Keys to abortion industry’s success: Public relations and liberal network
The abortion industry’s public relations machinery has always intrigued me. At any given time I can tell which agenda items anti-life groups have directed their PR firms to push by news articles, op eds, and tweets I read. If you pay attention you see there are always particular topics the other side is swarming around.
Right now, for instance, their focus is on making the morning after pill available over-the-counter for kids, and on forcing employers, with an emphasis on Catholic institutions (which actually may be a ploy to divert our attention from the bigger prize), to offer free contraceptives in their insurance programs.
Smearing abstinence education is one of their ceaseless targets, and Siri was a bonus add-on last week. (Do you really think Cecile Richards wrote that indignant op ed in HuffPo? Get real. It was penned and promoted by Planned Parenthood’s PR team.)
Public relations is a huge component of pro-abortion strategy. Wrote NARAL co-founder and pro-life convert Dr. Bernard Nathanson in 2002, “[W]e captured the media, we spent money on public relations.… Our first year’s budget was $7,500. Of that, $5,000 was allotted to a public relations firm to persuade the media of the correctness of our position. That was in 1969.”
This remains true. To be sure, abortion groups are always on the lookout for free interns to do PR for them (examples here and here), which most pro-life groups don’t utilize but should.
But they still need the big guns, companies paid to network with journalists like Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff [pictured left], a frequent pro-abortion accomplice.
So I’ve always wondered just who are these PR firms? How many are on retainer at any given time? How many and which abortion groups fund them? Do they pool their resources?
Well, last week I stumbled on one when reading an article in the New York Times, which quoted “Elizabeth Toledo [pictured right], a public relations consultant for abortion rights groups.”
I googled Toledo and found she is the president of Camino Public Relations, a firm “dedicated to bringing new communications technologies and proven media strategies to progressive causes.”
Indeed, Camino’s clients include Planned Parenthood Federation of America and three Planned Parenthood affiliates.
And this is no surprise since Toledo’s bio says she is a former Vice President of Communications for PPFA.
Of further interest are Camino’s other clients, which demonstrate the interconnectedness of liberal groups, none of which are actually service oriented but rather profit oriented.
One of Camino’s “featured clients” is the Service Employees International Union. SEIU’s International Executive Vice President is Kirk Adams [pictured left], husband to Cecile Richards.
Another Camino client is Danco Laboratories, which manufactures Mifeprex, aka RU486. Danco advertises Planned Parenthood as a Mifeprex distributor, and Planned Parenthood states “medical” (Mifeprex) abortions account for 32% of its abortion business now. Rest assured Planned Parenthood has negotiated a sweetheart purchasing deal with Danco.
I could go on with the zero degrees of separation between the abortion industry and other liberal political and financial power houses, but you get the idea.
The incestuous and synergistic power of these groups also helps explain why and who Obama and Democrats regulate, unregulate, attack, and protect.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
SEIU pro-death? No surprise here.
Two days after President Obama’s Inauguration, SEIU members were lined up with March for Life participants to enter Congressional Office buidings, brimming with pride at their election coup. They looked contemptously at the pro-lifers, wearing their purple SEIU shirts, until we reminded them that we have been doing this for 35 years, and we were not going anywhere, no matter who wins the next election.
I am surprised it took so little too uncover these connections. I always expected big money was behind the pro-abortion industry. Those on the Left constantly believe they are above the law, and don’t believe in full disclosure. They always justify their lack of disclosure by arguing they would be victimized if they did disclose their connections and their identities. It is completely a double standard that they perpetuate.
The connection between Kirk Adams, Cecile Richards, PP, Camino and SEIU needs to be investigated further. These connections are too close.
Of course. They want socialism (at the least). That system cannot exist or persist when there are too many mouths for government bread to feed.
Politics is a small, fishbowl world. Looking in the last annual report, you see a Soros and a John Kerry family member on the PPFA board. I would say conservative groups also are relatively interconnected, but pro-life groups by in large don’t share that quite as much. The important point here is that Planned Parenthood is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat party at this point, or vice versa, as are many groups. People thought it was ground breaking when Glenn Beck was pointing out how all these like-minded groups work together, when it is all in the light of day for anyone interested to look into. Of course, that’s the PR face we see (and the PR face most Americans have no clue about), but I’ll bet you there is a fair share of backbiting in that coalition.
When I see these grinning publicity head shots I have newfound respect for criminals who cover themselves with their jackets during a “perp walk”.
The right wing is extremely interconnected. That’s how they managed to drag the whole country to the Right with Reagan. So far to the right compared to before, that Ike would be a Moderate Democrat by today’s standards, and Teddy Roosevelt would be a Socialist by today’s standards. Both were popular bullwark Republicans.
Oh yes. Those terrible ’80’s. Gulags all over. Children forced to attend churches. Abortion outlawed. How did we ever survive?
The keys to the reason abortion was legalized was that not nearly enough was being done prior to legalization to protect girls and women from problem pregnancies or to aid those with such pregnancies. The fact is that the back-alley butchers were kept busy and rich because so many girls and women panicked when they learned they were pregnant. ”The Girls Who Went Away” were a reality as so much shame and stigma attached to unmarried pregnancies.
Another factor may be the decline of the extended family. Without multiple adults in a household, a married woman may (perhaps rightly) fear that she cannot adequately care for additional children.
Denise,
The “back alley butchers” were an exaggeration. One of the original founders of NARAL admitted that they were lying their @$$es off. Sorry to see you’ve fallen for it.
Look around you. Things have changed. Women are aborting simply because they don’t feel like being pregnant/giving birth.
This isn’t the 1950’s. It’s time for you to realize that. Girls don’t “go away” anymore. We now have ultrasound. There is VERY LITTLE stigma attached to out of wedlock births. Public assistance programs abound, and provide EVERYTHING for tons of mothers.
You need to prioritize a little better. Lives are being taken by mothers who don’t care and who would not suffer from letting their child(ren) live.
Leticia, that may be the LEADERSHIP of the SEIU, but I don’t think the rank and file are pro-abortion. Many of the members are blue-collar AA’S and Latinos who tend to be prolife, in spite of the fact that most of them vote for Democrats. I really wonder if most of the rank and file know the official position of their union on abortion is.
But sadly, most union leadership nowadays is pro-abortion. Once unions fulfilled a vital purpose in assuring economic justice for workers, but today, many of them are just auxiliaries of the Democratic party.
xalisae says:
December 9, 2011 at 10:52 am
Denise,The “back alley butchers” were an exaggeration. One of the original founders of NARAL admitted that they were lying their @$$es off. Sorry to see you’ve fallen for it.>>
(Denise) It was a reality but the amount of horror might well have been exaggerated. I know Dr. Bernard Nathanson said they made up figures of how many girls and women died in illegal abortions — figures they knew were distorted since the majority of illegal abortionists were in fact either doctors or other health personnel. <<Look around you. Things have changed. Women are aborting simply because they don’t feel like being pregnant/giving birth. This isn’t the 1950?s. It’s time for you to realize that. Girls don’t “go away” anymore.>>
(Denise) I’m aware of this. As conservative Caitlan Flanagan writes, “Being a single mother has so lost its stigma that some professional women I know have become single mothers by deliberate choice.”
We now have ultrasound. There is VERY LITTLE stigma attached to out of wedlock births. Public assistance programs abound, and provide EVERYTHING for tons of mothers. You need to prioritize a little better. Lives are being taken by mothers who don’t care and who would not suffer from letting their child(ren) live.
(Denise) One of the most troubling things is the persistence of both unplanned pregnancies and abortions. Unplanned pregnancies remain about 3 million per year and abortions roughly half that. We ought to see a dramatic reduction in both and yet we don’t.
That’s true, even single pregnant women planning adoption for their child these days aren’t expected to hide during the pregnancy. However, there are still a large group of “girls that went away.” these days, but these girls were sent “away” by the abortionist.
JillR. says:
December 10, 2011 at 9:47 am
That’s true, even single pregnant women planning adoption for their child these days aren’t expected to hide during the pregnancy. However, there are still a large group of “girls that went away.” these days, but these girls were sent “away” by the abortionist.
(Denise) There are approximately 3 million unplanned pregnancies per year, roughly half of which end in abortion. This doesn’t seem to have changed — at least not to an appreciable degree — since Roe v. Wade.
What can be done — that is both realistic and practical — to drastically reduce unplanned pregnancies?
One key to the abortion industry’s success is that the extended family has been pretty much replaced by the nuclear family — which is itself in some trouble. Many adults were around to care for children in the old extended family. Now the burden is likely to fall more completely on the mother and the result is that many women are SCARED of being able to do right by their children if their families are large. That fear of large families was seen in the outpouring of sympathy for Andrea Yates after she killed her 5 children. If she had had 1 or 2 kids — or if the same crime had been committed by a man — you wouldn’t have seen this outpouring of sympathy. A writer for National Review commented that in that outpouring of sympathy you could detect a fear held by many woman: “There but for the grace of abortion, day care and secular humanism go I.” Many women are terrified that, stuck with a large family of kids and around them 24/7, they would go stark raving mad.