Pro-life and pro-family activists brought their Values Voter Bus Tour to Muscatine’s riverfront Tuesday afternoon, telling a crowd of about 20 people they’ll work to ensure the eventual GOP’s presidential nominee is on board with their values.
This article first appeared online at MuscatineJournal.com on August 9, 2011.
Spinning wheels court Muscatine
Mike Ferguson
Pro-life and pro-value activists on bus tour hope to spin the issues in their favor at the straw poll
MUSCATINE, Iowa — Pro-life and pro-family activists brought their Values Voter Bus Tour to Muscatine’s riverfront Tuesday afternoon, telling a crowd of about 20 people they’ll work to ensure the eventual GOP’s presidential nominee is on board with their values.
“We’ll have the bus at the (GOP candidates’) debate Thursday, and we hope to spin the issues there as well as at the straw poll Saturday,” said Connie Mackey of the Faith Family Freedom Fund.
Former U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado, who now works for the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life group, called President Barack Obama “the most pro-abortion president in history” and criticized his choice of Supreme Court nominations, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The Susan B. Anthony List has signatures from six declared Republican presidential candidates — Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Thaddeus McCotter — on the group’s pro-life leadership pledge.
The candidates, some of whom joined the bus tour as it poked across Iowa, have promised to nominate only U.S. Supreme Court and federal judges “who are committed to restraint.” They’ve also promised to hire cabinet officers who are pro-life and promote the advancement of legislation to end taxpayer-funded abortion and defund Planned Parenthood.
Brian Brown, president of the National Organization of Marriage, lambasted the Obama administration’s decision “to call parts of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional” and not to enforce the law even though the administration said it would.
In a statement, Brown noted his group was the largest contributor to the effort to unseat Iowa Supreme Court justices who “imposed same-sex marriage on Iowa by judicial fiat.”
Jenifer Bowen, executive director of Iowa Right to Life, talked about abortion providers’ practice that she calls “webcam abortions” in which a doctor speaks to a woman seeking an abortion from miles away and dispenses pills to bring about the abortion by pressing a button that opens a drawer containing the pills.
The woman, she said, takes some of the pills in view of the physician and the rest several days later.
The woman is thus “sent home to have the abortion alone,” Bowen said.
After the talk, Hannah Flanders, 20, who grew up in Muscatine and is now a student at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif., said the messages she heard during the 20-minute presentation resonated within her.
“It’s really good to have people taking a stand before the straw poll,” she said. “It will affect people’s hearts.”
Flanders, one of nine children, co-founded Muscatine’s right-to-life chapter at age 15. She said she hopes to pursue the pro-life cause after she completes her degree.
“I grew up,” she said, “in a family of values voters.”
