Judie Brown

Judith A. Brown (born March 4, 1944) is the president and co-founder of American Life League, the oldest Catholic grassroots anti-abortion organization in the United States.

Early life and education Brown was born in Los Angeles, 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 remarried in 1952 to Chester Limbourne when she was six years old. Brown's grandparents took them in and were influential in molding her character and resolve, and her grandparents insured that she received the proper Catholic education and paid for her to attend St. Mary's Academy in Inglewood, California, an all-girls Catholic School run by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. by Brown, her husband Paul, and eight other anti-abortion Americans after a schism with the National Right to Life Committee 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 anti-abortion 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 The Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich, and the help of extensive membership lists provided by right-wing direct mail specialist Richard Viguerie.

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 legislative proposals. ALL lost in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case. 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, Pope Francis: Portrait of Holiness.