Democrat-backing Planned Parenthood has identified Sen. Kelly Ayotte as its first target in the 2016 Senate races when Democrats hope to regain control of the chamber.
Planned Parenthood Votes, which is the abortion business’s advocacy group, is launching its first televised ad in New Hampshire against Ayotte, who is in a tight race against the incumbent governor, Maggie Hassan.
The $400,000 ad buy slams Ayotte for adhering to the GOP’s promise to its constituents to not hold hearings on President Barack Obama’s liberal nominee to the Supreme Court, and for Ayotte’s support of overturning the controversial 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that usurped individual states’ rights to make decisions about abortion.
“For months, Senator Kelly Ayotte has followed party bosses — refusing to fill the Supreme Court vacancy,” the ad states. “For years, Ayotte has waited for an opportunity to push for someone to end access to safe, legal abortion and overturn Roe v. Wade.”
In a recent column at liberal Salon, feminist Camille Paglia criticized her Democratic Party for using abortion as an “ideological tool” to raise money and drive votes.
“The silence from second-wave feminists about the ethical ambiguities in their pro-choice belief system has been deafening,” Paglia asserted. “There is a moral hollowness at the core of Western careerist feminism, a bourgeois secular code that sees children as an obstruction to self-realization or as a management problem to be farmed out to working-class nannies.”
Paglia blasted Hillary Clinton and other liberals who aim “war on women” rhetoric toward pro-life supporters.
“As her Washington allies dump $400,000 more in dark money to support Governor Hassan’s negative campaign, it’s clear why Hassan refused to sign the same People’s Pledge that Jeanne Shaheen agreed to,” said Ayotte campaign manager Jon Kohan, according to WMUR. “Kelly’s long record of standing up for New Hampshire women and families is clear and she cares deeply about ensuring all women have access to health services.”
“Kelly Ayotte may try to paint herself as pro-woman, but her record tells a very different story,” said Deirdre Schifeling, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes. “Every chance she’s gotten, she’s voted to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood and cut women off from essential health care like birth control and breast and cervical cancer screenings.”
For years, Planned Parenthood – which has endorsed Clinton in the primary – has continued with the narrative that abortion is “women’s healthcare.” The abortion group’s attack on Ayotte for allegedly wanting to cut women off from birth control is inconsistent with the fact that the New Hampshire senator co-sponsored legislation last year that would incentivize drug companies that manufacture “routine-use contraceptives” to apply to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a switch to over-the-counter (OTC) sales.
The “Allowing Greater Access to Safe and Effective Contraception Act” encouraged contraceptive drug manufacturers to file for a “prescription-to-over-the-counter switch by allowing for priority review of the application and waiving the FDA filing fee.”
The bill also sought to repeal Obamacare’s restrictions on consumer use of health, medical and flexible savings accounts for the purchase of OTC drugs, thus further enabling the purchase of OTC contraceptives with these types of savings accounts.
“Our legislation will help increase women’s access to safe and effective contraceptives and further empower women to make their own health care decisions,” said Ayotte. “In addition, our bill restores the ability of Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Spending Accounts to be used to purchase over-the-counter medications, giving women more purchasing power.”
In advocating for OTC birth control – available without a prescription and, consequently, without Obamacare providing it, then-2014 Senate candidates Cory Gardner and Thom Tillis presented the economic argument that birth control pills could be even more accessible – and less expensive – if women could purchase them without having to obtain a doctor’s prescription. Obamacare’s requirement of full coverage of birth control in health insurance plans requires a prescription and, as a result, would keep the cost of the contraceptives rising for taxpayers who foot the bill for the “free” birth control, as Planned Parenthood likes to call it.
Since Planned Parenthood is reaping many benefits from Obamacare’s so-called “free” contraceptives, the argument for over-the-counter contraception sent the group into a tailspin.
Ayotte also voted last summer to redirect taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood to other community health centers that provide more comprehensive care for women, but do not provide abortions.
“I do not support the use of taxpayer dollars to fund a private organization that performs hundreds of thousands of abortions each year and harvests babies’ body parts, which is why I voted to redirect funding to community health centers that provide women’s health services such as cancer screenings, mammograms, and contraceptives,” Ayotte said.
Jennifer Frizzell, vice president of Planned Parenthood New Hampshire Action Fund, said:
Kelly Ayotte continues to advance an extreme agenda which would deprive New Hampshire women of critical reproductive health services, in direct contrast to the wishes of the citizens of New Hampshire, who demonstrate strong bipartisan support for access to safe, legal abortion and for access to Planned Parenthood health services.”
Planned Parenthood is currently under congressional investigation for its apparent practices of selling the body parts of aborted babies and altering the position of babies during abortion in order to harvest the most intact organs.