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Planned Parenthood investing $1.6 million in effort to stop TN ballot measure

Oct 21, 2014

 

Editor’s note. This appears in the October digital edition of National Right to Life News. You can read this and every other story and column in the “pro-life newspaper of record” at www.nrlc.org/uploads/NRLNews/NRLNEWSOCT2014.pdf.

By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Research and Education

yeson1ccFor all its talk of “letting women decide,” Planned Parenthood is putting more than $1.6 million into an effort in Tennessee to keep decisions about abortion laws in the hands of five unelected state supreme court justices rather than let voters determine, through their elected representatives, what sort of protections there will be for unborn children and their mothers considering abortion.

The focus is on a constitutional amendment—“Amendment 1”—on this fall’s ballot, a response to a 2000 decision by the Tennessee Supreme Court. If approved, it would stop the court from invalidating laws passed by state legislature related to abortion, in the name of “privacy.” Not surprisingly, abortion giant Planned Parenthood is heavily invested in defending its lucrative abortion business and is committed to seeing the measure fail.

Why an amendment?

In September of 2000, the Tennessee Supreme Court struck down several abortion regulations, e.g., informed consent, citing a “fundamental” but unwritten “right to privacy” in the state constitution. This has stymied common sense protective measures such as clinic regulations, waiting periods and threatens laws already on the book such as parental consent for minors that have simply not yet been challenged.

It has also led to Tennessee having what The Tennessean calls “the fewest abortion restrictions of any state in the Southeast” (5/19/12). Thus it is not surprising that Tennessee has what the latest abortion surveillance report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control shows to be the third highest percentage of out-of-state residents obtaining abortions in the country (among reporting states, not including the District of Columbia; Table 2, Abortion Surveillance -United States, 2010, published 11/29/13).

“Amendment 1″ would reject the court’s assertion of an unwritten “right to abortion” in the Tennessee constitution and would return the power to regulate abortion to the people of Tennessee through their elected representatives.

The text of the proposed amendment reads as follows:

Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.

Though many Tennesseans would surely welcome the opportunity to ban abortion entirely, the amendment does not do that. Amendment 1 merely returns the power to craft legislation on abortion back to the people’s elected representatives. Until and unless the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, Tennessee’s legislature will be limited by what the U.S. Supreme Court allows.

Dollars in Defense of Death

The state abortion industry is furious, of course, that anyone would dare to challenge their ability to do as they please, and is marshaling resources to try and defeat the amendment. They have created a “Vote NO on 1″ campaign and are flooding the airwaves, saturating the internet, and manning phone banks with tales of “attacks” on the state constitution and privacy rights. [1]

Though some of the state’s biggest private abortion clinics kicked in $40,000 and a handful of individuals made private contributions, the bulk of funding for the “Vote NO on 1″ campaign comes from Planned Parenthood affiliates in Tennessee and elsewhere. (Contributions to the Vote NO on 1 campaign, as well as expenditures, are listed on the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance website, www.tn.gov/tref/refcom/ref_com.htm).

After what appears to be an initial start up contribution of $1000 in the first quarter report of 2014, Planned Parenthood of Middle and Eastern Tennessee (PPMETN) made cash contributions of $189,500 in the second quarter and an additional $500,000 in the just completed third quarter.

Not to be outdone, Planned Parenthood of the Greater Memphis Region (PPGMR), which anchors the western part of the state, and its political arm Planned Parenthood Advocates Mid-South (same address as the Planned Parenthood Memphis clinic, though it also does political work for Planned Parenthood in Arkansas and Mississippi in addition to Tennessee) followed its first quarter contribution of $1000 with a contribution of $25,000 in the second quarter and a contribution of $817,140 in the third.

This $1,533,640 from just those regional Planned Parenthood affiliates represents nearly 80% of Vote NO’s contributions for the year!

But these affiliates were giving more than cash.

PPMETN and PPGMR also made “in-kind” contributions of personnel, travel, printing, postage, food, drink, etc. by during that same period totaling $120,657.68. This is easily more than any other individual or group invested in the Vote NO campaign, making it clear whose interests the Vote NO campaign serves.

It is clear from the contribution data, though, that this is more than just a local issue for Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood affiliates from other states have made sizeable contributions to Vote NO – $50,000 from Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest (Alaska, Idaho, and western Washington state), $45,000 from Planned Parenthood Illinois, $25,000 from the Community Action Fund of Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernadino Counties (California), $10,000 from the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, $5,000 from Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, $5,000 from Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, and a $1,000 each from Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes (New York) and Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina.

All told, Planned Parenthood affiliates from other states gave $142,000, easily making them the largest group of donors to the Vote NO campaign – outside of the in-state Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Money for Media, Manpower

More than $21,000 in the third quarter was spent on “print materials” or “printed materials,” nearly $40,000 on polling or polling research, and over $50,000 on “Media Production” and an additional $144,000 on “Paid Media.” Another $10,000 seems to have gone towards the website (“digital consulting”), though there were website, production, and printing fees in earlier quarters.

While they have spent a great deal, Vote NO still has a lot of money in the bank, with $1.6 million still on hand at the end of the last quarter (AP, 10/13/14). Watch for a lot of that money to go towards TV ads. Commercials are already running in Nashville, Knoxville, and Memphis, and a well funded ad blitz can be anticipated in the weeks leading up to the election.

Four TV ads are up already on Vote NO’s You Tube channel (www.youtube.com/channel/UCc4xgnRKU4NP8mVWOJh-Txg), featuring a woman victimized by rape saying the amendment would prohibit her seeking an abortion (it would not); female doctors claiming that the amendment could force a woman to choose between her own life and the life of her child, or that it could leave the family of a pregnant mother facing cancer with “no options” (again, the amendment takes no position on what the state’s abortion law should be in regard to rape, incest, risk to mother’s life, health, or any other situation); and a female lawyer saying that the amendment could (somehow, strangely) threaten “marital and child-rearing” rights.

The Yes on 1 folks do not have anywhere near the deep pockets of Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry, but do have broad-based grassroots support of their own and are very active. They have helped put out 75,000 yard signs around the state and have an active Facebook page with nearly twice as many likes as the Vote NO page. They are running TV and radio ads in all six of Tennessee’s major media markets. See their advertising on their own YouTube channel.

“We are praying that our grassroots work for the past year and a half will remain strong” Ed Albin, treasurer for Yes on 1, told the NRL News. And praying that the good folk of Tennessee “will not be swayed by their deceptive ads.”

Why it matters

As someone who grew up in East Tennessee and attended elementary, high school, and college in that state and still has family there, this amendment has special personal significance to me. My friends and family in Tennessee care deeply about both mothers and their unborn babies. They don’t want to see the abortion lobby and its allies on the state Supreme Court claiming constitutional authority to protect the abortion industry rather than the basic rights and safety of the women, teens, and unborn children of Tennessee.

Obviously it matters a lot to the abortion industry, too. They have invested over $1.6 million to defeat Amendment, and have brought in at least $142,000 from out of state pro-abortion groups. They see a real threat to their abortion empire if women find out the truth about abortion and the voters are given a real say.

They now their business could be harmed if, for example, shabby, dirty, cut rate clinics are inspected and then closed; if women actually begin to be told of abortion risks and life preserving alternatives that are better for them and their children; and if the courts stop trying to hide the reality of baby-killing behind fictional rights that do not actually appear in state and federal constitutions.

YES on 1, my fellow Volunteers!

[1] “Proposed Abortion Ban in Tennessee” Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee website, 10/14/14,http://voteno1tn.org/2014/10/09/early-get-out-the-vote-weekend-of-action), claims of rape victims and women with cancer being denied abortions (www.youtube.com/watch?v=41sGwrLnp50), claims of men and women being denied access to contraceptives (Chattanooga Times Free Press, 10/12/14). They also claim that the amendment will enable the legislature to take away even “marriage and childrearing rights.” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR2dh4QQ0HQ).

Categories: Abortion PPFA