Strib in its local reporting, not a wire feed republished, explained:
Sen. Tina Smith stands behind her work with Planned Parenthood -Senator's tenure as a Planned Parenthood executive is a lightning rod for critics. By Maya Rao, Star Tribune, January 20, 2018
Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) recently launched radio ads critical of her past work as a leader at Planned Parenthood.
“Tina Smith doesn’t just support abortion,” MCCL executive director Scott Fischbach says on the organization’s website. “She lobbied on its behalf. She worked to defeat any conceivable limitations on it. She was an executive for the state’s abortion leader. She is the abortion senator.”
[...] Noting Planned Parenthood’s reach — it serves 66,000 people in Minnesota annually — Smith said, “It is an organization that is deeply trusted to be there for women, men and families when it’s needed, and that’s something I’m very proud of.
“I believe that my work extending health care to women through Planned Parenthood is something that most people will respect and do respect,” Smith said in a Friday interview. “When the extreme right-wing … charges forward with a defund Planned Parenthood, anti-Planned Parenthood focused message, what happens is that people rally even more around Planned Parenthood.”
She spoke as thousands of abortion protesters marched in the U.S. capital in an annual demonstration, and President Donald Trump and GOP leaders rallied in support of them approaching the 45th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal across the nation. With Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House, reproductive issues are even more prominently in the political spotlight.
[...] So far, state Rep. Karin Housley is the only confirmed GOP challenger for Smith’s Senate seat. She issued a statement after Smith’s swearing-in saying that the new senator’s career as a longtime Democratic operative “and role as a leader in pushing for abortions at any cost as a Planned Parenthood executive gives reason to be concerned as to whether she will stand up for everyday Minnesota values.”
[...] Smith noted that federal support for family planning started under the administration of President Richard Nixon, a Republican.
“I will proudly work to maintain that source of family planning because I see it as being core to women’s economic opportunity,” Smith said. “I’m sure there will be other issues that come up that will try to place limits on abortion, and my fundamental view is that I trust women and their families to make decisions for themselves.”
The anti-choice card is all those creeps have to play. On all other issues such as Single Payer, the nation favors the enlightened position by massive margins, so get out the choice-hating torches and pitchforks, work up that crowd, and hope to smokescreen all the other issues via hate mongering. That it worked as part of the Trump vote is cause to mobilize the enlightened vote to counterbalance the frenzied ones.
Smith's background, becoming a focus that way, is worth marching for. Strib, whatever the motive, mentioned the wrong recent march. The good march was for freedom from government impositions upon the full spectrum of family choices, a march for liberty and sound policy free from bias or intrigues.
Stopping at a march, instead of a November 2018 vote, would be a great disservice to Smith, Planned Parenthood, liberty of choice, and sound reasoning leavened with common sense. Leave the horses and their voiding parts in their pasture.
BRING IT ON!