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Tag: susan b anthony list
mike pence

Mike Pence And Anti-Abortion Groups Escalating Attacks On Trump

A leading anti-abortion group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA), has slammed former President Donald Trump for avoiding questions on abortion access and threatened to campaign against him if he doesn't commit to a national abortion ban of no more than 15 weeks into pregnancy.

The group issued its warning after the Trump campaign told The Washington Postthat Trump believes the Supreme Court — in its controversial ruling that reversed its longstanding position in Roe v Wade — was correct to leave abortion laws at the state level.

“President Donald J. Trump believes that the Supreme Court, led by the three justices which he supported, got it right when they ruled this is an issue that should be decided at the state level,” Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, told the Post.

SBA president Marjorie Dannenfelser called the statement a “morally indefensible position for a self-proclaimed pro-life presidential candidate” in her scathing response, which mentioned Trump by name.

“President Trump’s assertion that the Supreme Court returned the issue of abortion solely to the states is a completely inaccurate reading of the Dobbs decision and is a morally indefensible position for a self-proclaimed pro-life presidential candidate to hold,” Dannenfelser said.

"Life is a matter of human rights, not states’ rights,” she added. “We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard.”

Responding to Dannenfelser, a Trump spokesperson told NBC News that the “focus here should be on saving lives and avoiding the Radical Left’s traps, not on dividing the pro-life community."

Prominent Republican pols, including Trump, have either softened or wholly abandoned strict positions on abortion after the Supreme Court’s decision to end 50 years of federal abortion rights sparked a rise in the already strong support for reproductive rights.

A PRRI poll conducted throughout 2022 found that most Americans (63 percent) opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, with 43 percent saying they “strongly opposed” the ruling.

In addition, nearly 70 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the country’s abortion laws, a Gallup poll released in February found. In contrast, only 15 percent believe abortion laws ought to be stricter.

According to the Post, Republicans — reeling from their underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterms, whose exit polls showed abortion as the second most important issue for voters after inflation — have privately considered toning down their anti-abortion rhetoric and instead depicting Democrats as villains on the matter.

Speaking virtually on Saturday at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, a conservative event for evangelicals, Trump did just that, falsely implying that Democrats supported “ninth-month” abortions.

"I will continue to stand strong against the extreme late-term abortionists in the Democrat Party who believe in abortion on demand in the ninth month of pregnancy,” Trump said, per Fox News.

Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, attended the event in person and criticized his former boss for his “states’ only issue” position on abortion, telling reporters that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling “did not mean that [abortion is] a state’s only issue.”

Pence said, “All it meant was that states now have the ability to craft legislation that protects the unborn. I also hold to the view that Americans want to see leaders at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue who will stand for the sanctity of life.”

Federal Judge Strikes Down Ohio’s Campaign Statements Law

Federal Judge Strikes Down Ohio’s Campaign Statements Law

By Kurtis Lee, Los Angeles Times

In a ruling that could have reverberations around the country, a federal judge on Thursday struck down an Ohio law that bars individuals from knowingly making false statements about political candidates.

The decision from District Court Judge Timothy Black follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in June that a political group could proceed with a First Amendment challenge against the Ohio law that criminalizes “false” political speech.

Calling the law unconstitutional, Black wrote in his 25-page ruling that “the answer to false statements in politics is not to force silence, but to encourage truthful speech in response, and to let the voters, not the government, decide what the political truth is.”

He also ordered the state’s Elections Commission to cease enforcing the law and noted that it’s up to lawmakers — and not a court — to rewrite the statute. “There is no reason,” Black said, to believe that the commission is positioned to determine what is true and what is false when it comes to literature and advertisements against candidates.

At its core, the case stems from a 2010 criminal complaint filed by former U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) against the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group. That year, as Driehaus faced a tight re-election race, the group planned to post billboard ads that said the Democrat’s support of President Barack Obama’s health care law was in essence support for abortion.

Driehaus, who opposes abortion, cited the Ohio law in his complaint against the Susan B. Anthony List, prompting the owner of the billboards where the ads were set to go on display to not put them up.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, applauded Black’s decision.

“After four years and a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, today we finally have a victory for free speech,” Dannenfelser said in a statement.

She also said that over the summer more than 20 groups from “across the political spectrum” submitted amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the Susan B. Anthony List prior to its ruling that allowed the federal court to hear the case.

The statute in Ohio has been in effect since 1995. Other states, including Minnesota, have similar laws.

AFP Photo/Mark Wilson

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