Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI) has launched a new advertisement that falsely claims GOP candidate Terri Lynn Land wants to cut women’s access to various female health services. The new ad comes as Peters and his campaign have completely publicly ignored an investigation by Breitbart News into Peters’ military background, in which documents and interviews with military leaders–including one of Peters’ former commanding officers–have shown that he fabricated much of his service record for political gain on the campaign trail.
“This is an important election for women,” a woman in the Peters campaign ad says.
“And I couldn’t believe what I learned about Terri Lynn Land,” another woman says.
“Terri Lynn Land supports a plan that would cut women’s access to preventive services like mammograms, cancer screenings and prenatal,” a narrator then says.
“But then I checked her record,” the first woman says.
“Land also supports letting employers make personal healthcare decisions for their female employees by denying them coverage for birth control,” the narrator jumps back in.
“As a woman,” the first woman reappears, before the screen cuts to a fourth woman: “Terri Lynn Land should know better.”
“I hear all this and I just can’t trust Terri Lynn Land to make decisions for me,” the second who reappears again says.
“Really,” the first woman ends the ad.
Land’s campaign spokeswoman Heather Swift fired back almost immediately after the ad was launched, calling it a “desperate” attempt to “cover up” attacks on Land from last week over her motherhood.
“Desperate to cover up sexist, anti-mom attacks from his campaign and allies, Gary Peters has resorted to lying about Terri and her positions,” Swift said. “The only candidate who has hurt women’s access to health care is Gary Peters. His support of ObamaCare has caused over 200,000 families to lose their plans. To make matters worse, his campaign is now attacking Terri for talking about how being a mom is important to her decision making. While Terri has a plan to put Michigan women First, it’s clear that Gary Peters will only put himself first, at the expense of Michigan women and families.”
Last week, Breitbart News reported that Peters’ campaign and his allies engaged in a campaign via Twitter to attack Land for noting she is a mother in some answers to policy questions during a radio interview. In response, Mitt Romney’s niece Republican National Committeewoman Ronna Romney McDaniel and U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)–both mothers themselves–joined with Land to demand that First Lady Michelle Obama, who was campaigning with Peters in Michigan on Friday, distance herself from Peters’ campaign’s “sexist” and “anti-mom” attacks.
“With the First Lady in Michigan today, we certainly think of Michelle Obama as a great mom for raising her daughters under unimaginable pressure,” Ayotte said. “We believe and I certainly believe that Mrs. Obama would not condone the rhetoric that we’ve heard that’s being used against Terri Lynn Land in terms of her role as a mom and how that would inform her decision-making in the U.S. Senate. I fully support Terri. I think she’ll make a great senator because of her experience at the local level and state level in Michigan. I wanted to be part of this because I’m a mom in the U.S. Senate and because frankly we don’t have enough–we have 20 women in the U.S. Senate, we don’t have enough people who have the experience in the Senate who have children and can bring that experience to the U.S. Senate. I think we need more moms in the Senate and people who would make the country better and safer for future generations of Americans.”
“I am calling on the Michigan press, Gary Peters and First Lady Michelle Obama to condemn the attacks on Terri for being a mom,” Romney McDaniel added. “It is troubling to see Gary Peters claim over and over that he is an outspoken supporter of women only to have him remain silent as Terri is attacked. Does Gary Peters believe that moms have no business caring about foreign affairs, healthcare or earning a paycheck?”
They compared the attacks to those SKDKnickerbocker’s Hilary Rosen made against then potential future First Lady Ann Romney’s motherhood during the 2012 election–attacks which were roundly criticized and rejected, forcing Rosen to apologize to Mrs. Romney for them.
This time around, however, Peters and Michelle Obama have not distanced themselves from the Peters campaign and its allies’ attacks on Land’s motherhood. Michelle Obama’s office has not responded to requests for comment in response to Romney McDaniel’s and Ayotte’s public requests for her to address it.
In an interview this weekend in South Carolina, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Breitbart News that the “phony war on women”–like what is echoed in the new Peters campaign ad–is completely fabricated by Democrats who have lied to voters.
“In 2012, the strategy of Democrats was to concoct a phony war on women. Now, it was based on an absurd premise,” Cruz said in the interview between public events in South Carolina. “It was based on the premise that Republicans somehow wanted to restrict people’s access to birth control. I’ve been raised around conservatives my entire life–I’ve never met a single human being on the face of the planet who wants to prohibit anyone from accessing birth control. It is a laughable proposition. It is a false and fictional threat that Democrats have spent hundreds of millions of dollars telling voters that ‘somebody is coming to take your birth control!'”
Cruz added that the issue Democrats are obfuscating “has never had anything to do with access to birth control” and said “it is indisputable that every American has a long-established legal right to birth control.”
“The question has been can the federal government force people to, against their religious beliefs, pay for abortion-inducing drugs for others,” Cruz said. “Right now the Obama administration is litigating against the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic charity, trying to force the nuns to pay for abortion-inducing drugs for others. Now, that is a fundamental religious liberty issue that thankfully the Supreme Court has rightfully concluded that no, the federal government cannot force us to violate our religious beliefs–but there never was any issue about access to birth control other than in the fictional world created by Democratic attack ads.”
Cruz said it’s the Democrats and President Barack Obama who are waging a war on women, not the other way around.
“Now if you want to talk about issues that really impact women, in the six years of Barack Obama’s presidency, 3.7 million women have entered poverty,” Cruz said. “In the six years of Barack Obama’s presidency, the median income for women has dropped $733. That is a war on women. There are right now millions of single moms who are struggling–and I recognize for the political elites in Washington, $733 seems like chump change to them, but if you’re a single mom struggling to feed your kids $733 is real money, is the difference between a new pair of shoes for your kid, the difference between taking care of your basic needs or not.”
In fact, in the case of Peters, he actually pays women in his congressional office 67 cents for every dollar a man makes who works for him.
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