Small anti-abortion advocacy group flexes muscle in midterm elections

The Washington Post reports on the increasingly important role of a small antiabortion advocacy group, the Susan B. Anthony List, which is targeting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his bid for re-election.

"'The money is going to Nevada,' said [Marjorie] Dannenfelser, 44, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a small-scale ideological counterpart to Emily's List, the machine behind many Democratic women in Congress. 'It's not hard to sell the idea that it will be an immense victory to have a pro-life woman unseat Harry Reid.'" On Friday, the organization will host Sarah Palin at a fundraising breakfast "the activist hopes will give her musings some muscle. Dannenfelser argued that Reid's health-care law, which does not ban federal funding for the procedure, destroyed his antiabortion bona fides and created an opportunity for Sue Lowden, an abortion opponent who is the front-runner in the Nevada Republican Senate primary, to win. ... Dannenfelser has hired Marilyn Musgrave, a former congresswoman from Colorado who opposes abortion, to target Senate seats held by Democrats in Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana and New Hampshire." Most of the group's cash will be directed to Nevada, "but resources will also punish House Democrats who oppose abortion and yet voted for the health-care bill" (Horowitz, 5/14).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.