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Abortion Lobby Launches $140 Million ‘Offensive’ Campaign: Expert

June 25, 2024

The abortion industry has committed more than $100 million to put an abortion-expansion agenda at the center of the 2024 elections, a strategy an expert commentator called “offensive” and “scandalous.” Yet pro-life groups have set aside tens of millions of dollars to mount an underdog, David-and-Goliath campaign to protect life from Joe Biden and the Democrats this November.

Powerful Democrat-aligned lobbying groups, amply funded by abortionists, announced two separate initiatives to bend national laws to their financial benefit this week. Planned Parenthood plans to spend $40 million on phone banks, door-to-door canvassing, online and television advertising, and direct mail aimed at turning out voters in Arizona, Georgia, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“Abortion will be the message of this election, and it will be how we energize voters,” said Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes.

In a separate development on Monday, Planned Parenthood joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Reproductive Rights, and at least six other pro-abortion groups to plan a 10-year, $100 million campaign aimed at “securing access to abortion care in every state.” Politico, which received advance notice of Monday’s meeting, reported that the decade-long project would propose compulsory “laws that make abortion not just legal but easily accessible and affordable” for the next Democratic president to enact. That could mean forcing taxpayers to fund abortion-on-demand nationwide, repealing the provision of the Comstock Act which prohibits sending abortion pills through the mail, and striking down Christian health care providers’ right to refuse to take part in abortion due to their religious beliefs — all items coalition members already support.

The campaign confirmed its desire to harness the power of the federal government to foist liberal abortion laws on the nation as a whole. “The only way to secure equal equality is to fight for federal protections” for the abortion industry, said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation’s leading abortion franchise.

“We are pushing for something beyond Roe,” admitted Sabrina Talukder of the Center for American Progress, who is a member of Abortion Access Now’s steering committee. “We envision a future where abortion, and all sexual and reproductive health care, is not only legal but also accessible, affordable, and free from stigma or fear,” said a statement from Abortion Access Now. The coalition’s members include:

  • American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
  • Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR)
  • In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda
  • National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice (Latina Institute)
  • National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF)
  • National Women’s Law Center (NWLC)
  • Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA)
  • Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America)
  • Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity (URGE)

The members’ positions lie far outside the national mainstream. For instance, URGE promotes an “abortion-positive” philosophy that sees abortion as liberation, deems parental notification laws “unethical,” and advocates for laws allowing pregnant women to take illegal narcotics during pregnancy. URGE would also allow men stay in battered women’s shelters, legalize prostitution, and abolish laws against transgender surgeries for minors as “dangerous.” URGE said this week it plans to stoke “national outrage over abortion bans,” although presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he believes abortion should be dealt with exclusively at the state level. 

The abortion industry has willing allies in the Oval Office. Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the administration’s spokesperson for the issue. “Our daughters know fewer rights than their grandmothers. This is a health care crisis, and we all know who is to blame: Donald Trump,” Harris said at a campaign stop.

“You only have rights if you’re born,” retorted Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, on Monday’s “Washington Watch.”

For his part, Joe Biden has promised to sign the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act, a sweeping national abortion expansion bill that would strike down more than 1,300 pro-life protections coast to coast, if it comes to his desk.

“To have a Catholic president of the United States overseeing this kind of campaign, putting all of his effort into riding this issue to what he thinks will be a victory in the fall on the lives of unborn babies in the womb is horribly offensive to me as a Catholic, as a woman, as a human being, and as a person who loves life,” said Kilgannon. “This is a really, really scandalous situation.”

“It seems crystal clear that 2024 for the Democrats is all about abortion,” said former Congressman Jody Hice, the program’s guest host. “There’s no doubt this is the issue for the Democrats,” perhaps due in part to their manifest credibility gap with the public on most other issues. Polls show that most Americans trust former President Donald Trump more than Joe Biden to handle the economy, immigration, inflation, and crime. If elected, Republicans “need to make sure that the next president addresses problems in the economy that people think they can’t afford to have a family and put extra pressure on people to make these horrible decisions,” said Kilgannon.

On the other hand, Hice pointed out, pro-life voters are “equally as passionate, perhaps even more so,” going into this summer’s presidential nominating conventions, ballot harvesting, and the get-out-the-vote effort in the fall elections.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America announced in February it would launch a $92 million get-out-the-vote campaign through November. SBA’s investment with the allied Women Speak Out super PAC will reach 10 million voters in eight swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio.

“This could be the last Dobbs anniversary that we celebrate if we don’t win the election,” warned Marilyn Musgrave, vice president of Government Affairs at SBA Pro-Life America, this week.

“We must stop the Democrats from their goal of abolishing every pro-life state law that protects unborn children — even children who have a heartbeat, smile, suck their thumbs, and feel pain,” said the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, in an email sent to TWS in April. Trump has also encouraged Republican candidates not to run from the issue of abortion but go on offense against the Democratic Party’s extreme minority position advocating for taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand until birth.

To build on grassroots enthusiasm, Hice urged, the Republican Party “must embrace [the pro-life cause] wholeheartedly, whether on the state level or federal level — or even our platform, for that matter.” Every four years, wars break out about whether to adopt, amend, or rescind the GOP’s right-to-life plank, but credible rumors warn skirmishes over abortion and marriage will be particularly pitched at this year’s Republican National Convention.

“We have to be vigilant,” agreed Kilgannon. “We have to make sure that we don’t accept compromises in party platform language.” The Republican platform should continue to reflect the reality that “there is a role at every level of government to protect life,” Kilgannon told Hice. “The Democrats demonstrate that, because they weaponize government at every level to destroy life.”

Even in a house divided, advocates say pro-life laws protect hundreds of thousands of unborn babies a year. “An estimated 200,902 lives are protected annually thanks to pro-life laws in 24 states,” said SBA Pro-Life America in a statement emailed to TWS.

Yet the abortion industry has vastly outspent the pro-life movement, flooding states with dubious and often inaccurate statements while winning statewide referenda to add abortion to state constitutions.

“It feels like we’re David and they’re Goliath,” said Kristi Hamrick, chief policy strategist for Students for Life of America.

 

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.



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