One of the Democratic Party’s brightest rising stars, whom party campaign operatives call “our next Barack Obama,” has released a video calling a Planned Parenthood abortion facility that also injects minors with transgender hormones “a safe place.”
“We are proud to be here to support the [abortion] providers,” said Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) in an online video shot last Friday to mark the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. “This is a safe place,” he continued from inside Annapolis Health Center, a Planned Parenthood affiliate that carries out surgical abortions up to 16 weeks and dispenses abortion drugs after only an online consultation.
That makes the facility anything but safe, pro-life advocates say. “Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry are businesses and pit mother against child. They put their profit over the lives of unborn children, young girls, and women. These businesses do anything to push pills and their agenda of abortion-on-demand, paid for by the taxpayer, including dangerous mail-order DIY abortion pills without medical in-person visits and at times without parental consent or notification,” E.V. Osment, vice president of communications for SBA Pro-Life America, told The Washington Stand.
“We should protect and advocate for women, offering them real solutions, not pushing pills and surgery that ultimately harms them and their children,” Osment told TWS.
The notion of a “safe” abortion would have triggered former Planned Parenthood facility manager Myra Rodriguez. “I sold abortions for 16 years. Then I became the director of an abortion facility. I realized what I had been promoting and selling — I realized there’s no such thing as a safe abortion,” Rodriguez told the Townhall for Life, hosted by the Family Research Council, last Wednesday night.
The location Moore chose for his video, the Annapolis Health Center, is also one of the many Planned Parenthood offices that injects minors as young as 16 with cross-sex hormones. Moore signed an executive order earlier this month declaring the state will “take whatever action is necessary” to protect the transgender industry’s access to minors.
“We’re thankful for your leadership,” Moore tells Planned Parenthood of Maryland president Karen Nelson, mirroring the White House strategy to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with abortionists. Last week, the Biden administration had Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, personally phone abortionists to thank them for plying their services.
In the video Moore, who took office in January, touts his brief but robust service protecting and benefiting the abortion industry. On his first day in office, Moore released $3.5 million in state funds to train such non-physicians as midwives, physicians assistants, and nurse practitioners how to carry out abortions.
In May, Moore signed one bill (S.B. 859) shielding the state’s abortion industry from the consequences of violating other states’ pro-life laws and another (S.B. 341) forcing certain colleges to create “a reproductive health services plan” that furnishes “abortion care services” to students.
“Maryland is a place where we are going to stockpile mifepristone,” the abortion drug used in more than half of all abortions nationwide, says Moore in last week’s video. Earlier this month, Moore announced $1.3 million for the University of Maryland Medical System to purchase about 35,000 mifepristone abortion pills, which sources estimate would last for about two-and-a-half years. Moore attributes the decision to the “remarkable leadership” of Maryland Secretary of Health Laura Herrera Scott, who also appears in the video.
“Eliminating medical supervision and using taxpayer dollars to stockpile abortion pills is reckless, particularly for women with ectopic pregnancies,” Osment told The Washington Stand. The FDA recorded thousands of negative side effects, including dozens of deaths, from mifepristone. The pill inflicts four times as many adverse side than surgical abortion, studies show.
Yet Moore vows, “We are going to make sure that Maryland is a safe haven for abortion.”
Moore joined 20 other Democratic governors to form the Reproductive Freedom Alliance. He “fully supported” efforts to “enshrine” abortion in the state’s constitution. “We are going to be aggressive,” Moore told The Baltimore Banner on Friday. “We believe deeply that abortion is health care and that health care is going to be a right for people.”
Maryland’s taxpayers pay the bill for nearly one third (32%) of all abortions statewide. Medicaid (known as the Medical Assistance Program) paid $6.5 million to subsidize 9,864 of the state’s estimated30,750 abortions in 2020, according to figures from the Maryland Department of Health. Although state officials stopped collecting official abortion statistics in 2006, the Guttmacher Institute estimates the number of abortions increased 3% between 2017 and 2020.
The Democratic Party’s national platform calls for taxpayer-funded abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.
The video praising Planned Parenthood, and vouching for the safety of its products, is significant because pundits across the political spectrum agree that Wes Moore — an up-and-coming figure in a party with a shallow bench of candidates — will almost certainly seek higher office.
Moore, a former Rhodes Scholar, worked as an investment banker at Deutsche Bank in London and Citigroup in New York, before the telegenic and charismatic 44-year-old formed his own television production company. Moore defeated former DNC co-chair and Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez for his party’s gubernatorial nomination before beating his Republican opponent by double digits. Plaudits began pouring in even before his election.
“Wes Moore has never been elected to anything. Some backers are already eyeing the White House,” noted Politico. “Maryland’s First Black Governor Gives Democrats Hope After a Biden White House,” stated a Bloomberg News headline.
Moore is frequently compared to another lightly experienced presidential candidate: Barack Obama.
Moore “is widely considered the Democrats’ most talented political newcomer since Barack Obama,” reported Time magazine in February.
“Moore’s victory proves … it is possible for [b]lack candidates to build multiracial coalitions to obtain enough votes from non-[b]lack voters to win elections,” wrote Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. “It’s easy to imagine him running for president.”
“[K]eep an eye on him. Someday the young governor may follow in Obama’s footsteps and wind up in the White House,” wrote Brazile.
“On election night, I was with some former Obama officials, and as you won, they said, ‘This is our next Barack Obama,’” revealed Alyssa Farah Griffin during Moore’s February appearance on “The View.”
Barack Obama helped cultivate Moore, tapping him to serve as a member of the board of directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service (e.g., AmeriCorps) in 2014 and endorsing him in the general election. After the midterm election, Obama praised Moore as one of his party’s “committed, passionate, down-to-earth” candidates, along with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator John Fetterman.
Moore told “The View” that “economic mobility” will be “our focus” in office before racking up a substantial record on abortion and transgender identity.
“Any woman or young girl who finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy deserves our compassion and should be met with support and resources. In Maryland, where abortion is available through all nine months of pregnancy, there are 84 better women’s service providers including pregnancy centers and health clinics compared to nine Planned Parenthoods,” Osment told TWS.
“These pregnancy centers stand alongside and support women, during their pregnancy and afterward for years, providing them resources.”
Maryland Right to Life did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Washington Stand.
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
