By Deborah Bunting
Planned Parenthood has announced it’s going whole-hog in spreading its massive wealth to elect pro-abortion candidates for state and federal offices in 2020.
According to CBS News, the abortion giant plans to spend an unprecedented $45-million – the most it’s ever spent on elections – to “fund large-scale grassroots programs and canvassing, digital, television, and radio and mail programs.”
Planned Parenthood told CBS just this week that, along with other like-minded political groups, it’s already hosted over 60 events.
On the eve of the 47th anniversary of Roe v Wade (Jan. 22), which is the Supreme Court decision that gutted state laws and made abortion legal nationwide, the nation’s largest abortion provider says threats to the right to kill unborn children have never been greater, nor the stakes higher than in this year’s elections.
“[The Trump Administration] has managed to undo so much over the last three years,” Jenny Lawson, the Planned Parenthood Votes Executive Director, said in an exclusive interview with CBS News. “The fact that this summer the Supreme Court might gut Roe v. Wade is an indicator of their intention and they’ve never been so bold.”
She’s referring to the Supreme Court’s consideration of a Louisiana law that requires that abortionists have admitting privileges at a local hospital, a requirement the law’s supporters say is intended to help guarantee the competency of doctors, and to protect the health and safety of mothers should something go wrong in the abortion procedure.
As reported by CBN News earlier this month, opponents of the law – like Planned Parenthood – say its real purpose is to limit access to abortion, which they say it severely does. The New York Times reports that only one abortion doctor in Louisiana has been able to meet the admitting privileges requirement.
The Louisiana law is the first dealing with abortion to come before the Supreme Court since Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both nominated by President Trump, were seated on the court. Planned Parenthood and other abortion supporters have relied heavily on the courts to side with them on the abortion issue to get what legislatures wouldn’t pass as law. Now with two more justices on the Court who think judges shouldn’t make law, they’re concerned Roe v Wade may be reconsidered and result in a diminishing of the right to abortion.
As CBN News reported, earlier this month 207 mostly Republican lawmakers in Congress signed an amicus brief in the Louisiana case asking the Supreme Court to do that very thing, reconsider Roe. Many legal scholars say Roe was a terrible decision, one where the Court stepped into legislating rather than judging and ended up making abortion the most contentious social and political issue since the Court ruled in the infamous Dred Scott decision that black people could not be counted as full persons.
But that’s not the only reason Planned Parenthood is turning to electioneering to save the “right to abortion.” CBS reports state lawmakers introduced more than 300 measures to restrict abortion last year, a record-high number, according to the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm. While many of these measures have been held up by the courts, many, like mandatory waiting periods to consider what abortion does to an unborn child, have gone into effect. More measures to restrict the procedure and protect the unborn and mothers will be considered by states in 2020.
Planned Parenthood’s “We Decide 2020” effort plans to target nine battleground states – Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – and reach five million voters.
As for candidates, Planned Parenthood’s Jenny Lawson told CBS they like all the Democratic candidates for president.
“The Democratic candidates collectively have the boldest reproductive rights policies we’ve ever seen,” Lawson said. “Every major candidate in the 2020 elections, except for Donald Trump, has spoken out against dangerous abortion bans and many of them have actually introduced real plans to protect the reproductive rights in this country.”
Opponents of abortion don’t plan to leave Planned Parenthood’s efforts unchallenged. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, says her group is planning its own efforts in battleground states to elect candidates who believe in the sanctity of life and is committed “to calling out extremist Democrats who support abortion on demand through birth and even infanticide…”
The SBA List plans to spend more than $40-million in the 2020 election cycle. Its website https://lifeontheballot.com/ shows numerous endorsements for pro-life women candidates in particular.
“The stakes of this election could not be higher,” Dannenfelser said in a press release, “as Democratic contenders line up to pander to the radical abortion lobby and declare war on even the most popular, modest pro-life policies, like the Hyde Amendment [allows no taxpayer funding for abortion]…Our team will be working hard through Election Day to educate millions of voters, expose the extremism of Trump’s opponents, elect pro-life leaders to Congress and in the states, and win a second term for the most pro-life president in history.”