Nevada Democratic Party: “[Adam] Laxalt joined a U.S. Supreme Court case supporting fake clinics that discourage women from making their own health care decisions.”
Steve Sisolak mailing: “[As] attorney general, Laxalt lobbied the Supreme Court to back abortion bans in other states, supported shady ‘clinics’ that discourage women from learning about their reproductive rights.”
Aaron Ford mailing: “The Reno/Sparks Crisis Pregnancy Center spreads lies about safe and legal abortion methods to mislead women and has also thrown lavish fundraisers with extremist organizations.”
Democrats have long supported abortion rights, though it took a few years for Steve Sisolak to get there, and they are on solid ground when they do so. But they cross a line when they try to hamper the legitimate activities of crisis pregnancy centers, funded and staffed by anti-abortion activists who try—legally and non-violently—to reduce the number of abortions. Democrat Bill Clinton popularized the notion that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Those goals always overlapped. Surveys have shown clearly that there are those who want abortion to be safe and legal but still find the procedure morally troubling while wanting the decision left to the individual and government out of it. This is an issue with nuance, which explains why some abortion opponents support the Democrats.
But the Democratic Party’s stance on abortion has changed from supporting abortion rights to trying to interfere with the rights of those who oppose abortion, even using state power to get the job done. The California Legislature went so far as to require crisis pregnancy centers to post signs advertising abortion services that constituted compelled speech. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that law. We tried to find independent studies that showed a pattern of misconduct or unethical behavior by pregnancy centers that prompted enactment of the California signage law. We found none. It all kept coming back to a one-sided report by the National Abortion Rights Action League, and the Atlantic Monthly reported that the California Legislature relied almost entirely on the NARAL report in crafting the law. That’s appalling behavior. How did such a thing happen, even in a legislature that is overwhelmingly Democratic?
Here’s how: “Planned Parenthood spent more than $38 million dollars on campaigning for Democrats from 2008 to 2016,” according to Lainey Newman, the college student who made a splash as a Clinton supporter in 2016.
Newman also argues, “The Democrats could face the reality that there are simply not enough staunch abortion-rights supporters to have electoral success. … [T]he political exclusion of pro-life voters only damages the electoral success of Democrats, and limits their ability to pass policies that support and provide reproductive care to women.”
Ford, Sisolak and the Democrats, through their verbiage, are trying to stigmatize crisis pregnancy centers without any independent proof that those clinics are doing anything wrong. If they have such proof, they should present it—and not just occasional anecdotes but evidence of a pattern of conduct by these clinics generally.
We’re waiting, gentlemen. Present your evidence or stop abusing the clinics.