October 3, 2012

Anti-Abortion Group Launches New Super-PAC

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-62553p1.html?cr=00&pl=edit-00">Richard Thornton</a> / <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/?cr=00&pl=edit-00">Shutterstock.com</a>

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The anti-abortion PAC Susan B. Anthony List announced on Wednesday that it is launching a new super-PAC, Women Speak Out, to counter the electoral advocacy of pro-choice groups.

The Susan B. Anthony List is a 20-year-old PAC launched to support anti-abortion candidates, which has become strongly aligned with the Republican Party in recent years. While the group has always spent money to elect anti-abortion candidates, the new super-PAC will allow it to raise unlimited funds to deploy in key states and districts. Women Speak Out says it plans to spend $500,000 on ads in swing states.

“We cannot sit back and allow the deep-pocketed abortion lobby led by Planned Parenthood and EMILY’s List claim to speak for all women,” said Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser in an email soliciting donations for the new PAC. The email requests contributions so that the group can air ads criticizing Obama as an “abortion radical” during Wednesday night’s presidential debate. The ads would counter new anti-Romney spots bankrolled by Planned Parenthood’s 501(c)4 and PAC. A pro-choice Super PAC has also received some major new donations in recent weeks. 

The Women Speak Out ads make a number of inflammatory claims about Obama—including that he supports aborting baby girls, that he supports killing babies who are “born alive” in the course of a “failed abortion,” and that the healthcare reform bill is “the biggest ever expansion of tax-subsidized abortion.”

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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.

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