Four candidates for the GOP’s 2012 presidential nomination will gather Wednesday evening in Des Moines to speak to the crowd at the premiere of a documentary narrated by the winner of the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. In the promotional video for the film, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee walks along a beach and talks into the camera.
“My heartfelt view on the value of life — all life, at every age — has been charged largely by meeting people whose remarkable stories have given me a deep, personal understanding of what life really means,” Huckabee says in the video.
The Gift of Life is a documentary from Citizens United, a group which also markets films produced and narrated by Newt and Callista Gingrich on its website. Gingrich, along with rivals Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum, will speak tonight before the showing of this new documentary. Iowa Right-to-Life executive director Jenifer Bowen will address the crowd, too.
“It’s an excellent opportunity for people outside of Iowa to see, really, the unique obstacles that we’re up against in the life movement here in Iowa,” Bowen told Radio Iowa.
Bowen was among those who lobbied state legislators to pass a law in Iowa that would have banned abortions after the 20th week of pregancy, but the bill didn’t pass the Democratically-led Iowa Senate.
Organizers expect about 1400 people to attend tomorrow night’s premiere in Hoyt Sherman Place in Des Moines. The venue can trace its roots back to the brother of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. Hoyt Sherman was the general’s youngest brother and he founded the Equitable Insurance Company. Sherman built the mansion in 1877. After his death, it was converted into a clubhouse for The Des Moines Women’s Club. The auditorium where the documentary will be shown was added in 1923.