When Dr. Allan Parker, Jr., president of The Justice Foundation, surrendered his life to Christ after graduating law school in 1981, his only ambition was to do what God called him to do — but he never knew he would end up in the fight against abortion.
To his surprise, Parker quickly found himself accepting a position to teach Education Law and Civil Procedure as a Professor of Law at St. Mary’s School of Law in San Antonio. He told Live Action News, “I had never thought about teaching law, but a friend told me about the opening, and I applied for it. When the position was offered to me, I believe I was being obedient to God’s will. This opportunity opened the door to the pro-life path I was eventually meant to take.”
In his capacity as law professor, he wrote about school choice as a Texas constitutional right which eventually led to litigating for this right on behalf of parents.
“Several people read my law review article about school choice and contacted me,” Parker said. “After telling them we needed $100,000 to litigate, they found the money after the law school refused the funding. From this experience came the concept for The Justice Foundation.”
The foundation was established to protect the freedoms and rights vital to safeguarding American society by providing free legal services to defend those rights.
Allan Parker
While the Justice Foundation was initially formed in 1993 to litigate for school choice, the organization’s mission “to pray, litigate, educate, and advocate for life, liberty, and justice” would expand also to advocating for the preborn and women harmed by abortion through its several ministries.
Partnering with Norma McCorvey and Sandra Cano to overturn abortion decisions
The catalyst for Parker’s involvement in the pro-life arena was set into motion after he attended the March for Life in 2000. For Parker, the event was a spiritual awakening compelling him to be a witness in the community and stand against the horrors of abortion. While on his way home, he was struck by the notion that Norma McCorvey and Sandra Cano, defendants in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, respectively, could file a Rule 60 Motion to reverse their own cases. Parker prayed about a path forward if this was God’s will.
Parker said, “After praying, the Lord led me to Isaiah 28:14-22 as a confirmation that this is what I was supposed to do. Sandra had called and poured out her story of fraud and deception on the Court by those who wanted to force her to have an abortion. So, when I presented this idea to Sandra and Norma, they both agreed to go forward, and I embraced this opportunity wholeheartedly.”
Seventeen years after Roe was passed into a court decision, Norma was living as a pro-life Christian, eager to for her name to be “cleared” in association with an abortion case that had resulted in the deaths of so many babies.
“Norma knew she was forgiven but often felt depressed, especially near Roe’s anniversary, at having been involved for years with the abortion industry,” Parker said. “Both women were now seeing the realty of how abortion represented a callous disregard for women’s well-being.”
Parker and his team began collecting gripping testimonies of women harmed by abortion to use in court proceedings – like witness impact statements. From this concerted effort, Operation Outcry, a ministry of The Justice Foundation was born. To date, Operation Outcry has collected close to 5,000 testimonies that illustrate the suffering inflicted on women from abortion.
Parker hopes to amass at least 10,000; he is particularly interested in testimonies about chemical abortions.
Parker said, “Powerful testimonies can often change the hearts of the judges and in fact, has been instrumental in getting the state of South Dakota to ban abortions. With chemical abortions, women are being traumatized by seeing the tiny bodies of their babies in the toilet and tragically, these babies are being funneled into the nation’s sewage systems.”
In May and August 2003, the Dallas court received Parker’s argument for McCorvey and Cano to overturn their cases and denied the cases without a hearing on grounds it was too late. This was overruled by the Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court declined to take Norma’s appeal in 2005, and Sandra Cano’s in 2006. Yet Parker wasn’t deterred. He would continue the fight against one of the most egregious crimes against humanity.
“Once abortion is legal, you open the door to forced abortions and that is becoming a widespread problem in America,” Parker said.
In response, The Center Against Forced Abortions (CAFA) was created under the The Justice Foundation’s umbrella, to offer educational resources for any woman in all 50 states, whether she’s a minor or not, who is being pressured to have an abortion. Additionally, CAFA offers free legal tools to stop abortions in all 50 states.
The impact of the Moral Outcry Petition on Roe Reversal and beyond
In 2017, Melinda Thybault contacted Parker to seek his help in petitioning SCOTUS to reverse Roe. Together, they founded The Moral Outcry Petition to show courts the destruction wreaked on women by abortion. The petition sought to not only reverse Roe v. Wade, but Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Doe v. Bolton, all of which were the Court’s abortion decisions.
Parker said, “You have a right to petition the government to address grievances. But only SCOTUS can reverse its decisions. So, we started a petition through The Moral Outcry which became one of the most successful court petitions in history. In fact, Justices Alito and Kavanaugh discussed one of the reasons for reversing Roe given in The Moral Outcry Petition and Justice Barrett discussed a second argument, the Safe Haven law.”
Parker sees how effective The Moral Outcry was at helping to abolish Roe and now, he believes it will be instrumental in making abortion illegal in all 50 states.
“Science has proven new life begins at conception,” Parker said. “Now, women have more life-affirming choices. The Safe Haven law eliminates the burden of parenting. So does adoption. A million couples a year want to adopt newborns. No woman in America must parent a child if she doesn’t want to or can’t afford to. Killing a child in the womb is never the solution.”
