NARAL Uses Kermit Gosnell's Photo in Pro-Abortion Push

    Via J.D. Mullane, the Philadelphia-area reporter who did much of the work exposing the Kermit Gosnell murder trial to much of the nation:  A May 16th blog post on the NARAL Pro-Choice America website included this graphic:

    Incredibly, in describing the horrors of Gosnell, not once does NARAL even allude to the babies he killed.  The post refers to "[a]ll the women whose lives were affected" and "what Gosnell inflicted on women." It reads in part:

This week, a jury returned a guilty verdict in the case against Kermit Gosnell. 

This man will pay the price for the horrible acts he committed. All the women whose lives were affected deserve at least this much. 

The Gosnell tragedy should serve as a wakeup call that we need to work even harder to ensure that all women have access to safe and legal abortion care. We can't let anti-choice politicians use the Gosnell trial to make it even more difficult for women to access abortion care.

    Planned Parenthood issued a similar yet shorter statement on the Gosnell verdict:

  “The jury has punished Kermit Gosnell for his appalling crimes. This verdict will ensure that no woman is victimized by Kermit Gosnell ever again. 

“This case has made clear that we must have and enforce laws that protect access to safe and legal abortion, and we must reject misguided laws that would limit women's options and force them to seek treatment from criminals like Kermit Gosnell.”

    Planned Parenthood made no reference to Gosnell's baby-killing convictions either.

Planned Parenthood: A Few Choice Words

    Anna North of BuzzFeed created a stir recently with her report that Planned Parenthood would be "moving away" from "pro-choice" terminology that has been the euphemism of choice for abortion rights advocates for decades:

"It's a complicated topic and one in which labels don't reflect the complexity," said Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards at a press briefing Wednesday. But, she said, the group's polling showed most Americans could get behind a more nuanced statement of principles: "It is important that women make their own decisions about pregnancy, and that politicians do not."
Planned Parenthood Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens said the word "choice" itself might be causing problems. "When 'choice' got assigned," she explained, "women didn't have as many choices" in any area of their lives. Now that women have more rights and freedoms, she said, maybe "'choice' as word sounds frivolous."

    As if on cue, the statement issued on January 11th accompanying its 2011-2012 annual report does not mention "choice" at all. Remarkably, for a report that includes a record number of abortions last year, one would hardly know Planned Parenthood even offered the procedure:

“The Planned Parenthood annual report for 2010-2011 shows that Planned Parenthood affiliates remain one of the nation’s leading providers of high-quality, affordable health care for women, men, and young people. Planned Parenthood health centers provide nearly three million patients a year with a wide range of preventive health care, including lifesaving cervical cancer screenings, breast exams, Pap tests, STD testing, and birth control. More than 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are preventive care, such as cancer screenings and birth control, and like any other health care provider Planned Parenthood health centers are reimbursed by the government for providing specific preventive services to low-income patients. As has been the case for decades, federal funds are not and cannot be used to provide abortion.” 

The Planned Parenthood 2010-2011 annual report shows that more than 750 Planned Parenthood health centers nationwide provided nearly 11 million services to nearly three million people during the year, including:

• birth control information and services to two million patients;
• 585,000 Pap tests, which identified about 82,000 women at risk of developing cervical cancer;
• 640,000 breast exams; and 
• nearly 4.5 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV tests.

    The only abortion mention in the statement is in the negative: "federal funds are not and cannot be used to provide abortion." In the body of the annual report, "abortion" appears in only three places, once on a graphic and twice in a list of total services offered in 2011-12. Although the graphic portrays abortion as representing only 3% of its services, I have seen estimates that abortion provides anywhere from 15% to 50% of Planned Parenthood's annual revenue.

    But old habits die hard. On January 14th, this press release appeared from Planned Parenthood:

Planned Parenthood Welcomes Ilyse Hogue as NARAL President; Thanks Nancy Keenan for Years of Service to the Fight for Women’s Health 

WASHINGTON, DC — Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards released the following statement welcoming NARAL Pro-Choice America’s announcement that Ilyse Hogue will replace Nancy Keenan as President.
“We are thrilled to welcome Ilyse Hogue as the new president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. She brings fresh perspective and energy to the fight for access to safe and legal abortion as we mark the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and face continued battles in many states across the country. We look forward to our continued close partnership with NARAL Pro-Choice America under her leadership, especially as we work to cultivate the next generation of leaders...

    When your soul-mate organization calls itself "NARAL Pro-Choice America," shedding the "choice" language may be harder than it first seemed.

When is Nonpartisan Not Nonpartisan? [Updated]

    A short time ago I wrote about a website called Name It. Change It., an affiliate of the Women's Campaign Fund (WCF).   While my original focus was on the conflicting messages within WCF sites about "what issues are important to women," I was also intrigued by another statement on the main page of the WCF website:

NONPARTISAN - We support women leaders who support reproductive health choices for all, regardless of political party.

As I began to investigate this claim, I found that the information provided on their website about candidates backed by WCF certainly seemed to confirm the non-partisan claim.  I could find no indication of the political parties of any of the 61 listed candidates.  However, elsewhere on their main page the mission of the WCF is proclaimed as follows:

The Women’s Campaign Fund, a nonpartisan organization, is dedicated to dramatically increasing the number of women in elected office who support reproductive health choices for all. [Emphasis added]

Given the obvious divide between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of abortion (the non-euphemistic and more succinct term for "reproductive health choices"), I was reasonably sure Democratic Party candidates would far outnumber Republicans.  I was not disappointed.  Here is what my research turned up:

Democratic Party - 58
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party - 2
Republican Party - 1

A Republican! Yes, Elizabeth Childs is running for Barney Frank's open seat in Massachusetts.  However (surprise, surprise,) Childs is not exactly a lifelong Republican, as the Boston Globe notes.  She's actually a nine-month Republican:

Childs had been registered as either a Democrat or an unenrolled voter for two decades before registering as a Republican in July, just before announcing she was running for Congress.

The Globe article also notes the following about the Democratic side of the race:

But in a statement released by the Childs campaign Wednesday, Nassour said Childs is “the best candidate to take on the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joseph Kennedy, and bring more bipartisan balance and strength to our Congressional delegation,” she added.

Perhaps I'm just cynical, but is it possible that Childs believed it would be easier to face a Kennedy in Massachusetts as a Republican in the general election rather than a Democrat in the primary with the hope that some of that old Scott Brown magic will rub off?  In any case, Childs is certainly not going out of her way to draw attention to her new Republican identity.  A search of her campaign website does return two hits for "Republican," but a perusal of the two pages listed by the search reveals the word is nowhere to be found.
   So, "Women's Campaign Fund, a nonpartisan organization?"  Technically, yes; but in practice, the group is about as nonpartisan as the Congressional Black Caucus.  "Women's Campaign Fund" might not be completely honest and descriptive, but "Liberal Democratic Pro-Choice Women's Fund" would definitely be more difficult to fit on a letterhead.

UPDATE:  Someone pointed out that I would need to analyze the "reproductive health choices" positions of the WCF candidates' opponents to really judge the nonpartisan nature of the WCF.  I acknowledge I am primarily relying on the IIQLAD test, but until the hiring freeze at the Speak With Authority Think Tank is lifted, it will have to do. However, I can add these to the mix:

1. According to Gallup, 25% of Republican women identify as “pro-choice”. Theoretically, at least, the numbers are out there.
2. In January, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, one of WCF’s high profile women, wrote in the Huffington Post, “we must recommit ourselves to doing all we can to elect more pro-choice Democratic women to Congress in 2012.”
3. There is a longer list of all WCF-endorsed candidates who won their races and are currently serving, but are not necessarily up for reelection. There could be more Republicans on that list, but I have not researched that. Yet.

That being said, I still find the data and empirical evidence so far persuasive enough that I am comfortable with my preliminary conclusion that WCF is only slightly more nonpartisan than they are gender-inclusive.


Originally published before the update at Blogger News Network on April 2, 2012.