National anti-abortion groups are targeting Rep. James Oberstar with a series of mailings criticizing his support for health care reform. The groups point to Oberstar’s vote for the Affordable Health Care and Patient Protection Act of 2010 to claim he supports federal funding for abortion and therefore is no longer “pro-life.” But as fact-checkers have pointed out, health care reform does not include federal funding for abortion. In fact, one national group that’s targeting Oberstar, the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), has landed in court over the statements.

SBA List has spent $32,432 on mailers in opposition to Oberstar so far this cycle. The group says it’s part of a larger campaign targeting 42 candidates around the country. Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life has also attacked Oberstar, charging that he supported federal funding for abortion by voting for health care reform.

SBA List sent this statement out last spring:

“Congressman Oberstar can no longer call himself ‘pro-life.’ He has set himself with the likes of NARAL, NOW, and Planned Parenthood, and has betrayed his pro-life principles and his constituents. Seventy-four percent of voters in the eighth district oppose taxpayer funding of abortion as part of health care reform, according to a survey commissioned by the Susan B. Anthony List this week. Fifty-six percent of Rep. Oberstar’s constituents surveyed also said that they would be less likely to vote for him next Election Day if he supported healthcare with abortion funding.”

The National Right to Life Committee said the same thing in their endorsement of Oberstar’s Republican opponent Chip Cravaack.

“We’re proud to endorse Chip Cravaack for Congress,” said director Karen Cross. “Chip Cravaack is firmly committed to repealing the anti-life provisions of the pro-abortion, pro-rationing Obama health care law passed by Congress in March – a law that Jim Oberstar voted for and helped enact.”

And MCCL echoed those sentiments in their endorsement of Cravaack.

“Jim Oberstar has turned away from the pro-life principles he used to hold in common with the citizens of the 8th District,” MCCL director Scott Fischbach said. “He has walked away from the pro-life movement. For years Jim Oberstar has had a 100 percent pro-life voting record and now he has a zero percent pro-life voting record. Just as Jim Oberstar has abandoned the babies, it is time for the voters to retire Jim Oberstar.”

But as Jesse Zwick at our sister site the Washington Independent reports, experts agree that the bill does not fund abortions. Likewise, at least one authority isn’t buying the logic either.

In Ohio, the elections commission panel ruled that there was probable cause to believe that a billboard that read, “Shame on [Rep.] Steve Driehaus! Driehaus voted FOR taxpayer-funded abortion,” was false. The billboard owner pulled the ad. The full elections commission is set to rule on the ad on Oct. 28, but SBA List is suing the board in District Court to prevent them from ruling on the ad.

Oberstar has long been “pro-life,” earning endorsements throughout his career from MCCL, SBA List and the National Right to Life Committee. He was once co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus. The National Right to Life Committee has given him a 100 percent rating four times since 1996 and ratings above 80 percent in every Congress since then, with one exception: In 2008, he scored 71 percent.

Judge Donovan W. Frank

It’s official: A Minnesota disclosure law, enacted in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, was upheld by a federal judge on Monday.

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank for the District of Minnesota denied a temporary injunction in a lawsuit brought by supporters of Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, including an anti-abortion group and an anti-tax organization. They sued to overturn the law on free speech grounds and had asked Frank to suspend the disclosure requirements immediately.

Frank answered with a firm no.

“Invalidating the election laws at issue here would likely result in corporations making independent expenditures without any reporting or disclosure on the eve of the upcoming general election on November 2, 2010,” his ruling said. “This result so close to the election would clearly harm the state, Minnesota voters, and the general public interest.”

The lawsuit, brought by Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life and Taxpayers League of Minnesota, argued that the disclosure law — which made possible the discovery of political donations made within the state by Target and other companies — was so burdensome that it infringed upon the groups’ first amendment rights. It’s an argument akin to what the National Organization for Marriage has been arguing in its lawsuits against the state of Maine and California — and the ruling today represents another blow to the logic of NOM’s case.

Even in its Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court upheld federal disclosure requirements as constitutional by a vote of 8-1. Some state laws are more rigorous (and therefore perhaps more burdensome), but none seem likely to be overturned wholesale on the grounds that they stifle free speech.

“As a political spin doctor, you would think that Tom Horner could have come up with a better abortion position than ‘I won’t be labeled,’” Scott Fischbach, MCCL executive director, said in a statement. “If a candidate opposes Woman’s Right to Know and wants to force taxpayers to buy other people’s abortions, he is clearly not ‘in the middle’ on the abortion issue — he is pro-abortion.”

MCCL then went on to praise the Republican-endorsed candidate Rep. Tom Emmer. “Tom Emmer is the only major candidate for governor who understands the importance of supporting unborn children and their mothers in our state,” he said.

Horner, via his Twitter account, replied: “MCCL misstates my positions, then attacks me. An organization sacrificing its credibility doesn’t reduce abortions, it just reduces trust.”

But Fischbach wasn’t done with Horner. He told the anti-abortion website Lifenews.com, “The facts are the facts: Tom Horner supports abortion on demand and wants taxpayers to pay for abortions. A candidate can spin and spin and even tweet all day long. It does not change the fact that Tom Horner is pro-abortion.”

But did MCCL “misstate” Horner’s position on abortion by calling him “pro-abortion?” Horner has stated his actual position on the issue of abortion several times.

From ECM Publishers:

While saying others could affix the labels of “Pro Choice” or “Pro LIfe,” Horner spoke of reducing the number of abortions — comprehensive sex education, including abstinence-based — and said as governor he would not have signed the Women’s Right to Know abortion provision.

State laws pertaining to abortion have less to do with abortion than driving political wedges, said Horner.

According to TPT, “On abortion he’s neither pro-choice nor pro-life, but wants to reduce the number of abortions.”

According to WCCO, “He refused to take a firm stand on abortion, saying he would try to reduce unwanted pregnancies with more aggressive sex education programs.”

Minnesota Capitol News quoted him as saying, “‘I think we need to reduce the number of abortions.’ Horner added however that he would not seek to repeal Row Vs. Wade. He said the question of whether abortion should be legal or illegal is a federal question, not one for the Governor of Minnesota.”

Photo: Minnesota Independent

With more than a year to go until the general election, abortion is already becoming an issue in the 6th Congressional District race. An analysis of anti-abortion campaign donations finds that Rep. Michele Bachmann is one of the country’s top earners — and she’s delivered for her contributors on that issue. At the same time, local anti-abortion forces are already tarring DFL candidate Sen. Tarryl Clark just a day after she announced her candidacy.

Bachmann is ranked third of 435 U.S. House members in total campaign contributions from anti-abortion interests, according to a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. Bachmann received $63,658 since she announced her run for Congress in 2005 — 3.5 times the amount given by abortion opponents to all other Minnesota House members combined. Only Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., who was first elected to Congress in 2002, and Chris Smith, R-N.J., who’s been in Congress since 1980, have raised more from the anti-abortion lobby, taking in $89,081 and $142,854 respectively.

Among Minnesota’s other House members, Reps. John Kline ($9,050), Collin Peterson ($6,307), and James Oberstar ($3,289) have received money from the anti-abortion lobby. Three other members — Reps. Betty McCollum ($11,900), Tim Walz ($19,400) and Keith Ellison ( $4,600) — have accepted gifts from abortion-rights groups.

Bachmann’s disproportionate share of contributions has paid off for her anti-abortion benefactors. She’s sponsored or cosponsored an impressive 13 bills restricting abortion rights so far this year. Among the bills, one includes funneling entitlement money to “abortion alternatives” programs and another that would ban race and sex discrimination against fetuses. Yet another would give 14th Amendment protections to an embryo or fetus.

Her efforts have earned her the support of Minnesota’s largest anti-abortion group, Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, which all but endorsed Bachmann in a scathing attack on Rep. Tarryl Clark only a day after she launched her campaign to replace Bachmann.

“The voters in the 6th Congressional District need to know that Tarryl Clark is a radical anti-life candidate,” said MCCL executive director Scott Fischbach said in a statement on Tuesday. “Senator Clark has voted to use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions — even cruel saline abortions!”

“From now until the election in 2010, MCCL will work tirelessly to make sure the voters know that it is Congresswoman Michele Bachmann who is willing to stand up and fight for the innocent unborn and their mothers, while Tarryl Clark supports even the most gruesome taxpayer funded abortions,” he said.

So far this year, MCCL has ignored the two other candidates in the race to unseat Bachmann. El Tinklenberg, who ran an unsuccessful campaign against Bachmann in 2006, describes himself as pro-life.

“It’s been my perspective since the early days of my life as a minister,” Tinklenberg during the 2008 campaign. “It’s not my mission in life to eliminate Roe [vs. Wade],” he said. “As a pro-life person, my mission is to reduce the number of abortions.”

Dr. Maureen Reed, who is also seeking to defeat Bachmann, hasn’t taken a strong stance on the issue, either in the current campaign or as candidate for lieutenant governor in 2006.

Photo: The UpTake

Anti-abortion group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life called on Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken to reverse their Senate Judiciary Committee votes to approve Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday. In a letter to the senators, MCCL said that a legal board that Sotomayor once sat on advocated abortion rights.

“While Judge Sotomayor served on the governing board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), the PRLDEF was actively involved in litigation that attempted to advance the abortion agenda,” wrote Scott Fischbach, executive director of MCCL. “In fact, briefs that were filed by PRLDEF at the time urged the Court to regard abortion as a ‘fundamental right.’”

Despite the association outlined by Fischbach, Sotomayor has not yet ruled on an abortion or reproductive rights case.

“Women and unborn children in Minnesota have suffered long enough from the devastating results of Roe v. Wade and deserve a United States Supreme Court that will protect them from an aggressive abortion industry,” Fischbach wrote in the letter to Franken and Klobuchar.

MCCL’s letter is unlikely to change any positions. Both Franken and Klobuchar have indicated their support for reproductive rights as well as reducing the need for abortion through family planning.

According to a report (PDF) released this week by the Minnesota Department of Health, 12,948 abortions were performed in 2008 – down from 13,843 in 2007 and the lowest number since 1975.

Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota said the decrease could be attributed to affordable access to birth control.

“The best way to sustain reductions in the need for abortion is to provide accessible, affordable birth control and accurate, fact based sexuality education to all Minnesotans,” said Kathi Di Nicola, PPMNS communications director. “Planned Parenthood continues to work with the legislature and in our clinics across the state to do just that.”

Di Nicola noted that 95 percent of the care PPMNS provides comes in the form of prevention. The organization provided more than 300,000 units of contraception, nearly 58,000 tests for sexually transmitted diseases, more than 20,000 breast cancer screenings and more than 17,000 cervical cancer screenings.

“The overall decline in abortion in nearly every category is positive news and a goal that PPMNS works toward every day in our clinics across the region,” she said.

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, said the decline was due to the Positive Alternatives program, a faith-based, state-funded program that urges women considering abortion to forgo the procedure.

“This report demonstrates that Positive Alternatives is working for women and their unborn babies,” said Scott Fischbach, executive director for MCCL.

While MCCL is openly hostile to PPMNS, Di Nicola offered an olive branch in working to reduce abortions in Minnesota through education and contraception.

“We again call on groups like the MCCL join to with us in taking tangible, common-sense steps to prevent unintended pregnancy and reduce the need for abortion in Minnesota,” she said.

“MCCL applauds this move by Governor Pawlenty and legislators toward protecting life from replication, manipulation and destruction,” said Scott Fischbach, executive director of the state’s largest anti-abortion group. “Human life must be treated with dignity, not as mere raw material for experimentation.”

Pawlenty signed the higher education omnibus bill last week that had been amended with language prohibiting “human cloning” (Reps. Steve Smith, R-Mound; Patti Fritz, DFL-Faribault; Dave Olin, DFL-Thief River Falls; Matt Dean, R-Dellwood; and Joyce Peppin, R-Rogers, offered the amendment and it passed the House by a vote of 71 to 60 on April 22).

“MCCL applauds Gov. Pawlenty and the state Legislature for establishing a clear ethical boundary which upholds the integrity of the human embryo and opposes the commodification of the human body,” said Fischbach “The majority of Americans and Minnesotans oppose human cloning and do not want to be forced to pay for it.”

The “human cloning” that MCCL opposes is not the actual cloning of people, but the process of inserting genetic material into an egg to create stem cells and potentially create new organs for transplant. The process is called somatic cell nuclear transfer and there are currently no human trials of the procedure.

No entities in Minnesota, or the United States for that matter, are known to be attempting to clone whole human beings.

Pawlenty also earned praise for not cutting any funds from the Positive Alternatives program, a state fund that gives money to faith-based organizations with the purpose of persuading women to forgo abortion.

The state has spent $9.7 million on the initiative since its creation in 2006. “The state’s Positive Alternatives program remains fully funded for the 2009-2010 biennium, thanks to the support of pro-life Gov. Tim Pawlenty and state legislators in both parties,” stated MCCL in a press release.

Several of MCCL’s initiatives did not make it to Pawlenty’s desk, however. MCCL put forward bills to ban abortions covered by state health care programs and to ban saline abortions, but those efforts did not make it out of committee.

(Photo: Malevda, Flickr)

University of Minnesota researchers are reporting a major advance in the field of embryonic stem cell research that undercuts the anti-abortion movement’s — and Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s — chief argument against state funding for the research.

The researchers used human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to create immune cells to fight cancer and found a 100-percent success rate at eliminating cancerous tumors in 13 trials. The researchers also used human umbilical cord blood cells, the type of cells anti-abortion activists say are equal to hESCs, and only five trials of 13 saw the successful elimination of cancerous tumors.

“This is the first demonstration of anti-cancer activity in a living organism by cells derived from human embryonic stem cells,” said study leader Dan Kaufman, an associate professor of medicine and associate director of the University’s Stem Cell Institute, in a statement. “The superior performance by cells with an hESC lineage points to a crucial role for hESCs in developing new cell-based cancer therapies.”

The Minnesota Legislature passed a bill in 2008 that would have allowed state funding to be used for embryonic stem cells research,but it was met with Pawlenty’s veto pen. He did so at the behest of anti-abortion group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life.

“The biotech industry wants you to pay for its ruinous research,” says MCCL’s anti-embryonic stem cell pamphlets, “but not even a lab mouse has ever benefited from embryonic stem cell research.”

All thirteen of the successful University of Minnesota trials eliminated cancerous tumors in lab mice.

Because of Pawlenty’s veto last year, legislators have taken a different approach to getting state support for hESC research. Instead of a bill to allow state funding for the research, Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, has put forward a bill that requires fertility clinics to inform patients about the options for discarded embryos — including stem cell research.

But Republican House members want to eliminate research on viable embryos. Their bill, the Minnesota Hope Act, would limit research in Minnesota to “naturally dead” embryos. Reps. Matt Dean of Dellwood, Laura Brod of New Prague, Steve Gottwalt of St. Cloud, Joe Ward (DFL) of Brainerd, Tom Emmer of Delano, Tara Mack of Apple Valley, Jim Abeler of Anoka and Mary Ellen Otremba (DFL) of Long Prairie.

Neither bill passed out of committee this session.

The group Planned Parenthood got much of the attention. Only hours after an anti-abortion activist slammed his SUV into a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul, rally attendees held up signs condemning the reproductive health organization and MCCL speakers called for the defunding of the organization they called the “abortion industry.”

Also condemned at the rally was President Barack Obama, who was accused of having an “anti-life” agenda.

(Sources: Minnesota Historical Society, Wikipedia)

A simple but powerful reproductive health bill is up for consideration in the Minnesota Legislature this year, and it has anti-abortion activists concerned. The Minnesota Reproductive Privacy Act (SF 115) states that the government has no business interfering with the constitutionally protected privacy rights set forth in Roe v. Wade. Anti-abortion advocates say this law would cripple their efforts to make abortion illegal, while reproductive rights proponents say this bill not only protects women’s privacy but also their lives.

The bill reads, in part: “The state may not deny or interfere with a woman’s right to choose to bear a child, to terminate a pregnancy before viability, to terminate a pregnancy after viability when termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman, or discriminate against the exercise of rights set forth in clause in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.”

The Reproductive Privacy Act was introduced at the end of the 2007-08 session and did not leave committee. This year, the bill has the support of two contenders for the state’s top office. Presumed gubernatorial candidates Sens. John Marty and Tom Bakk are among the five coauthors. Sens. Scott Dibble, Sandy Pappas and Ellen Anderson are also authors.

Staunchly pro-life Gov. Tim Pawlenty is unlikely to sign such a bill should it reach his desk.

Anti-abortion groups say that could jeopardize their efforts to end abortion in Minnesota. “The Reproductive Privacy Act is a giant step backward in the effort to protect unborn children and their mothers from an aggressive, predatory and profit-driven abortion industry,” Scott Fischbach of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life told anti-abortion news outlet Lifesite.com. “Removing all limits on a deadly industry in decline is a stimulus package that Minnesotans don’t want.”

Supporters of the bill say that protecting privacy rights from government intervention is crucial to preventing the erosion of those rights — and preventing the deaths of women.

“The difference between a society with legal abortion and one without is not about the number of abortions performed, but is about the number of women’s lives saved,” said Linnea House, executive director of NARAL Pro Choice Minnesota. “The goal of this bill is to ensure that we continue to protect women’s lives.”

When reproductive health care is restricted, women pay the price, says House. “In countries without access to safe and legal reproductive health care, women suffer from infertility or die as a direct result of illegal, unsafe and unsanitary abortions. We also know that in countries where abortion is illegal, there is not always a decrease in abortion rates; there is, however, an increase in the number of women dying from unsafe medical procedures.”

The bill would make it more difficult for the state to continue waiting period laws or for reproductive health care workers with religious objections to decline to provide services.