Marjorie Dannenfelser of the ironically named Susan B. Anthony List has dedicated her group to inserting their anti-choice agenda into the presidential and congressional races. But now as the Obama campaign is stressing the President’s pro-choice views while Mitt Romney and Republicans across the country run away from the abortion debate, Dannenfelser is singing a new tune, saying that voters don’t want to hear about abortion after all.
She spoke to Janet Mefferd yesterday to criticize Lena Denham’s web ad for the Obama campaign (where she made a joke similar to one told by Ronald Reagan) as a “very smart” campaign tactic that will backfire. Dannenfelser compared it to the Tom Wolfe novel “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” which she said is “all about the equalization of on-campus sex and how women now are the new predators and it is an unbelievable appeal to young women who are at that place and who may be confused but they want that.” “This whole ‘women’s vote’ thing is truly a way to exploit young women and any woman in childbearing years and we need to see it as that,” Dannenfelser lamented.
Mefferd chastised the Obama campaign for “treating women like they are idiots” or “brain-dead” while telling them “lies like that Planned Parenthood needs to be supported to help women’s health.” Dannenfelser even said that Obama’s outreach to women and support for reproductive rights are “exactly what the early suffragists warned against: the exploitation of women.”
Later, Dannenfelser argued that voters consistently back candidates who favor the criminalization of abortion. However, a recent CNN poll [PDF] show that just 15 percent believe it should be illegal in all cases, and a USA Today survey found that female voters who list abortion and birth control as among their top election priorities are disproportionately backing Obama. If Dannenfelser is so sure that voters are ready to abandon Obama over his support for reproductive rights and Planned Parenthood, then why is the Romney campaign now running ads in swing states moderating his position on abortion in order to appeal to pro-choice voters?
She goes on to charge that Obama “underestimates the courage and confidence and intellectual power and decision-making that women actually have” by trying to have them “be bought out with a packet of pills,” while Mefferd said Obama views women as “little sexual machines that need the government to take care of us.”
Dannenfelser: When they understand the difference in opinion they will always vote on our side. In fact every election that we have tracked since 2002 shows that when voters are—when the abortion issue is top-of-mind for them, when it is something very important for them, no matter how outspent we are they give the margin of victory to the pro-life candidate. This president is the main ally of Planned Parenthood, I mean you can’t find a better ally of Planned Parenthood than this president. They put in a billion dollars into this and the president of Planned Parenthood is on the stump in Ohio, Pennsylvania, every battleground state, they know what’s at stake, they understand that their funding is going. There is only one thing that they can’t lose at Planned Parenthood and that is the abortion business, if they lose that they’ll go under. They are not about women’s health, they know that when this is taken out of the calculation they will go under so when people understand that, they get it.
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Dannenfelser: I think your point at the beginning is how much he underestimates the courage and confidence and intellectual power and decision-making that women actually have, that we could be bought out with a packet of pills, a packet of contraception, like ‘we’ll pay for your contraception, that’s the price for your vote.’ That’s actually what he’s doing right now.
Mefferd: Right as if all we are is little sexual machines that need the government to take care of us.
