Antiabortion Militants for Congress & Gory Fetuses on TV

[Joanne98]

The Hill and The Washington Post recently ran reports on how theocratic antiabortion militant Randall Terry is considering running for president. His reason is not to become president. He wants to exploit the laws exempting TV stations from editing the content of ads for federal office in order to air graphic antiabortion ads on television. He is seeking to expand on the success of Missy Reilly Smith who got only 6% of the vote in her campaign against Eleanor Holmes Norton for Congressional Delegate from the District of Columbia -- but was able to run thousands of dollars worth of gory fetus antiabortion ads on TV.


The Post reported:

Randall Terry -- the fiery activist who recruited D.C. resident Missy Reilly Smith to run for congressional delegate, thus clearing access to the airwaves -- announced this week that he plans to recruit candidates to run for Congress in the nation's 25 largest media markets, expressly to air graphic TV commercials.
And Terry, whose group Operation Rescue pioneered in-your-face abortion clinic protests in the late '80s, is also considering a run for president in 2012 -- which would give him the ability, he said, to run a commercial in the most coveted airtime in American television: during the Super Bowl.

The ads take advantage of a little-known legal provision barring broadcast TV stations from altering the content of political advertisements. Prior to the election, at least two dozen ads aired on broadcast and cable stations in the area, usually preceded by a disclaimer inserted by the stations. The impact of the ads were amplified by the news coverage of the attendant controversy.

The ads "did exactly what they were supposed to do," Terry said. "Missy's ad got more pro-life debate, more pro-life press ... in a two and a half weeks than all other pro-life news that I know of in the whole country."


Of course, it remains to be seen whether Terry and his colleagues can pull it off. But it is worth noting that this is not the first time this has been done. Howard Phillips, the founder of the U.S. Taxpayers Party (now called the Constitution Party) featured graphic antiabortion TV ads in Iowa during his 1992 presidential campaign. This is probably where Terry got the idea. He was a regional leader of the party, and ran as a USTP candidate for Congress from New York. (For a discussion of the origins and theocratic ideology of the USTP see Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy). Terry later mounted an unsuccessful primary challenge against his local Republican State Senator in Florida.

While it is worth noting that Ann Marie Buerkle, a former Operation Rescue associate of Terry's, was recently elected to Congress as a Republican from New York, Terry's aim is clearly different. He wants to take advantage of the lack of GOP challengers to entrenched incumbents in heavily Democratic districts in order to get antiabortion militants access to the ballot. This may have the effect of polarizing the abortion debate among key Democratic constituencies with implications beyond the district and the particular race.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/12/3/18346/4939

[MH1]

1. Recc'd for visibility

Maybe a pro-choicer should do the same thing with graphic images of the results of back-alley abortions. Or what happens to women in many theocratically ruled countries.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Randall Terry responds to symbols just as easily.

In the mid-Eighties, I was in D.C. for another abortion march (in support of rights). Randall Terry was standing on bleechers on the side of the street, with his megaphone, angrily shouting bible verses at us.

I was carrying a wooden cross. A large one I made. With a wire clothes hanger nailed to it, upside down, with red paint on one end, trickling down the cross.

He saw my cross and was literally at a loss for words mid-shout.