November 18, 2009

SarahPAC Scrubs Site of Pro-Choice Nomination

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On Tuesday, Mother Jones reported that the anti-abortion group American Right to Life planned to protest at one of Sarah Palin’s book promotion appearances in Indiana because it believes Palin isn’t really pro-life. ARTL’s Exhibit A is Palin’s March appointment of a former Planned Parenthood board member to the Alaska Supreme Court. ARTL had included the information in a report outlining its case against Palin on its new website, Prolife Profiles.

Apparently ARTL has hit a nerve with the Palin campaign. Less than 24 hours after the group posted the report, Palin’s political action committee, SarahPAC, scrubbed its website of any mention of the court appointment. (Palin had issued a news release about it earlier this year.) Fortunately, ARTL cached the web page and it’s now available for the ages here. They write in the new report:

While National RTL and the pro-life industry continue to allow the Body of Christ to be deceived into thinking that Sarah is 100% pro-life, she cannot hide her record from God, nor from the public. Pro-lifers do not appoint abortionists to the Supreme Court just as an abolitionist would not appoint a slave trader. Please pray with us that Sarah will apologize to the children of Alaska, specifically those who have been dismembered since March 4, 2009, for appointing an ‘outstanding’ unrepentant pro-abortion lawyer. SarahPAC took this information down; ProlifeProfiles put it back up. Welcome to the end of child killing in our lifetime.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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