NBC News: “Americans United for Life, perhaps the most powerful right-to-life legal organization in the country …”
“I think AUL has become the premier pro-life organization in the country,” said (Gov. Mike) Huckabee to the Christian Science Monitor. “I think their approach has been far more objective, a great deal more thoughtful. They’re working not toward just raising an issue, but also toward changing minds and hearts, engaging people in honest, thoughtful discussion as to why every life matters.”
1. Established as the First, National Pro-life Legal organization in the country. Americans United for Life (AUL) was founded two years BEFORE Roe v. Wade was decided, anticipating fomenting legal threats to life and organizing to confront them. AUL has fought for life in every abortion-related case before the Supreme Court, from Roe v. Wade to this June’s Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. In 1971, a diverse group of pro-life activists, spearheaded by Brent Bozell, a colleague of William F. Buckley, gathered in Washington, D.C. to form AUL. The first Chairman of the Board was George Huntston Williams, then-Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard. They had the audacious aim of ensuring the protection of unborn life under the law. Since that day, AUL has worked for comprehensive legal protection of human life from conception to natural death. Its goal, as eloquently stated by former Board member, the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, is an America where all unborn children are welcomed in life and protected in law.
2. Defended the Hyde Amendment before the Supreme Court, ensuring that taxpayer dollars are not used to pay for abortions. In 1980, Americans United for Life won an historic victory for pro-life America when we successfully defended the Hyde Amendment before the U.S. Supreme Court in Harris v. McRae. AUL attorney Victor Rosenblum argued the case before the Court, resulting in a favorable decision and ending a four-year court battle. This important court decision upheld federal and state prohibitions on public funding of abortion except in the case of threats to the life of the mother.
3. Credited with many of the state pro-life laws enacted between 2011 and 2015. AUL remains the leading advocate for state legislation protecting human life. For example, in 2011, Arizona became the first state to enact AUL’s Women’s Health Protection Act, banning abortions at five months of pregnancy based on concerns for women’s health and the pain felt by unborn children. Also of particular interest is an AUL model law banning abortions performed for reasons of genetic abnormalities or sex-selection. In 2013, North Dakota became the first state to enact this innovative and humane law. In 2016, Alabama and Idaho enacted laws modeled after AUL’s Unborn Infants’ Dignity Act, written in direct response to the Planned Parenthood fetal body parts scandal and recognizing a deceased unborn infant’s right to dignified treatment. Mother Jones reported, “Americans United for Life (is) the anti-abortion group perhaps most responsible for a barrage of new state laws” on life.
4. Developed the “pro-life playbook” Defending Life, a compendium of life-affirming model legislation and analysis. In its inaugural edition in 2005, Defending Life featured five pieces of model legislation and now contains more than 50 pieces of model legislation developed to equip legislators with legally sound language to protect life from conception to natural death. New York Times magazine said of AUL’s model legislative approach “[AUL] put[s] more muscle into fighting for restrictions on the state level — chipping away at Roe one legislature at a time.”
5. Developed the influential “Life List,” a ranking of the 50 states based on how well they protect and defend life. Under the leadership of AUL’s Vice President of Legal Affairs Denise Burke AUL analyzes the 50 states for their contributions toward protecting life from conception to natural death, including recent efforts in the courts and in the legislatures. Through the annual “Life List All Stars,” AUL commends state leaders and innovators who have best protected the vulnerable during the preceding year. The media increasingly turns to AUL’s “Life List” to gauge the effectiveness of life-affirming state laws and the state legislators and governors who champion them.
6. Spurred the drive for Fetal Homicide Laws that have now been enacted in 38 states. AUL’s Acting President and Senior Counsel Clarke Forsythe was one of the first pro-life attorneys to focus on fetal homicide policies with a 1987 law review article entitled “Homicide of the Unborn Child: The Born Alive Rule and Other Legal Anachronisms,” in the Valparaiso University Law Review. A fetal homicide law recognizes an unborn child as a “person” or “human being” under the criminal law. AUL’s legal experts laid the intellectual groundwork to enact fetal homicide laws nationwide. At the time of the Roe decision in 1973, only a handful of states enforced these protective laws. Today, 38 states have fetal homicide laws in place, and 29 of these laws protect the unborn child from conception.
7. Pioneered the state-based model legislation strategy in the 1980s, which has exploded over the past decade. AUL’s legal strategy works to save lives today, while undermining the so-called “reliance” interest adopted by the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: the false notion that women “rely” on abortion to succeed in American society. AUL first drafted legislation for Illinois as early as 1974, but expanded the state legislation strategy nationwide in 1989, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, a case that opened up new avenues for abortion limits. In November 1989, AUL held a national conference for legislators in Chicago, laying the groundwork for broader pro-life protections in state law.
8. Defended the sick and vulnerable from pressure to end their lives. AUL successfully defended, in state courts and before the Supreme Court (Cruzan v. Missouri, 1990), the claim that there is no constitutional “right to die.” AUL attorneys published a critical law review article “Suicide: A Constitutional Right?” cited prominently by the Supreme Court when it unanimously rejected the claim of a federal constitutional right to assisted suicide in 1997. In 1980, AUL published Death, Dying and Euthanasia, a collection of essays on the complex social, legal, medical, and moral issues surrounding the end of life, and has continued to be involved in every significant case, at both the state and federal levels, concerning physician-assisted suicide, including the extensive role AUL played in Baxter v. Montana in 2009. In that case, AUL fought an attempt to find a state constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide in the Montana Constitution. While the Montana Supreme Court declined to acknowledge any state policy against the practice, it also declined to affirmatively find a state constitutional right to assisted suicide.
9. Revealed the behind-the-scenes deliberations in the Supreme Court that tragically produced Roe v. Wade in a groundbreaking book by AUL Acting President Clarke Forsythe, a leading legal expert on abortion law in America. Forsythe’s Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade, published by Encounter Books in 2013, has been favorably reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, First Things, World Magazine, National Review, and other journals. Jeffrey Rosen, President of the National Constitution Center, wrote in the Wall Street Journal “Abuse of Discretionprovides a cautionary tale about the political and constitutional hazards of unnecessarily broad Supreme Court decisions.”
10. Released the explosive exposé, The Case for Investigating Planned Parenthood in 2011. This ground-breaking report documented known and alleged abuses including misuse of federal healthcare and family planning funds, failure to report criminal child sexual abuse, failure to comply with parental involvement laws, apparent willingness to assist those involved in prostitution and/or sex trafficking, dangerous misuse of the abortion drug RU-486, misinformation about so-called “emergency contraception,” willingness to give women false information, and a willingness to refer women to substandard clinics.
In September 2011, led by U.S. Congressman Cliff Stearns (then Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations), the Energy and Commerce Committee launched the first investigation into Planned Parenthood’s use of taxpayer dollars and its institutional policies and practices – an investigation largely motivated by the troubling questions raised in this groundbreaking report.
11. Coming Soon: Preparing a forthcoming report on abortion industry abuses nationwide. Building on the legacy of AUL’s groundbreaking, four-part expose of Planned Parenthood, AUL will be releasing Abortion Inc. – How Abortion Industry Abuses Put American Women at Risk in December 2016. This latest investigative report will focus on the increasingly dangerous safety record of America’s abortion industry, including non-Planned Parenthood clinics which are currently performing two-thirds of all abortions.
The report will establish and document that legalized abortion kills and injures thousands of women each year; that the practice of abortion has devolved into the “red light district” of American medicine and is characterized by dangerous, substandard providers; and that, at least since 2009, a nationwide pattern of abuse has characterized an industry that fights to keep profits high and standards low.
Evidence from across the nation and featured in this Special Report will also effectively counter abortion industry propaganda that “abortion is safer than childbirth” and that “abortion is between a woman and her doctor.” In the years to come, this same evidence will also provide support for AUL’s strategic, highly effective, and legally sound model legislation including medically appropriate health and safety standards for abortion facilities, rigorous inspection and investigation protocols for abortion clinics, and enhanced penalties for violations of these and other life-affirming laws.
12. Led the way for Defending Life in Latin America. In 2012, AUL published a groundbreaking study of pro-life laws in Latin America, Defending the Human Right to Life in Latin America that documents the pro-life laws, policies, and preferences of the vast majority of Latin Americans. It plays an essential role in resisting the effort of pro-abortion forces to liberalize laws on abortion in what is currently the most pro-life part of the globe.
13. Fought the anti-life elements of Obamacare. During the 2009-10 healthcare reform debate, AUL launched the website www.realhealthcarerespectslife.com, through which the AUL legal team provided in-depth, comprehensive analysis of pending healthcare reform proposals. AUL’s legal team also provided numerous interviews, blog posts, opinion editorials, and rapid response analysis. AUL Action conducted an aggressive Capitol Hill campaign, visiting members of Congress and their staffs to provide them with our analyses, and AUL team members provided testimony and comment as the law was debated.
14. Developed an opt-out bill for the states to equip them to separate tax dollars from abortion under Obamacare. AUL’s legal analysis of why an Executive Order would not remedy the pro-abortion portions of Obamacare was employed by opponents of the bill in debate on the floor of the House of Representatives. Following the passage of Obamacare, AUL released new model legislation, The Abortion-Mandate Opt-Out Act, to assist states in “opting out” of one of the pro-abortion provisions in the law and continues to assist states with this effort. Nine states have already adopted AUL’s innovative, opt-out language.
15. Developed legislation informing women that chemical abortion may be reversed. Recognizing that chemical abortions currently account for one-quarter of all abortions, AUL developed model legislation in 2015 to address the growing crisis of women injured by life-ending drugs. Arizona and Arkansas enacted innovative laws, based on AUL model legislation, requiring that women be informed that chemical abortions may be reversed, if the mother acts quickly.
16. Defended Arizona’s health and safety regulations in the Ninth Circuit. In 2000 and 2001, AUL Vice President of Legal Affairs Denise Burke represented Arizona in federal district court in a constitutional challenge to the state’s abortion clinic regulations. “Lou Ann’s Law” was enacted in 1998 after a 32-year-old mother bled to death while her abortionist visited his tailor and ignored repeated requests from his staff to check her condition. Lou Anne’s tragic and preventable death marked a turning point in the protection of women. Dozens of states increasing regulations on abortion clinics, and many used AUL’s model language as a guide. In 2003, Ms. Burke also led the successful defense of “Lou Ann’s Law” in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
17. Filed more than 100 (and counting) amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs in life-related cases. Since 1972, AUL has been involved in more than 100 federal and state cases across the country and internationally, including every significant abortion-related case before the Supreme Court. AUL has represented a wide range of high profile clients: state and federal legislators, including former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner, former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, and the majority of the Oklahoma Legislature; medical and bioethics leaders, such as former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Dr. Edmund Pellegrino; leading medical organizations, such as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, the Catholic Medical Association, and Christian Medical & Dental Associations; and non-profit organizations, such as 40 Days for Life and Care Net. Amicus briefs filed by AUL have drawn the attention of the nation’s top courts. For example, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals adopted a portion of AUL’s amicus argument in upholding South Dakota’s requirement that women be informed of the potential increased risk of suicide following abortion (Planned Parenthood of Minnesota/South Dakota/North Dakota v. Rounds, 2012), and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals cited AUL’s amicus brief in its decision enjoining the forced insurance provision of so-called “emergency contraception” under Obamacare (Hobby Lobby Stores v. Sebelius, 2013).
18. Fought for free speech rights for pro-life Americans by filing a brief on behalf of 40 Days for Life in 2014 in McCullen v. Coakley where the Supreme Court decided 9-0 against an anti-pro-life-speech Massachusetts law. The case involved a 35-foot “no-enter zone” around abortions clinics in which Americans could be arrested for peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights.
19. Fought against the inhumane Partial-Birth Abortion procedure in the landmark case, Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), in which the Supreme Court upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortion, a form of abortion in which a child is delivered in the breach position, with all of the body outside the birth canal but leaving a portion of the infant’s head in the mother, and then killed by stabbing scissors into the back of the head. The slaughtered infant is then fully delivered. This important ruling virtually overturned the Supreme Court’s earlier decision in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) which had struck down 30 states bans on partial-birth abortion.
20. Established Americans United for Life Action (AULA) in 2008, which first focused on stopping President Obama’s threat to advance the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) as one of his first initiatives upon taking office. AULA’s anti-FOCA petition drive ultimately collected 700,000 signatures and was so successful that FOCA was not even re-introduced in Congress during Obama’s two terms. Since that time, AULA has been involved with the fight against federally funded abortion in healthcare reform; opposition to pro-abortion Supreme Court Justices nominated by Obama, including formal testimonies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and, most recently, the restoration of a pro-life majority in Congress.
21. Published 22 Planned Parenthood Exhibits in 2012 to further illustrate the destructive, insidious, and taxpayer-funded behemoth that is the nation’s top abortion provider. AUL’s leadership in documenting the track record of this predatory abortion industry leader has included four AUL special reports: The Case for Investigating Planned Parenthood, the Planned Parenthood Exhibits: The Continuing Case for Investigating the Nation’s Largest Abortion Provider, Abortion Inc.: Cecile Richards’ Planned Parenthood, and The New Leviathan: The Mega-Center Report, How Planned Parenthood Became Abortion, Inc. .
22. Stood with families whose sexually abused children are taken for abortion to cover up crimes in John and June Roe v. Planned Parenthood Southeast Ohio Region. The case involving Planned Parenthood’s failure to comply with Ohio’s parental involvement law and to report suspected child sexual abuse. The case involved a teenage girl who was impregnated by her soccer coach and taken by him to Planned Parenthood without her parents’ knowledge or consent.
23. Established itself as the legal arm of the pro-life movement in strategy and purpose. In the 1970s, the AUL Board wisely chose to turn over the reins of the organization to a nationally prominent medical attorney, Dennis J. Horan, managing partner of one of Chicago’s largest law firms. Horan’s vision was simple: AUL and the movement needed a legal defense fund, an entity to draft laws that would do what was possible to save unborn life, while laying siege to Roe by ensuring that such laws were properly defended in the courts. For several years, Horan and a handful of colleagues did this on nights and weekends, on top of their demanding legal practices. Mr. Horan remained AUL’s driving force from 1973 until his untimely death in 1988. AUL continued with that vision, leading Think Progress to call us “The Highly Sophisticated Group That’s Quietly Making It Much Harder To Get An Abortion.”
24. Worked to pass and defend pro-life laws, resulting in a 25 percent nationwide decline in the number of abortions performed since 1992. According to scholar Dr. Michael J. New, legislative efforts to enact parental involvement laws, informed consent laws, and limits on taxpayer funding of abortions have had a proven difference.
25. Fought for higher legal standards for the provision of deadly life ending drugs by filing amicus briefs in Rogers v. Planned Parenthood Cincinnati Region. AUL filed multiple amicus briefs before both the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Ohio Supreme Court in a challenge to a 2004 Ohio law requiring abortion providers to comply with the FDA-approved protocol for dispensing the dangerous abortion drug RU-486.
26. Developed and continues to fund groundbreaking and pivotal studies on the harms of abortion to provide resources and intellectual arguments supporting life-affirming legal protections. For example, AUL quantitative research analyst, James Rodgers, PhD. published a study in the prestigious American Journal of Public Health revealing the positive impact of Minnesota’s parental notice law on teenage pregnancy and abortion rates. In 1987, AUL published Abortion and the Constitution: Reversing Roe v. Wade through the Courts, a compilation of many of the papers presented at AUL’s 1984 Reversing Roe conference. In 1981, AUL sponsored publication of New Perspectives On Human Abortion by Thomas W Hilgers, Dennis J Horan, and David Mall. In 1972, AUL sponsored the research and publication of the landmark book, Abortion and Social Justice, by Thomas W Hilgers and Dennis Horan. Such intellectual efforts continue at AUL with the publication of four special reports on Planned Parenthood and an upcoming expose on the nation’s abortion industry.
27. Fought consistently against efforts to end the lives of the sick and elderly. Campaigns to make it easier to kill the sick and elderly arise too often and are cloaked in false compassion, using euphemisms such as “aid dying” and “compassionate choices.” In 2015, at least 25 states and the District of Columbia considered measures to legalize physician-assisted suicide, a more than three-fold increase in such measures from the prior year. Much of the momentum supporting these measures derived from the publicity surrounding the assisted-suicide death of Brittany Maynard in November 2014. AUL continues its leadership role in fighting such initiatives.
28. Partnered with pro-life allies in the great State of Texas, the 28th state to join the union, multiple times in its legislature, in federal court, and before the Supreme Court in Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt, a case involving health and safety standards for abortion clinics, an issue championed by AUL. From day one, AUL stood with pro-life Texans as they worked to protect both mothers and their unborn children in the law, and while the Supreme Court rejected the Texas law, citing lack of sufficient medical information to justify the law, for the first time the high court said that abortion could be regulated through all nine months of pregnancy when medical data supports the law.
29. Filed 29 amicus briefs against the HHS Mandate. As the abortion industry moved from “choice” to coercion, manipulating the law to force people to comply with an anti-life agenda or face business-destroying and costly punishments, AUL stood with Americans to fight for their Constitutional rights, specifically opposing the HHS Mandate that forces companies and organizations to provide employees with insurance coverage that includes coverage for life-ending drugs and devices.. AUL has consistently fought the anti-life mandates in Obamacare, testifying multiple times against such anti-life mandates before the law was passed and filing briefs after its passage to assist Americans who do not wish to fund and endorse anti-life efforts and initiatives.
30. Defended partial-birth abortion laws in 30 states, which protected infants from inhumane deaths. From 1997 to 2000, AUL worked with two-thirds of America’s state attorneys general to defend state partial-birth abortion bans. Sadly, in a decision of stunning callousness and abuse of power, the Supreme Court overturned these laws in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), which was later overturned by Gonzales v. Carhart in 2007.
31. Advised on both the enabling legislation and subsequent litigation in the pivotal 1989 Supreme Court decision, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services that successfully upheld a Missouri law restricting state funding of abortions. AUL continues to fight to protect taxpayers from being forced to fund life-ending procedures, drugs, and devices. Yet, the abortion industry and their allies continue to seek taxpayer funding for abortions, despite the opposition to such funding by 7 out of 10 Americans, whether they identify as pro-life or pro-choice.
32. Fought against the inhumane Partial-Birth Abortion technique in Richmond Medical Center for Women v. Herring, a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals case upholding Virginia’s ban on partial-birth abortion. The horrific reality of this late-term abortion procedure shocked the nation and further illustrated the callous reality of abortion in America.
33. Provided testimony on Life-Protecting Constitutional Amendments debated in Congress between 1973 and 1983. AUL attorneys provided significant support to pro-life constitutional amendments debated in Congress after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Roe v. Wade. For example, Victor Rosenblum and Dennis Horan testified in support of various amendments, including the Hatch Federalism Amendment (1982) which would have returned deliberation and decision on abortion issues to the states and to Congress.
34. Organized the amicus briefs in the landmark 1992 Supreme Court decision, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. In Casey, the Court approved laws requiring a 24-hour waiting period, parental consent, and informed consent before an abortion can be performed. While the Casey decision was not the “win” pro-life advocates had hoped for, it opened the door to further state regulation of abortion.
35. Developed the arguments that were critical to upholding a requirement that women considering abortion be informed that the procedure often leads to an increased risk of suicide. In 2012 in Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals utilized arguments advanced in AUL’s amicus brief to uphold the “suicide advisory” in South Dakota’s informed consent law.
36. Developed and championed the Mother-Child Strategy that is critical to addressing the fallacies of the so-called “reliance interest.” AUL’s “mother-child” strategy seeks to legally protect and advance the interests of both a mother and her unborn child, exposing the lies propagated by the abortion industry that abortion is beneficial to women and that a woman’s interests are at odds with those of her unborn child.
37. Called for state and federal abortion reporting laws to hold the abortion industry accountable for their conduct and to track the impact of the often-dangerous abortion procedure and life-ending drugs and devices. Abortion industry claims that it offers easy, “safe” procedures are unverifiable because the procedure is not adequately monitored, as are many other medical procedures. In fact, only two national organizations collect abortion data in the United States: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a federal government agency, and the private abortion advocacy group, the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Reporting of abortion data to both is completely voluntary and not all states participate. In light of the Hellerstedt Supreme Court ruling, in which the Justices said that they need more data to support health and safety regulations, AUL will continue to push for required reporting to strip away the fabricated reports of “safety” the abortion industry spins as fact.
38. Worked with our 40th President Ronald Reagan to defend life in law. Following the Roe decision, Dennis Horan and other AUL Board members, notably Dr. C. Everett Koop and Dr. Joseph Stanton, recognized the risk of the courts declaring constitutional rights to assisted suicide and euthanasia, as well as infanticide of handicapped newborns. AUL’s books, Death, Dying & Euthanasia (1976) and Infanticide and the Handicapped Newborn (1981) set forth the pro-life case against such practices. AUL attorneys also played a key role in drafting legislation to give federal civil rights protection to handicapped newborns, enacted by Congress and signed by President Reagan in 1984.
39. Sponsored the landmark book, The Cost of Choice (Encounter Books 2003) based on a series of symposia on Roe at 30, continuing AUL’s long-standing tradition of focusing on abortion’s harms to both mother and child, documenting the actual impact of abortion, and exposing the deceptive and predatory practices of the American abortion industry.
40. Testified in four Senate Judiciary Committee hearings regarding Supreme Court nominations. AUL leadership testified against the nominations of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
41. Served alongside the legendary Rep. Henry Hyde who was a Board member of AUL and the champion of the Hyde Amendment that currently protects taxpayers from funding abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at risk. AUL continues to work to have the Hyde Amendment made permanent law (rather than an annual statutory rider).
42. Stood with pro-life leaders in Ireland. In 1979, AUL played a pivotal role in amending the Irish Constitution, requiring the equal protection of both unborn human life and maternal life, making Ireland one of the strongest pro-life nations in Europe. In subsequent legal battles, abortion advocates continued to advocate in the courts for the liberalization of Irish abortion laws, and AUL was there to fight for life. Given that activist judges in the U.S. may use international judicial decisions to support their aims for finding a “right” to abortion that would be binding upon the US (through treaties and other international agreements), it is important to fight for life overseas.
43. Understood the growing threats to the rights of conscience of healthcare providers and developed innovative legislation to protect individual conscience. In 2004, Mississippi became the first state to pass AUL’s comprehensive Healthcare Rights of Conscience Act, the most protective conscience law in the country. In light of the abortion industry’s use of the force of law against those who do not support its agenda, from Catholic nuns to private business owners, AUL continues to work to defend those who value life at every age and at every level of ability.
44. Testified at the state and federal levels in support of life-affirming legislation on issues including the harms inherent in abortion, the need for health and safety standards for abortion clinics, the importance of parental involvement laws for abortion, the need to support pregnancy resource centers, the constitutionality of fetal homicide provisions, and the importance of protecting healthcare freedom of conscience.
45. Committed to laying the foundation to roll back Roe v. Wade, returning the issue to the states and ending the Supreme Court’s self-appointed role as the “National Abortion Control Board” from 1971 until today. More pro-life laws were enacted between 2009 and 2014 than in the entire previous decade, and this life-affirming trend continues in the states. AUL’s Women’s Protection Project and Infants’ Protection Project have been key in these and other pro-life successes. The Christian Science Monitor reported, “In the often heated debate over abortion, a less confrontational, more pragmatic force is behind a record number of antiabortion laws and pro-choice’s ‘bad year.’” And that force is AUL!
