Yesterday I blogged about the entrenched, old-guard pro-choice interests freaking out about the new magenta movement which combines abortion with other social justice issues, but today I read that the same thing is happening with old-guard pro-lifers. Groups claiming to be ‘pro-life’ are now showing their true colors:
Anti-abortion groups are poised to launch a multimillion-dollar offensive against a collection of former allies — House Democrats who also oppose abortion — in an effort to discredit their credibility with anti-abortion voters and oust them from office.
Four separate campaigns are in the works, aimed at anti-abortion House Democrats who voted for the health care bill and designed around the notion that those Democrats signed on to legislation that lacked restrictions ensuring that federal funds would not be spent to provide coverage for abortions.
Some of the targeted members — largely, though not exclusively, vulnerable and junior Democrats — voted for the bill after Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) cut a deal with the White House that President Barack Obama would sign an executive order ensuring that the bill would not provide such funding.
This week, the Family Research Council Action political action committee announced that it would spend $500,000 targeting 20 House Democrats — many of them freshmen from districts with a high concentration of voters who oppose abortion.
This despite the the fact that:
Some in the anti-abortion movement conceded that attacking their longtime Democratic collaborators — who have a small but influential role within the House majority — hasn’t been easy.
McClusky, for his part, acknowledged that in taking on Mollohan, a longtime ally who holds a seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, the anti-abortion movement risked alienating a friend.
“The last thing we want to do is take out an Appropriations Committee member who was on our side,” said McClusky. “And the last thing we want to do is to take out a Democrat on our side.”
Ya think?
That they still see some kind of essential link between their movement and that of the Republican party not only reveals where the old-guard pro-lifers get butter for their bread, but it also where their true loyalties lie. Rather than being authentically pro-life, they are more fundamentally socially conservative. And their idolatry with regard to outdated political categories means that abortion will continue to exploit the most vulnerable persons in our society: our prenatal children and their mothers. And especially the poor.
Simply an outrage.
No Hidden Magenta 