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The Politics of 2018

By Jim Sedlak

You are the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and this past weekend was the 45th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions of the United States Supreme Court.

These decisions, taken together, decriminalized abortion-on-demand in the United States throughout all nine months of pregnancy. Your organization publicly says that abortion is not that important to it and represents only three percent of your operation—even though you run 49 percent of all abortion centers in the country and commit over 320,000 abortions a year. So, what did you do over the weekend?

Well, Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s president, was at a political rally entitled Power to the Polls in Las Vegas, Nevada, trying to motivate every one of the reported 14,000 attendees to just one purpose—win the 2018 elections. According to published reports by NPR, the stated goal of the rally was to “transform words and emotions into votes and political action.”

Yet it was clear from Richards’ words at the rally that she doesn’t think abortion, by itself, is a winning topic. She was very careful to call all kinds of groups to join together and fight—at the same time—for a variety of things. One NPR reporter at the event quoted Richards as saying:

Our members, our supporters, our staff have not only stood for Planned Parenthood. They stand with DREAMers. They stand with Muslims. They stand with every attack that this administration has made on people.

This same strategy of lumping all the various topics together was also seen at other “Women’s March” rallies across the country this weekend. In Nashville, Tennessee, for example, organizers described the 15,000 people who participated in the event as advocates for reproductive rights, wage gaps, environmental justice, immigrant rights, and other liberal causes joining together to win the 2018 elections. Francie Hunt, executive director of ‎Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood, urged participants toward political action:

Today’s movement was fueled by fierce love by and of our community. We are moving from resistance to persistence, anger to action, pink hats to politics. The feeling we’ve shared today is going to continue across time and grow across Tennessee and in the New Year. 2018 will be the year we all joined forces and powered together. 

You get the idea. It appears that the leaders of all the groups that oppose any policy of the Trump administration are trying to join together to defeat any candidate, anywhere, who agrees with any part of the administration’s policies. As much as they want to portray themselves as this universal movement for everybody, it is clear that the driving force behind all of this is Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the room. It is the one with over a billion dollars in the bank. It is the one with 1,400,000 donors—including some of the richest individuals and foundations in the country. Despite the attempts of Richards and her friends to hide behind all of these various topics, the election is about Planned Parenthood and the murder of innocent children in the womb.

When people think of the 2018 elections, they usually think about the voting taking place in November. But, November is at least six months too late!

The first national pro-life PAC committed to defeating pro-abortion politicians was the Life Amendment Political Action Committee. LAPAC was founded in 1977 by Paul Brown (whose wife, Judie Brown, would later become president of American Life League) and became a major national force in the campaign against pro-abortion members of Congress. In 1980, LAPAC identified 12 members of Congress as ”the deadly dozen” and helped defeat nine of them, including three veteran Democratic senators: Birch Bayh of Indiana, George McGovern of South Dakota, and Frank Church of Idaho.

One of the major political strategies to emerge from LAPAC’s successful efforts in 1980 is that the ultimate victory must start in the earlier primaries. It is in the primary elections that there is an opportunity to replace pro-abortion politicians or secure the position of those who support pro-life ideals.

As people in California know too well, without success in the primaries, the November election too often becomes a choice of this pro-abortion candidate or that pro-abortion candidate.

Find your state in this primary schedule and then plan to vote. Many states have primaries in May (12) and June (15). Thus, by the end of June, over half the states will have already decided the choice of candidates you will have on the November ballot.

The fact is, you may only have three more months to make sure there are pro-life candidates on your ballots in November. There is NOT much time. That is why Planned Parenthood is active and rallying everyone now. That is why YOU must start your political activity NOW. There is no time to lose. Your political actions in the next few months will decide the fate of babies for years to come.

Do NOT sit this one out.

Jim Sedlak is executive director of American Life League, founder of STOPP International, and host of a weekly talk show on the Radio Maria network. He has been successfully fighting Planned Parenthood since 1985.