Susan B. Anthony List, the “Pro-Life Women’s Organization”
Susan B. Anthony List consistantly calls itself a "pro-life women's political group," but is it?
Editor’s Note: This article was updated at 12:00pm Central on October 21, 2010, to correct an error. Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper is running in Pennsylvania, not Ohio. We regret the error.
As the Susan B. Anthony List gets yet another cash infusion at the end of the election cycle, a funny thing can be noticed as the press reports the upcoming ad buys — the group is always referred to as “being focused on electing women who oppose abortion rights” or in some way being a group concerned with anti-choice female candidates.
Obviously, with SBA’s focus on anti-choice female Democratic Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper in Pennsylvania, who is being challenged by a male candidate, the “pro-life female candidates” thing isn’t the whole story. But looking at their endorsed candidates list, I was shocked to see how far they really had gone.
Susan B. Anthony List has 43 endorsed candidates. Of those 43 candidates, only 30 are women. Thirteen male candidates are on the list, and many of them are running in races where they are challenging sitting anti-choice politicians. Over 25 percent of the groups publicly-backed candidates are male, and many of them are in the higher profile races, as oppose to races where the chances of winning are slim to none.
How does a group manage to get the entire media to unquestioningly report that they are a focused on election “pro-life women,” or to refer to them as a “conservative EMILY’s List?”
Just to be sure, I checked the EMILY’s List page of endorsed candidates.
Not one man among them.