the center of that great cause. I look forward to building on the successes we have achieved under Dr. O’Steen’s leadership and capitalizing on the wonderful opportunities to save more and more lives.”
Four decades of service
O’Steen had served the NRLC as executive director since 1984. During his tenure, National Right to Life, founded in 1968) greatly expanded its programming and outreach to support and strengthen the organization’s grassroots network. Working in tandem with affiliates in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia and thousands of local chapters, the organization pursued state and federal legislative initiatives like the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act, among others, that have saved countless lives, and caused the Supreme Court and lower courts to revisit the issue of abortion time and again.
Under his leadership, National Right to Life also led the fight against the abortion-expanding provisions of the Clinton Health Care Plan in 1994 and Obamacare in 2009, as well as combating many attempts to repeal the Hyde Amendment and expand taxpayer funding of abortion.
Additionally, O’Steen’s tenure saw the expansion of National Right to Life’s outreach efforts to minorities, young people, and women healing from abortion with the creation of outreach organizations like Black Americans for Life, National Teens for Life and American Victims of Abortion. He established the organization’s Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, which works to protect the medically vulnerable and disabled from efforts to expand physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in the United States.
‘Unwavering dedication’
“Words cannot adequately express our gratitude to Dr. David O’Steen for his unwavering dedication to the cause of life and his extraordinary leadership of National Right to Life and the right-to-life movement,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “It is no understatement to say that under Dr. O’Steen’s leadership, National Right to Life has been at the center of developing and executing the legislative and legal strategies that have not only saved millions of lives over the past four decades but also directly led to Roe v. Wade’s reversal by the U.S. Supreme Court last summer.”
O’Steen will continue to serve in an advisory capacity, according to an NRLC press release.
“The work of National Right to Life goes to the very core of our society — a human being’s basic right to exist,” O’Steen said. “What a blessing and privilege it is to be part of this great cause and work with the staff, volunteers and affiliates of National Right to Life as we restore a culture of life in our country. As a right-to-life movement, we’ve made tremendous gains over the past 40 years, but we know there is still much work to be done. We must ensure that our nation’s laws recognize and respect the humanity of the child in the womb, the elderly and the medically vulnerable and disabled, and that those laws protect these innocent human lives from the evils of abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia.”
For more information on the work of the National Right to Life Committee, click here.
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