Pro-Abortion Groups Claim Funding Battle Ups Fundraising
National | Steven Ertelt | Apr 12, 2011 | 11:42AM | Washington, DC
There's nothing like the having the ability to tell your donors and supporters that the sky is falling to drive up fundraising numbers and generate more money from supporters.
The old adage in fundraising that bad news, complaints and attacking the other side of a political issue is much more financially effective than focusing on good news and praising people is apparently proving true again for groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood.
According to a new Politico report, the battle over de-funding Planned Parenthood, which both pro-abortion organizations have exploited to raise money, has been bringing in big bucks for both outfits. Online donations to the Planned Parenthood abortion business have reportedly increased 500 percent since the funding battle began while NARAL told the news web site its email list has grown by 1,000 people a day during that time.
Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, said that had Republican lawmakers been focusing only on cutting family planning funds they wouldn't have outraged Planned Parenthood activists as much as focusing on the abortion business.
"If the federal budget proposal had simply said, 'We're going to eliminate family planning funding,' I don't think people would have been as concerned," she told Politico.
"But they literally went after Planned Parenthood. For the first time, I think, the next generation of pro-choice women and men saw that the attack was real. It would affect their lives. It wasn't hypothetical like last year's debate; it really connected the personal with the political."
Richards said the number of people on the Planned Parenthood Facebook page has surged and said more than 810,000 people signed an online statement supporting Planned Parenthood, which allowed the abortion business to grow its email list and fundraising base.
Although pro-life groups have focused on how Planned Parenthood mostly provides abortions to pregnant women and was involved in abuses ranging from covering up sexual abuse of minor girls to helping sex traffickers arrange for abortions for victims, Richards believes the media coverage has allowed her group to talk about how it's supposedly a legitimate health care provider for women.
"I don't know how many graphs and pie charts have been shown on national television at this point," Richards said. "It is so important that there is an absolutely new understanding of what we do in terms of preventive services."
NARAL president Nancy Keenan told Politico that the highly complex, frequently changing and increasingly detailed nature of the budget debate has presented challenges to her organization in communicating with the abortion activists who support it.
"There was so much more going on, and it was much more confusing," she said, while offering praise for Democratic Party leaders and groups. "This was such a clear attack on contraception, women's health and abortion care. It's been good to see the party committees engaging in choice-related issues in ways they have not in the past."