Misleading Mailer Sent Out by MA Democratic Party
Greg Sargent uncovered this story:
This is absolutely brutal: Massachusetts Dems have dropped a mail piece accusing GOP Senate candidate Scott Brown of wanting hospitals to turn away “all” rape victims.
The mail piece — sent over by the Brown campaign — shows pictures of women who are supposed to have been raped, one of them in a wheelchair bent over with her head in her hands. It says: “1,736 WOMEN WERE RAPED IN MASSACHUSETTS IN 2008. SCOTT BROWN WANTS HOSPITALS TO TURN THEM ALL AWAY.”
This turns out to be a reference to Scott Brown’s support, in 2005, for an amendment that would have allowed hospital personnel who oppose emergency contraception for religious reasons to withhold information about it from rape victims. However, this is, to say the least, an incomplete picture of the truth. First of all, the law in question, is not specifically identified in the mailer. Instead, the mailer sources the claim to “a law to let emergency hospitals turn away rape victims in need of emergency contraception.” That’s the law (apparently) that Brown supported in 2005, but as described above, that law created a “conscience exemption” to allow emergency room staff to withhold information about the morning-after pill to rape victims. Allowing hospital personnel to refuse to tell rape victims about emergency contraception or give it to them if they ask for it, as repellent and heinous as I personally believe such a refusal to be, is clearly not the same thing as allowing hospital personnel to “turn away rape victims” from emergency rooms.
Also, as Greg reports, there is additional information not mentioned in the Democratic mailer that increases its deceptiveness (my bolds):
As Coakley’s own Web site says, after Brown’s amendment was rejected, he voted in favor of the bill to require emergency rooms to provide rape victims with emergency contraceptives, and the whole debate seems to be more nuanced than the mailer suggests.
I know campaigns get dirty, but this is pretty deplorable, in my view.
13 Responses to “Misleading Mailer Sent Out by MA Democratic Party”
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This sort of exaggeration and deception seems to be growing every year. Hopefully, this blows up in their face and sobers up all sides. I'm not holding my breath.
Major kudos to Kathy Kattenberg for this post.
http://tinyurl.com/ybqfnp9
Wow, and a beagle, too! I love beagles.
Teddy is on record supporting the type of amendment that Brown wrote. See the Weekly Standard Blog here http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/will-obama-… This is also in the Senate “Healthcare Reform” bill that Martha supports.
Yes, this is pretty bad, thanks for highlighting it.
I've also read that Sen. Schumer and others in the Democratic camp have labeled him a “tea bagger” and far right.
The irony is that according to this he's more liberal than several of the blue dogs. One wonders if the GoP really knows who they might get.
And, in the spirit of non-partisan rationality that Kathy has demonstrated, I'll point out that obviously Republicans aren't entirely immune from engaging in such tactics (just mostly immune, of course — j/k).
lol. yeah. Republicans would never “swift boat” anyone. Oh, wait.
But at least they don't resort to cheap racist smears like the Willy Horton crap. Oh. That's right, those were done by “moderate” TMV guest author Floyd Brown.
heh
Anyway, yes, thanks Kathy, for posting this. Let's see if any of the righties here condemn similar distortions done on a national, even presidential, level by their “with us or with the terrorists” comrades.
I hereby express by regret at having facilitated the sprouting politicization of this previously non-partisan thread with my light-hearted remark.
Once a ball is fumbled, either team scrambles and scratches to get the advantage. It's a game, a dirty one.
I don't care. Republicans have piles of nefarious acts pinned to their low sloping foreheads. Democrats may not be perfect but they are light years ahead of republicans with regard to intent and method.
Good for you in calling this Kathy. Trying to accuse Brown of opposing treatment of rape victims instead of what he actually did in trying to prevent nuns from being forced to engage in abortions was really the worst sort of political mudslinging imaginable by the Coakley campaign.
From legal insurrection blog
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2010/01/d…
<snip>
These people who think that emergency contraception for rape is a “right” simply because it is allowed by law, need to pay attention to the rights of those who have to administer this drug. Hey, if you're disrespecting my religion then I can't very well practice it can I? And my religion says you can't have an abortion. end of story.