by LauraLoo

Crucial choices are upon us for 2012.

Also, what’s with Obama and his hypocrisy?  He tells us he’s pro-choice, pro-Roe v. Wade, but not pro-abortion – while continuing to be an staunch advocate of Planned Parenthood:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65OLSWWs87s[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Jill]

There’s a whole generation of young women and men who have no idea what the back-alley days were like, what the dangers and casualties were, and how important it is for it to be safe and legal today…

We decided to go back to the back alley and tell our stories, because most people have no idea.

~ Filmmaker and post-abortive mother Dorothy Fadiman (pictured right), explaining the reason for the national touring project Choice at Risk!, featuring her Academy Award-nominated (1996)  trilogy of films, From the Back-Alleys to the Supreme Court and Beyond. The tour features footage and interviews of those who remembered what it was like in the pre-Roe vs. Wade days, as featured in the Philadelphia Weekly, September 27

[Photo via stealingamericathemovie.org]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Kristin Neuhaus, a former abortionist and rubber-stamper for abortionist George Tiller owes $93,000 to the state board for her various attempts to keep her medical license.
• Speaking of Tiller and Neuhaus, the leader of a pro-abortion organization in Kansas with ties to Tiller has purchased his former clinic and aims to make it an abortion clinic again:
  

  Burkhart declined to discuss the details of the sale, but property tax records available online list the appraised value of the property as $734,100. Burkhart said she can’t say yet exactly when the new clinic will open or how many doctors will work there….

  In a recent advertisement circulated by email to abortion-rights supporters, Trust Women said it was looking for medical staff experienced in first and early-second trimester abortions and planned to open its clinic between mid-November and January 2013.

• In Canada, there is much ado over Status of Women minister Rona Ambrose (pictured left) voting in favor of a motion to create a committee to research when life begins. At National Post, Jonathon Kay has the details:
  

  Globe & Mail columnist Tabatha Southey Tweeted that “Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose voted Yea on [motion] 312. Now waiting for the Minister of Agriculture to vote against corn.” Canadian poet Paul Vermeersch wondered aloud: “After Rona Ambrose votes in Parliament against all Canadian women, will Peter Kent napalm a family of peregrine falcons in solidarity?” And Gail Erlick Robinson, Director of the University Health Network’s Women’s Mental Health Program, has a letter to the National Post declaring that “As Minister for the Status of Women, [yea-voting] Rona Ambrose should be particularly ashamed.”

  Ashamed? For what? Voting her conscience on one of the most important bioethical issues facing humanity? For supporting some measure of parliamentary courage in remedying a legislative vacuum that has existed in this country since the Supreme Court of Canada struck down our abortion law a quarter century ago?

  Pro-choice militants cast abortion restrictions — at any stage of gestation — as a form of female slavery. And, perversely, they do this despite the fact that sex-selective abortion is eradicating millions of females from the earth every year — including some right here in Canada. Might it not be within the ambit of the Status of Women Minister to investigate whether the extermination of so many girl fetuses — including those viable outside the womb — is consistent with Canadian values?

[Ambrose photo via National Post]

For 29 years Nancy Brinker and Susan G. Komen for the Cure enjoyed the adoration of the masses.  There is no better story than launching an organization to stop breast cancer at the request of one’s dying sister.

Brinker also enjoyed bipartisan political favor as a wealthy Republican who had received appointments from every GOP president since Ronald Reagan and also as a pro-abortion liberal who sat on the board of her local Planned Parenthood, was friends with CEO Cecile Richards, and had received the Medal of Freedom from President Obama.

So it may be no wonder Brinker’s leadership team was totally unprepared for the Left’s assault when they tried to defund Planned Parenthood. They likely had grown to believe their own hype.

The other problem was so many on Brinker’s leadership team were Planned Parenthood sympathizers whose loyalty rested with it rather than beating breast cancer when put to the test.

How naive were Brinker and Komen? They hired public relations consultants that were Democrat and Planned Parenthood operatives.

Here’s a pretty unbelievable list of all the players, according to former Komen exec Karen Handel in her new book, Planned Bullyhood, who I also interviewed for this story:

Komen team

Leslie Aun, Komen’s VP of Communications, who resigned following the debacle: Handel described Aun to me as an “in-your-face liberal.” In her book, Handel wrote of Komen’s very first conference call regarding PP, regarding Richards’ mammogram claim on Joy Behar’s talk show, during which Aun said Komen couldn’t walk away from PP because it would “deal PP a body blow,” an exact quote according to Handel’s notes from the call.

Liz Thompson, Komen’s President, who has now also resigned: Described in Handel’s book as “friends” with Richards. “They frequently crossed paths and had sat on numerous panels together.”

Affiliates: Handel told me in our interview  the Komen affiliates most against the PP decision were those in New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and California.  Others joined with them, but these were the instigators.  Staff at several of these affiliates are previous PP employees, volunteers, and/or board members.  A detailed Q&A was distributed to them in the summer of 20111, before the decision, “a big mistake,” according to Handel, because it contained too many details. People within Komen handed it over to to PP, giving PP its ammunition.

During a follow-up affiliates meeting Handel wrote in her book that several executive directors actually said “the right to choose” trumped Komen’s mission, and if Komen suffered, so be it.

Public Relations team

Ogilvy Public Relations/Brendan Daly: Ogilvy was and still may be Komen’s primary PR consultant.  Brendan Daly was the account rep.  Daly is a longtime Democrat who previously worked for Nancy Pelosi as Communications Director, where he and Richards also worked together.

SKDKnickerbocker/Hilary Rosen: Yes, that Hilary Rosen (pictured below right). Komen hired SKD to manage the Left on a variety of issues, including PP and this environmental study it thought would attract liberal ire. According to Handel, the connections between Rosen, the White House, Democrats, and PP run deep:

• Anita Dunn is a managing partner in SKD, formerly the White House Communications Director under Obama.
• At the same time SKD was handling PR for Komen, it was doing PR work for PP. According to Handel in our interview, “Rosen told me directly that it was nothing to worry about it because SKD kept a ‘firewall between clients.'”
• Rosen was Komen’s go-between with Planned Parenthood, tasked, for instance, with arranging the call between Thompson and Richards.
• Rosen was involved in Komen’s communications strategy discussions from the beginning.  Rosen actually crafted the initial language that was so focused on investigations against PP – a focus Handel felt was not at all appropriate for external audiences and the press.
• Rosen/SKD did consulting work for the DNC and specifically worked to help media train Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
• Rosen and PP VP of Policy Dawn Laguens know one another well.  Their children are in the very same class at a small private school in D.C.
• Rosen is a former editor for Huffington Post – the outlet of choice for all Komen leaks.

SKDKnickerbocker/Emily Lenzner, partner: Lenzner was introduced to Komen by Rosen in the very first email to senior staff about the hire of SKD as the “PP expert.”

Lenzner’s husband is Peter Cherukuri, the managing partner of the Washington office for HuffPo, again,the go-to media outfit for all leaks from within Komen. Not in the book: Lenzner’s parents started a  charitable trust that contributes to PP.

Tomorrow: “Komen betrayed from within, Part II: The coincidences”

by Hans Johnson

Massachusetts Against Doctor Prescribed Suicide – No On 2 warns that the so-called “Death With Dignity Initiative” to be voted on this  November 6th does not safeguard against cases such as that of Barbara Gordon, who was offered an assisted suicide drug instead of actual medical treatment.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UduKJhIDcEI[/youtube]

You can see a report of the Oregon case here, and a Fox News follow-up here.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Jasper]

… Wisconsin congressman [and pro-life Catholic Paul Ryan] said if he and Mitt Romney win the election in November, the requirement [for] religious employers… to provide contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs “will be gone, I can guarantee you that….

Joseph Koss at CatholicVote.org writes that… during the vice presidential debate between Ryan and Joe Biden on October 11… “we will most likely see two very different interpretations of Catholic teaching in action.”

~ Ben Johnson, Life Site News, September 24

[HT: Jill]

Up on Drudge now is a link to a Washington Examiner story reporting the results of a new Susan B. Anthony List’s poll, which are:

• A majority of swing voters (54%) are less likely to vote for President Obama after learning that he voted against a law to give equal treatment and constitutional protections to babies born alive after a failed abortion (35% much less likely).
• After learning of President’s Obama’s record of opposing equal treatment and constitutional rights for babies born alive after a failed abortion, women (53%), independents (46%) and pro-choicers (43%) said they would be less likely to vote for the President.
• By a margin of 2-to-1 (49%-25%), likely swing voters in battleground states say they are less likely to vote for President Obama based on his inclusion of taxpayer funding of abortion in Obamacare.
• Swing voters overwhelmingly reject (69%) the HHS mandate that forces faith-based institutions to violate their beliefs and provide coverage for abortion-inducing drugs.  Forty four percent of voters said they are much less likely to vote for the candidate who imposes such regulations.

The poll was conducted by the polling company inc./WomanTrend of likely voters in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin who were either undecided or are leaning toward Romney or Obama.

In other words, when Independents or leaners learn of Obama’s abortion record, they are repulsed. We must get the word out.

Read topline data is here (6 pages), SBA List’  analysis here (2 pages), and SBA List’s press release on the poll here.

Tomorrow SBA List will launch a $150,000 ad buy in Ohio, featuring both the Melissa Ohden ad as well as this brand new ad…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF-DEfCidXE[/youtube]

Georgia’s Politifact decided to analyze Karen Handel’s book, Planned Bullyhood, on two key points.

Handel is Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s former Senior VP of Public Policy who was falsely accused by feminists and liberals of pushing the organization to defund Planned Parenthood.

Handel’s new book gives an insider’s account of Komen’s original rationale and the naiveté, insurrection, and cowardice that lead the organization to flip flop.

Politifact picked two points from the book to analyze: that Planned Parenthood does not perform mammograms, and that Obamacare includes abortion coverage.

The mammogram question was easy to prove. Although PP was certainly not forthcoming for many years, and had even attempted to confuse the issue, the organization will admit the truth when asked point blank.

In fact, it apparently now feels pressure to jump out in front at times and clarify it does not offer mammograms, as did Dr. Vanessa Cullins, VP of External Medical Affairs at PP, in this August 2012 video, although notice the spin, lumping PP into a category of healthcare providers it is not. Jump to 1:35…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxNYSHN3G24[/youtube]

On the mammogram point Politifact gave Handel an unqualified “True.”

The question on whether Obamacare indeed covers abortion, despite Obama’s claims to the contrary, is harder for MSM to see, since the route is circuitous. In April 2012 Tampa Bay Politifact would only go so far as to say:

The complex funding mechanisms make the question of whether Obamacare covers abortion a little fuzzy. But clearly the law provides some access to the service.

In fact, Politifact has so been notoriously bad on this topic that Douglas Johnson at National Right to Life warned in September 2009 one might “get vertigo” trying to follow its logic.

But Georgia Politifact was more willing to hear Handel and Johnson make their case, ultimately giving Handel a mostly thumbs up:

Basically, abortions can be performed under the health care law, depending on which state you reside in. Because that bit of detail was not mentioned, we rate Handel’s entire claim Mostly True.

Nevertheless, Politifact still managed to play fast and loose with facts surrounding abortion coverage in Obamacare in its story, earning this withering response from Johnson, in an email comment:

A new week, and here we have yet another PolitiFact “factcheck” on an Obamacare-abortion issue – and as you would expect, there are all sorts of things wrong with it.

The reporter (Eric Sturgis of PolitiFact Georgia) concludes that “federal funds” are not used for “abortion services” under Obamacare – in part because a page on the DHHS website says this is so!

He accepts that the Obama executive order “committed to no federal funding for abortion,” despite the detailed materials I sent him refuting this notion – including the statement by the president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, that the executive order was a “symbolic gesture.” He quotes Richards in a manner that leaves the impression that she disapproved of the executive order, but the quote was actually what Richards said months earlier, in an initial reaction to the Nelson-Boxer deal. And so forth.

Still, because of the way Karen Handel stated her charge – she spoke of Obamacare providing “coverage for abortions” – PolitiFact decided that Handel’s statement was “mostly true.” It is nice to see an innocent defendant win acquittal, even though the “judge” got so many things wrong on both the law and the facts.