abortion rights

Right-wing activist and former California legislator Steve Baldwin has organized an open letter to “Conservative, Catholic and Evangelical Leaders” asking them to refuse support for Mitt Romney’s campaign for president. Already a number of activists including failed US Senate candidate and Tea Party hero Joe Miller; Rick Scarborough of Vision America; Brian Camenker of MassResistance; Linda Harvey of Mission America; Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association; Ted Beahr of WND and Movieguide; Gary Glenn of American Family Association-Michigan, Kelly Shackleford of the Liberty Institute; Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation; Floyd Brown of WND; Dick and Richard Bott of Bott Family Radio, and the leaders of a number of anti-choice groups have signed the letter.

The letter says that “a Romney candidacy would be disastrous for the conservative movement and for the country,” writing that he is insincere in his conservative beliefs and “continues to support many aspects of the homosexual agenda even today.” The activists claim that “the flatly illegal charade of ‘gay’ marriage exists solely in Massachusetts due to Governor Romney’s illegal actions,” and lists numerous other issues including abortion rights and health care reform where Romney has reversed himself: “Romney has also been both in favor and against minimum wage legislation, capital gains taxes, gun control, amnesty for illegal aliens, campaign finance reform, the Kyoto agreement, gambling, gun control, and many other issues.”

They conclude by warning that nominating Romney “would be a disastrous mistake”:

Most disturbing is the key role Mitt Romney played in accelerating two of the greatest threats to our Judeo-Christian culture and free enterprise system: Homosexual marriage and government control of health care. In both instances, the actions Romney took – or didn’t take – on homosexual marriage and RomneyCare have done lasting damage to our country. Romney’s aggressive efforts to implement the unconstitutional Goodridge decision set a precedent which inspired pro-homosexual marriage activity nationwide, and his RomneyCare bill served as the model for ObamaCare, the biggest lurch toward socialism since the New Deal.

As such, Romney has done more damage to America in his four years as Governor than any Democrat officeholder we can think of. But Romney, to this day, defends his actions on both fronts and sincerely believes he has done nothing wrong, an attitude which only raises additional questions about his fitness for national office. We must question his worldview, his sincerity, and his judgment. We believe the election of Mitt Romney would be a disastrous mistake for the conservative movement and for the country.

A coalition of groups opposed to abortion rights wants the government to place graphic warning labels on emergency contraceptives and abortion clinics in the same way cigarette packs are now required to display explicit images. Disregarding the fact that abortion is an exceptionally safe medical procedure, a spokesman for the campaign said, “If you’re going to force cigarette manufacturers to put graphic images on every single pack of cigarettes, you should do the same thing with abortion.” In fact, a number of states already force doctors to read false statements that abortion causes breast cancer and other ailments. In a petition-drive launched by organizations including The Radiance Foundation (best known for placing billboards that refer to legal abortion as “black genocide”), Operation Rescue, Pro-Life Nation, and Students for Life, the coalition urges the government to impose labels to shame women:

The FDA recently announced new restrictions on cigarette packages, forcing manufacturers to feature prominent graphic images on the front of every cigarette package to warn smokers of harmful effects that smoking can have on their health and those around them.

When picking up their cigarette packages, smokers will see pictures of a man blowing smoke out of a hole in his neck, a smoker’s mouth riddled with cancer, a baby under a cloud of smoke, and a deceased man, among other colored graphics.

This marks the biggest change in cigarette package warnings in over a quarter of a century and notes the shift in American public opinion about smoking. Smoking has become passe.

Yet, what about abortion?

Where are the warning labels on abortion?

Where are the warnings to tell women that abortion will kill their child and scar them for life?

Sign your name to this petition to tell the FDA that all abortion facilities and abortion-causing drugs should come with graphic warning labels - showing women what an abortion really does.

Radio talk show host and Religious Right activist Penna Dexter was the keynote speaker at the National Day of Prayer event yesterday in Rapid City, South Dakota. Dexter, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, last year blamed a gay California youth who was murdered by another student for his own death. According to the Rapid City Journal, Dexter lamented that while Osama bin Laden is dead, the “the advancing homosexual agenda” continues to flourish:

A smaller than expected crowd of about 350 people, including at least two out of four mayoral candidates, turned out for Rapid City's National Day of Prayer event Thursday at Rushmore Plaza Civic Center to hear Christian political commentator Penna Dexter encourage Americans to offer "fervent prayer" for a government she believes is in trouble.

"Despite the sense of satisfaction in our country now because our guys just got a really bad guy, there's still a feeling that the ship of state is sinking," Dexter said, referring to the recent killing of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. military.

The Texas radio personality credited the Obama administration with defending the observance of the first Thursday in May as an annual National Day of Prayer. Dexter then moved on to what she called social, financial and moral problems with the current government, including abortion rights, the homosexual rights agenda and the growth of government entitlement programs.

"It's not politically correct to say so, but the greatest threat to America ... today is the advancing homosexual agenda," she said. She called on Americans like herself who are concerned about "so many attempts to silence God's word" to pave the way for political action with "fervent prayer."

Newly elected Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is set to address the Faith & Freedom Conference and Strategy Briefing in June, the hallmark event of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition. Sen. Paul and his father, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, both appear to be testing the waters for a presidential bid. The younger Paul recently address the Iowa Republican Party’s “Night of the Rising Stars” and the Iowa Campaign for Freedom; he also told The Hill that he feels ready to run for president even though he has only held elected office since January.

Paul has also helped serve as a bridge between the Tea Party and the Religious Right, and conservatives were quick to defend him after he said he publicly opposed the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2009 Paul headlined an event for the Constitution Party, which wants to establish “biblical law,” and his far-right positions have helped him win endorsements from prominent Religious Right figures like James Dobson and Beverly LaHaye.

During his Iowa speech, he said that politicians should refuse to compromise on the issue of abortion, connecting it to compromises on slavery laws prior to the Civil War. Earlier this year, he tried to connect his opposition to abortion rights to his battle against low flush toilets.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who is forming a presidential exploratory committee, is also slated to speak at the conference. The group’s Iowa convention hosted likely candidates such as Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, and Buddy Roemer.

The Republican governor of South Dakota announced that he is “inclined to sign” an extreme bill passed by the state legislature that requires women seeking an abortion to undergo a 72 hour waiting period and biased counseling. RWW first reported on the bill when it was first approved by a House committee, and has since passed the full House and Senate.

As outlined in a new People For the American Way report on the flurry of anti-choice laws under consideration in the states, the impending 72 hour waiting period would even exceed the more common 24 hour waiting period in a state which only has one clinic that offers abortion services, which are provided just once a week.

If signed into law, South Dakota women would be forced to meet with staffers of so-called “pregnancy care centers,” better known as crisis pregnancy centers, who are typically not medical professionals but instead anti-choice activists. Such centers receive significant funding from Religious Right groups and organizations opposed to abortion rights, and frequently employ deceiving and discredited propaganda against abortion and contraception.

According to a 2006 Congressional report, close to 90 percent of such centers “grossly misrepresented the medical risks of abortion, telling the callers that having an abortion could increase the risk of breast cancer, result in sterility, and lead to suicide and ‘post-abortion stress disorder.’” Many of the groups also receive government funding through abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and one of the largest private financers said that the goal of such centers is to “get the chance to share the Gospel with [women], which is the ultimate thing of what we’re doing.” In fact, the New York City Council just passed a measure that would make the centers disclose that they are not accredited medical offices.

Michele Bachmann

South Carolina: Slams Obama's foreign policy and says striking workers should be fired in address to GOP activists (Spartanburg Herald Journal, 2/20).

Health: Criticizes Michele Obama for encouraging breast feeding (WaPo, 2/19).

Veterans: Faces resistance to her plan to dramatically cut funding to veterans (The Daily Beast, 2/18).

Haley Barbour

Iowa: Tells state's governor that he will campaign in Iowa if he decides to run (Des Moines Register, 2/21).

Huckabee: Wins praise on race-issues and political strategy from Mike Huckabee (CNN, 2/21).

Race: Silent on proposed car tag honoring founder of Ku Klux Klan (Clarion Ledger, 2/18).

Religious Right: Attending screening of Creationist movie "The Genesis Code" in New Hampshire (Roll Call, 2/17).

Mike Huckabee

2012: Knocks Tea Party's purity tests; claims it will be difficult for GOP nominee to beat Obama (WaPo, 2/21).

Book: Says he will weight "reaction to the message" of his book tour when deciding presidential bid (The Hill, 2/21).

Religious Right: Blasts Islam and a church that hosts Muslim worshipers on Fox News (Mediaite, 2/19).

Reproductive Rights: Tells anti-choice groups that if he runs, he will emphasize his opposition to abortion rights (RWW, 2/15).

Sarah Palin

Book: Leaked manuscript of ex-aide's book shows Palin as vindictive, mistrustful (Anchorage Daily News, 2/19).

Reality TV: Show received $1.2 million in government subsidies (Fairbanks Daily-News Miner, 2/19).

Labor: Chastises labor unions for protesting in Wisconsin (Facebook, 2/18).

Tim Pawlenty

Economy: Describes national debt as a “pile of poo” (Star Tribune, 2/21).

Tea Party: Addresses Tea Party Patriots policy summit in Arizona (WSJ, 2/18).

Mitt Romney

Huckabee: Former rival denies rumor that he will run just to stop Romney (Politico, 2/21).

Economy: Conservative New York Post bashes Romney's record on Wall Street (NYPost, 2/19).

Rick Santorum

New Hampshire: New Hampshire Journal calls Santorum "Mitt Romney with a soul" (PoliticsPA, 2/21).

Religious Right: Speaks to ultraconservative Ave Maria University, calls Tea Party “a blessing to the country” (Naples News, 2/18).

Internet: Discusses notorious “google problem” (Roll Call, 2/16).

CPAC’s anti-abortion rights panel “The Pro-Life Movement: Plans and Goals” was galvanized over the election of a Republican-led House, believing that the GOP leadership was committed to passing anti-choice legislation.

Hosted by Tim Goeglein, the head of Focus on the Family’s policy arm CitizenLink and a former Bush Administration staffer, the panel focused on attacking the health care reform law, Planned Parenthood, and Republicans who aren’t categorically anti-choice.

According to Goeglein, “the pro-life movement is becoming younger,” and the panel featured young leaders like Anna Franzonello of Americans United for Life, Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life, and activist Erin DeLullo.

Goeglein tried to balance his belief that the anti-choice movement was gaining support and energy with his fear that social conservatives may devolve into political obscurity and lose their place in the broader right-wing coalition. He said that smear-artist Lila Rose represents a “new generation” of the movement, but also anxiously insisted that the “pro-life and pro-traditional marriage” positions must “remain central to the conservative movement.”

DeLullo made the case that the anti-choice community needs to quickly mobilize against Republicans like Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels who proposed a “truce” on social issues. She maintained that the Club for Growth, a pro-corporate group best known for funding primary opponents against more moderate Republican incumbents, should serve as a model for a “permanent political organization” that is “dedicated fulltime to make sure the ‘anti-life’ vote is as suicidal as a vote to raise taxes.” “The right to life cannot be put on the backburner,” DeLullo said, arguing that the group must act now to stop “‘trucers’ like Mitch Daniels.” Of course, there are already a plethora of social conservative political action committees, but maybe DeLullo was making a plug for her own firm.

AUL’s Franzonello claimed that “abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women,” and discussed her vehement opposition to emergency contraception and legal exceptions for cases of rape and incest. She also floated the “death panel” conspiracy theory about health care reform, saying that the law jeopardizes the lives of “elderly and disabled persons,” along with pushing the debunked claim that it promotes taxpayer-subsidized abortions.

Later, Hawkins of Students for Life, a self-declared “abortion abolitionist,” discussed ways anti-choice groups can drive the conservative movement. She noted that while young voters tend to generally hold liberal and Democratic-leaning views, they tend to be more opposed to reproductive rights than prior generations. The abortion issue, Hawkins argued, gives right-wing organizations an opening among young voters. Hawkins said that young voters are increasingly opposed to legal abortion because “Planned Parenthood nearly snuffed us out of existence,” and then allegedly tried to coerce young women on college campuses to have abortions.

Hawkins lavished praise on “prayer warriors” and Lila Rose, calling her “a modern day muckraker” who will “go down in history” for her role smearing Planned Parenthood. She said that young anti-choice activists should embrace Rose’s tactics in order to get the attention of Republican politicians and Fox News, saying, “We can drive their agenda.”

The anti-choice movement has consistently attempted to tar reproductive freedoms as anti-black genocide. Most recently, Rick Santorum said that it was “almost remarkable for a black man” like Obama to support abortion rights, and Terry Heck believes that Obama’s pro-choice position made him a “disgrace” to “his ancestors” like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

Now, a state legislator in Arizona wants to “criminalize abortions if they’re sought because of race or sex,” reports Cronkite News:

If a state lawmaker has his way, women seeking abortions in Arizona would be required to sign documents saying they’re not terminating a pregnancy because of the fetus’ race or sex.

Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, is sponsoring two bills that would criminalize abortions if they’re sought because of race or sex. Doctors knowingly performing abortions for those reasons would face Class 3 felony charges.

Michelle Steinberg, an Arizona policy manager for Planned Parenthood, said women should never have to make a case to get an abortion and called the bills demeaning and bizarre.

“This could be a slippery slope in terms of requiring women to disclose why they’re choosing abortion,” she said. “Women should never have to present a case to get an abortion.”

Montenegro didn’t respond to several requests for interviews left with his office and with a spokesman for House Republicans. However, he told Capitol Media Services that abortion clinics are targeting minority areas and that more females are aborted than males.

Steinberg said the fact that minority women seek more abortions stems from other problems.

“This idea that minority women are having abortions at higher rates than white women speaks more to rates of poverty, access to contraception and a lack of sex education,” she said. “This is not racial genocide for God’s sake; this is a real problem that we’re not addressing.”

…

U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican representing Arizona’s second district, in 2009 sponsored similar legislation: the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act. The bill, which never made it out of committee, would have criminalized abortion because of the “sex, gender, color or race of the child, or the race of a parent.”

Illinois and Pennsylvania have laws prohibiting sex-selection abortions. Several other states, including Georgia, Mississippi, New Jersey, Idaho and Oklahoma have tried to enact legislation that would prevent sex- or race-selection abortions.

…

Roy Spece, a lawyer and professor at the University of Arizona’s law and medical schools who co-authored a book on cases of bioethics and the law, said Montenegro’s bills could move Arizona backward.

“We could return to the era when you have hospital committees who would decide why each specific woman’s reason for having an abortion is sufficient,” he said.

As Kyle notes, Religious Right organizations have launched a coordinated effort to bring down Planned Parenthood just as the House is set to hold hearings on the misleadingly-named “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” H.R. 3, that attempts to end insurance coverage for abortion and even redefine 'rape.' The House may also take-up Rep. Mike Pence’s “Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act,” which would strip funding to Planned Parenthood that goes towards women’s health services.

Republican leaders have had no problems using smears in their drive to pass anti-choice legislation in the past. Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Michele Bachmann falsely claimed that women in Pennsylvania were using federal dollars to pay for abortions as a result of the health care reform law. Bachmann suggested that defunding Planned Parenthood would help solve the country’s budget deficit, and Pence even used the unemployment rate as a reason to end funding to Planned Parenthood.

Rep. Chris Smith, the chief sponsor of H.R.3, and Rep. Joe Pitts, who sponsored the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and is the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health, both participated in a 2009 Religious Right campaign warning of a “a massive effort to mandate taxpayer-funded abortions” through the health care reform law and blasting Planned Parenthood funding: “Citing the $350 million in taxpayer money handed over to Planned Parenthood, the U.S. abortion industry’s largest business, it warned, ‘Now they want even more!’” And Pitts absurdly claimed on Fox News that the health care reform law would “compel communities who don’t have [abortion] service to provide it.”

That same year, Religious Right leader Gary Bauer called upon activists to attack Planned Parenthood just as James O’Keefe targeted ACORN: “Planned Parenthood deserves the same treatment ACORN is getting and should be stripped of the hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars it receives annually.”

Earlier this week, Smith told Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association that the GOP leadership is solidly behind his bill, and that “Planned Parenthood and the others in the abortion rights movement” who oppose his legislation “are just are trying to poison the waters while they literally poison the child to death.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List is already using Live Action’s video in her demand for Congress to pass anti-choice legislation:

The horror exposed in the video released yesterday was not an isolated incident in the history of a group willing to be a chief ally in the exploitation of women and girls. The unbroken chain of Planned Parenthood's violations is appalling. Yet, this organization insists that it deserves taxpayers' continued support. The moment for taxpayers to reject their compulsory funding of the exploitation of women has arrived. If this organization doesn't shut down its gruesome business altogether, it should at least operate on its own dime. The SBA List and other groups in this coalition are calling upon pro-life America to contact their Representatives and urge them to support the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act. Planned Parenthood must be defunded.