Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty have signed on to the Susan B. Anthony List’s 2012 Pro-life Presidential Leadership Pledge. The presidential candidates have pledged to roll back abortion rights in four key areas, and the duo join three other presidential contenders: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Bachmann went after fellow presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday for not signing the pledge and not committing to “ending the practice of abortion.”

The candidates pledged to appoint anti-abortion judges, to appoint anti-abortion cabinet members, to defund Planned Parenthood and to sign a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks gestation.

Bachmann went after Mitt Romney for not signing the pledge.

“It is distressing that Governor Romney refuses to sign the SBA Pledge, even while claiming to be pro-life,” Bachmann said in a statement on Sunday. “The excuses for not signing clearly continue the doubts about his leadership and commitment to ending the practice of abortion – particularly for a candidate who ran as pro-choice for the Senate and Governorship of Massachusetts. Any Presidential candidate seeking our party’s nomination should sign the SBA Pledge and vow to protect life from conception to natural death. Governor Romney should reconsider his decision not to sign the Pledge just as he reconsidered his position on the life issue during the last campaign.”

In a webinar with anti-abortion rights activists Tuesday evening, Rep. Michele Bachmann said that she voted against the continuing resolution aimed at avoiding a government shutdown because it didn’t defund Planned Parenthood and “Obamacare.” She called abortion the “watershed issue of our time” and said she’s prepared to fight “eyeball-to-eyeball” to defund Planned Parenthood in the next continuing resolution in two weeks.

The “Defunding Planned Parenthood: Urgent Nationwide Webcast,” observed by the Minnesota Independent, was hosted by anti-abortion rights group the Susan B. Anthony List.

“Abortion is the watershed issue of our time,” Bachmann said. “We shouldn’t have one red cent go for Planned Parenthood,” calling it an opportunity abortion rights opponents have not had before.

She said that GOP leadership thought cutting all funds to the group was too controversial to include in the continuing resolution, which passed in a 335-91 vote in the House Tuesday and was approved by the Senate today by a 91-9 margin.

“For me personally, there were a few of us who voted ‘no’ on the continuing resolution… because it did not defund implementing ‘Obamacare’ because, as you know, ‘Obamacare’ will allow for taxpayer-funded abortions for the first time in history of the nation.”

The Affordable Care Act — or, as Bachmann puts it, “Obamacare” — will not allow taxpayer funding for abortion services. Numerous nonpartisan fact-checkers have called that assertion false, including FactCheck.org and Politifact.

“The next time we vote on the continuing resolution we have to insist on defunding ‘Obamacare’ and defunding Planned Parenthood,” she said. “My opinion is there is a point where you draw the line in the sand and you have a hill where you die on. I think this is our issue.”

“We control the spending, and we are going to have to have an eyeball-to-eyeball fight,” she promised. “At some point you have to have a knock down, drag down fight. This is it.”

She concluded, “It’s just morally reprehensible on its face to force people, for whom this is a violation of our moral conscience, to force people to pay for other people’s abortions.”

Federal law contrastst Bachmann’s statement, however. The Hyde Amendment forbids federal money from paying for abortion. For Planned Parenthood, federal money pays for cervical cancer screenings, mammographies and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

Bachmann wasn’t the only member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation to vote against the resolution; DFL Reps. Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison also cast “no” votes.

Religious right groups in Minnesota and around the country said that Tuesday’s landslide victories for Republicans were due to their efforts — and they might be right. Anti-abortion groups claim they ousted incumbents who were previously “pro-life” but voted for health care reform, which the groups inaccurately stated will fund abortions. And massive anti-gay marriage campaigns throughout Minnesota preceded losses by same-sex marriage supporters at the Legislature.

“Today, the Susan B. Anthony List announced that it successfully defeated 15 of its 20 targeted self-described ‘pro-life’ Democrats who voted for the pro-abortion health care bill as part of its “Votes Have Consequences” project,” the anti-abortion group said in a statement Wednesday. Rep. James Oberstar was one of those the group said it targeted.

“Last night, the SBA List accomplished its overall goal and delivered on our promise that votes have consequences,” the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said. “In these races, the abortion issue was a determining factor. We flexed the muscles of the pro-life movement.”

Concerned Women for America also saw Oberstar’s defeat as a victory for the religious right. Citing Oberstar, Concerned Women for America Director of Legislation and Public Policy Shari Rendall said, “Last night’s vote was crystal clear: Americans do not want their money to pay for abortions.”

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, after endorsing Oberstar for years, threw its support behind Republican Chip Cravaack, also citing Oberstar’s vote for health care reform.

“Yesterday was a good day for the pro-life movement — nationwide and here in Minnesota,” an update on the MCCL website read. “The one change came in the 8th District, where pro-life (and MCCL Federal PAC-endorsed) Chip Cravaack ousted Rep. Jim Oberstar in a remarkable upset. Our state will now have five (out of eight) pro-life members of Congress.”

SBA List, Concerned Women for America and MCCL all attacked Oberstar for not being “pro-life” due to his vote for health care reform. They said that vote was a vote for federally-funded abortions, but many fact-checkers say that claim in false.

According to Factcheck.org:

The law says that those receiving subsidies to buy insurance through state-based exchanges must submit a separate payment to cover abortion services (if they choose a plan that covers abortions), and insurance providers must keep federal money separate from private payments to ensure the federal money does not go toward abortion coverage. President Obama also signed an executive order reaffirming the federal rules on only funding abortion in cases of rape, incest and danger to the mother’s life.

And the Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact also rated claims that Obamacare pays for abortion as “false.”

In Minnesota, the Minnesota Family Council took credit for the GOP gains in the State Legislature.

“MFC would like to thank the tens of thousands of social conservatives who headed [sic] our calls, emails and mailings to vote their pro-life, pro-marriage values,” said Chuck Darrell, Director of Communications. The group, which opposes LGBT rights, said it made 500,000 calls and distributed 250,000 voters’ guides to 1,200 churches.

“This dramatic change in both houses stops efforts to legalize gay marriage dead in it’s [sic] tracks. Recently, backers of gay marriage have been boasting that Minnesota is on the ‘verge’ of legalizing gay marriage. Apparently not, as the people have responded by electing pro-life, pro-marriage majorities in both the house and the senate,” said Darrell on the group’s site.

MFC also teamed up with the National Organization for Marriage on a series of radio and television ads supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. The two groups spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the ads, though exact numbers are unknown since NOM refuses to disclose its expenditures.

And to supplement the efforts of NOM and MFC, the Catholic Church sent out hundreds of thousands of DVDs to Minnesota Catholics urging them to vote against legislators who support gay marriage.

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.

“We’re so pleased to have Gov. Tim Pawlenty headline our Campaign for Life Gala,” Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser told Politico. “The governor’s actions on behalf of Minnesota women and unborn children are exemplary.”

Aside from Pawlenty, Reps. Michele Bachmann and James Oberstar will likely be in attendance as both serve on the group’s advisory board.

Here’s Bachmann’s speech to the attendees of the 2008 gala:

Photo: MnIndy

On Wednesday Rep. Michele Bachmann was part of a star-studded “teletownhall” meeting to discuss health-care reform. The event, billed “Keeping Faith with the Unborn,” was sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group. The organization’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, claimed that there were some 350,000 listeners on the line.

Bachmann was joined by North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, most famous for calling Matthew Shepard’s murder a “hoax,” and former Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, who made national headlines by refusing to concede after losing her re-election contest November. But even with such veteran political pugilists sharing the phone line, Bachmann managed to distinguish herself during the 90-minute phone call.

The 6th district Republican quoted the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, attacked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for receiving political contributions from a medical doctor who was murdered in May, and called on everyone to get down on their knees and pray that health care reform fails. Bachmann didn’t always make sense, but she undoubtedly scared the living daylights out of anyone on the line.

Bachmann repeated the myth, adopted early by Sarah Palin, that the health-care plans being debated in Congress would set up “death panels” to determine which old folks are entitled to health care. “Thank God that Sarah Palin said that,” she told the callers. “These are true.”

In response to a caller from Minnesota who wanted to know if there was a plan afoot in Washington to require all medical doctors to perform abortions, Bachmann didn’t exactly shoot the suggestion down.

“Unless we explicitly restrict these items, I think we can fully expect that these radical pro-abortion individuals could very likely make those decisions,” she told the caller. “All of us who have labored tirelessly in the pro-life cause for years and years and years, we know what these people are capable of. That’s why they have to be tied down by restrictions explicitly in law.”

She also suggested that it might be some kind of religious destiny that hardy souls such as herself are in Congress at this time.

“We all need to consider that in God’s timing that he may have allowed us, as members of Congress, to be in the position that we’re in just for this specific issue right now,” she said. “Everything that all of us have worked together and labored for over the years, all of it could be undermined with this one bill. President Obama realizes that. The radicals that are on the pro-abortion left, they realize that. They could win it all. And the unborn, and the vulnerable, the disabled and those at the end of life could lose it it all.”

But it was Bachmann’s fervent call to utilize prayer and fasting to beat back health-care reform efforts that was the true highlight of the call.

“That’s really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting,” she told the listeners. “Remember: faith without works is dead. So we’re asking you to do all of it: pray, fast, believe, trust the Lord, but also act.”

Listen:

The panel will also feature former Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, a conservative firebrand who was soundly defeated last year, and North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, who has promoted the myth that health care reform will result in senior citizens being euthanized.

The Family Research Council, a religious right organization that opposes equal rights for gays and lesbians, rushed to the aid of Rep. Michele Bachmann in the wake of Anti-AmericaGate. They also rallied around Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, a Republican who has made opposition to same-sex marriage her signature issue in Congress.

In a letter to the Republican National Congressional Committee titled “NRCC Abandons Social Conservatives,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins wrote, “You have made a grave error in judgment by pulling your funds from the Michelle Bachmann race in Minnesota and the Marilyn Musgrave race in Colorado,” he said. “The left is attacking both of these outstanding women because they are true conservatives.”

Despite the economy and the Iraq War dominating voters’ concerns this November, Perkins says it’s Bachmann’s and Musgrave’s extreme views on abortion and homosexuality that will sway voters.

“They vote pro-life and pro-family. Both Congresswomen are against taxpayer funding of abortion. Both oppose embryonic stem cell research, and both are for a Marriage Protection Amendment,” he said. “These are issues that motivate voters. These are issues they and other conservative candidates have won and can win with.”

MnIndy: A tool of the Religious Right?

The Family Research Council used reporting by the Minnesota Independent in its newly released voter guide (PDF) touching on abortion, same-sex marriage, “special protections for homosexuals” and stem-cell research. “Erik Paulsen runs away from Republicans and his own record” is used to bash Ashwin Madia on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, as are other reports from our coverage of the 3rd Congressional District debates. View their source guide (PDF).

Pro-lifer’s canceled speech riles right-wingers

“In Minnesota, there is another brilliant example of liberals trying to indoctrinate their views on college students,” wrote Crystal Clear Conservative. “The College of St. Catherine is banning Bay Buchanan from speaking on campus, because the college administration believes her speech would be a direct violation of their 501(c) (3) status.”

SCSU Scholars blog cried foul. “Bay Buchanan is neither a candidate nor engaged in a campaign or debate for any candidate,” read a post at the popular St. Cloud blog (its contributors helped arrange the Buchanan visit). The Republican Party-affiliated Young America’s Foundation suggested “a more sinister motive behind the cancellation of Ms. Buchanan’s speech and an utter contempt for intellectual diversity.”

Despite protestations that Buchanan is not campaigning for any candidate, Buchanan held an impromptu gathering across the street, hailing Sarah Palin’s candidacy. SCSU Scholars wrote, “As Bay stated, Sarah was not exactly the icon these feminists wanted. Sarah is (horrors) a Republican, a Christian and a mom who kept her child even after she knew it would have health problems. And, like it or not, she’s the new face of feminism.”

Despite outcries from the right wing, the college has been bipartisan in its policies. It banned Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton from appearing at the college this week and last month told DFL Senate candidate Al Franken he could not speak on campus.

Anti-Obama abortion mailers hitting Minnesota mailboxes

The Susan B. Anthony List has printed 500,000 of these mailers to send to mailboxes in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania this week. The two-sided mailer features a lenticular print on the front: when viewed from one angle, a baby is visible; from another, it’s gone.

Click the image for a larger size:

The ads say, in part (MP3):

In Minnesota, 39 innocent children are lost every day, 39 children every day. And what does comedian Al Franken want to do about it? Nothing. Franken says he supports abortion on demand. It’s no wonder radical pro-abortion groups have embraced Al Franken. They want to overturn the ban on gruesome partial birth abortions, force you to pay for abortions with your tax dollars, and allow young girls to get abortions without their parents consent. Al Franken and his allies are wrong. Call Al Franken right now at 612-344-2008 and tell him MN deserves leaders we can trust to protect life. tell him every life counts and this is no laughing matter.

“While Senate candidates like Al Franken in Minnesota and Kay Hagan in North Carolina hide their extreme support for abortion on-demand from the voters, we are there to expose it,” SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser told the religious right website Lifesite.com. “American voters deserve to know the truth about who really is – and isn’t – on the side of unborn children.”

The group opposes any and all abortion, including those resulting from rape or incest. Like the name suggests, SBA List’s original focus was on progressive pro-life candidates who opposed abortion, but promoted social welfare policies that reduce the need for abortion.

In the late-1990s and early-2000s, the group underwent a transformation as Republican insiders took over the group, aligning its activities close to those of the religious right.

The group is also focusing three other states: Colorado, New Hampshire and New Mexico.