Who We Are
 
Our Mission
 Statement of Principles
Organizational Philosophy
 Our Officers


 		 Our Advisory Committee
How to Contact Us
 How You Can Help

 

 

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Last Update:  April 17, 2016 
Our Mission
 
   
The mission of the Human Family Research Center is to provide research and advocacy that builds a better understanding of the inalienable value of every human being from the earliest moments of existence and awakens a need to create a human community that understands the interconnectedness, value and importance of every human being
 		    
Statement of Principles
 











 		  
  • We believe that the human rights of every human being should be protected in the courts, by the government, and in the community.
  • We believe that human rights include, at a minimum, the rights to life and freedom. We call on our leaders to have the moral courage to acknowledge that our country was founded upon the principle that every human being deserves equal protection of the laws, and equality of opportunity for life. Life and Liberty should both be valued.
  •  We represent many different philosophies and beliefs, but agree that abortion is an act of violence against individuals and our nation.  
  • We believe that laws contrary to human nature cannot stand. Killing the innocent is contrary to human nature, and so is coercion in the form of discrimination, torture, bullying and human trafficking.
  • We acknowledge that we have two (or more) neighbors in every pregnancy and that we must seek mercy, love and justice for both (or all) of them.
  • We insist that women be treated with dignity and respect, both in the home and the workplace, so they may obtain the support and justice they deserve.
  • We believe that children have a special claim to our resources, love and protection and deserve to have their rights fully protected from the beginning of their lives.  Human rights begin when human life begins.
  • We are peaceful. We reject the methods of violence. We commit ourselves to act with humble assertiveness.

Organizational Philosophy








 
   

We are a nation of rights – human, civil, political.  This was a natural stage of human development as we struggled to oppose various types of oppression – social, gender, economic, ethnic.  We pride ourselves on having in place the rule of law, which is supposed to result in fairness and justice for all.  At least that’s the goal we strive for. As a consequence of this protracted but necessary battle for rights, we have become a nation focused on those rights.  Somewhere along the way we have sacrificed our sense of community.  John Quincy Adams once said that the right to be an individual contains within it a responsibility to community.  Individual rights are neither greater nor lesser than the rights of the community; they are, rather, complementary. 

Those who support this vision value human life and understand its beauty and potential but fear that the human race is being threatened by increasing violence and the disregard for human rights and other evidence of dehumanization, such as the involvement of the United States in torture, bullying, human trafficking, abortion, child abuse and the callousness of random acts of wanton violence often in the news. There is a need to rebuild a renewed concept of freedom that is not merely the deification of personal autonomy (what Mario Cuomo calls “primitive individualism”) but includes within that autonomy the necessity of responsibility to the community. 

The Human Family Research Center seeks to articulate and defend the inherent dignity of humanity and to encourage positive human potential by demonstrating how that potential can be enhanced through community action

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Our Officers
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 		   Denise M. Mackura

 Denise M. Mackura received her juris doctor degree from Cleveland State-Cleveland Marshall College of Law and has practiced law in Ohio and Illinois. She has served on the Boards of the Chicago Volunteer Legal Services, the National Lawyers Association andas a member of the Illinois State Bar Association's Individual Rights and Civil Liberties Section Counsel.

In addition to legal counsel to the Ohio House Reference Committee, She has practiced law, directed national government relations programs for non-profit associations, and established a free legal clinic on the near West side of Chicago. Ms. Mackura served for three years as senior legislative counsel for Americans United for Life and for seven years as the Director and General Counsel of Ohio Right to Life and the Life Legal Defense Fund. She is currently the Chair of the Life Issues Section of the National Lawyers Association and serves on the board of Democrats for Life of America. She has been involved in the pro-life movement since the 1970's. Denise is the author of American Democracy in the Wake of Roe: Prospects for a Rational Change.
 
     


 		   Marianne Relic
 
Ms. Relic was a practicing attorney and former magistrate in the Probate Court of Cuyahoga County.  She teaches and resides in Cleveland, Ohio.  She received an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University, a graduate degree in education from Case Western Reserve University and a law degree cum laude from Cleveland Marshall College of Law.

Ms. Relic has long been active in promoting the efforts of local pregnancy centers, having served in various capacities as volunteer,  fundraiser and trustee.  She is currently assisting Maggie's Place, a new concept in residential homes, which provide shelter and support for pregnant women who are homeless.
 



 
     
   
 

 

  




 

  
Paul Benjamin Linton
 
Mr. Linton is an attorney and writer based in Chicago, Illinois.  He has published a dozen law review articles on a variety of topics, including criminal law, sex discrimination, state equal rights amendments, same-sex marriage, the history of abortion regulation and assisted suicide.  His publications have appeared in, among other journals, the American Journal of Law & Medicine, Issues in Law & Medicine, Loyola University of Chicago Law Journal, the Oregon Law Review and Temple Law Review.  His 1993 article, Planned Parenthood v. Casey: The Flight from Reason in the Supreme Court, published in the St. Louis University Public Law Review, was the first comprehensive critique of the Supreme Court’s decision in Casey reaffirming Roe v. Wade.  He received his undergraduate (B.A. Honors) and law (J.D.) degrees from Loyola University of Chicago. 

Mr. Linton has represented amicus curiae (friends-of-the-court) in landmark decisions of the United States Supreme Court, including Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health (1990), Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), Stenberg v. Carhart (2000),  Lawrence v. Texas (2003), Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (2006), Gonzales v. Oregon (2006), Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (2007).

Mr. Linton served as the General Counsel for Americans United for Life, clerked for two justices of the Illinois Appellate Court and was an Assistant State’s Attorney for the Cook County (Chicago) State’s Attorney.

Mr. Linton is the author of Abortion Under State Constitutions  A State-by-State Analysis (Carolina Academic Press 2008), the first, full-length analysis of abortion under state constitutions that has been published by anyone on either side of the abortion debate. [Review of Abortion Under State Constitutions  A State-by-State Analysis by Time Magazine]
 

  
Our Advisory Committee
     


 

 

  

Raymond J. Adamek, Ph.D.

Raymond J. Adamek is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Kent State University (Ohio), where he taught courses in the family, statistics, research methods, and other subjects for some 39 years.Dr. Adamek earned his bachelor’s degree at Canisius College (Buffalo, N.Y.), his masters’ degree at Fordham University, and his Ph.D. at Purdue University. 

Dr. Adamek has published some 50 articles in academic journals and other outlets.  These include 22 publications on life-issue topics in publications such as The Human Life Review, and the National Right to Life News.  Thirteen of Dr. Adamek’s publications deal with public opinion on  abortion.   In December of 1981, he testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution concerning public opinion on abortion.   

Dr. Adamek has been active in the pro-life movement since 1972.  He has served as the President of Right to Life of Portage County (Ohio), and of Greater Akron Right to Life.  He has also served on the Board of the Ohio Right to Life Society.  Currently, Dr. Adamek serves as Secretary and as Education Chair of Right to Life of Northeast Ohio, headquartered in Akron, Ohio.


 
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Michael P. Boland

Michael Boland has 30+ years of experience in sales leadership.  He has held positions from Sales Rep to Strategic Business Unit (SBU) Leader of a Fortune 1000 company.  He founded Performance Technologies in 1982, a business consulting and training firm, which specializes in helping its customers WIN by developing elite sales forces led with exceptional coaches.  As a business consultant, Michael’s strength lies in his ability to distill complex issues into workable solutions and to lead organizations through transformation that converts challenges into achievement.  Michael is an International Speaker, and has facilitated over 1000 workshops, clinics and strategy sessions over his career.   

Michael has brought his leadership to the Life movement for almost 20 years, starting with growing and expanding a major Crises Pregnancy organization in SW Ohio, ultimately as its Board Chair. Michael then began working on the Right To Life platform, merging a pro-life Foundation with a pro-life Advocacy organization, leading it as Board Chairman for five years,  followed by  serving  as Chair Emeritus. Throughout his tenure, Michael has served as an executive coach for several Executive Directors and Board Leadership, as well as a major contributor and facilitator for long term Strategic Planning.   He is a founding member and contributor to the Human Family Research Center.

 


 
Richard Stith, and his wife, Rosemarie







 

  

Richard Stith, J.D., Ph.D.

Richard Stith, who teaches at Valparaiso University School of Law, received both his law degree and a doctorate in ethics from Yale University.  From Harvard and from the University of California, Berkeley, he holds degrees in political theory. 
 
Besides teaching law, Professor Stith has served as director of the Program in Biomedical Ethics at St. Louis University School of Medicine. He currently serves on the Advisory Council of the National Lawyers Association and on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of Comparative Law. He is also a member of the Academic Council of the doctoral program in law at the Universidad de Los Andes in Chile, and of the advisory board of the Chilean Revista de Ciencias Sociales.
 
Professor Stith has taught and published on comparative law and legal philosophy in Spain, Germany, India, China, Ukraine, Chile and Mexico. In 2001, he became the first U.S. professor to be designated and subsidized by the European Commission as teacher of a “Jean Monnet Module” on the law of the European Union. He was named the first Swygert Research Fellow in recognition of his scholarship. Recent works include Securing the Rule of Law through Interpretive Pluralism: An Argument from Comparative Law, 35 Hastings Const. L. Quarterly 4

Professor Stith is a member of the national boards of University Faculty for Life, the pro-life National Lawyers Association, and of Consistent Life (a group opposed to war and the death penalty as well as to abortion and euthanasia). He has been a speaker at national, state, and international right-to-life gatherings and has presented pro-life testimony by invitation before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution and to state and foreign legislative committees. He has exposed the profound contradictions in American abortion law in an article entitled Location and Life: How Stenberg v. Carhart Undercut Roe v. Wade, 9 William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law 255 (2003).
 
How to Contact Us
     




 		  
By Mail
 

The Human Family Research Center
1338 Avondale Road
South Euclid, OH  44121

By E-Mail
 humanfamilyresearchcenter@gmail.com.
 

    

The Human Family Research Center
Who We Are