I admit, I didn't know investment billionaire and co-founder of The Giving Pledge, Warren Buffett, donated $1.2 billion to pro-choice organizations. Fox News and a plethora of right-wing news groups decided to publicize Buffett's pro-choice donations in a very large scale media blitz, last week - as if it were a bad thing. The conservative anti-choice newsgroups pretty much did a copy/paste of Fox's article. If you google the subject, you will find multiple articles with almost the exact same title and text. I haven't seen that much blatant GOP plagiarism since Republican Senator Rand Paul lifted the Gettysburg Address from Wikipedia, or something like that.

Much of Warren Buffett's pro-choice donations were made via his former wife's foundation. According to the New York Times:

Susan Thompson Buffett was married to Warren Buffett and served as president of the foundation that bears her name. She died in 2004. Two years later, Warren Buffett gave the foundation about $3 billion. He said that he expected the gift to increase the foundation’s annual expenditures by $150 million. And in fact, total giving by the foundation, where two of the Buffetts’ children sit on the board, increased from $202 million in 2007 to $347 million in 2008, according to tax returns.The tax records also show that most of the foundation’s spending goes to abortion and contraception advocacy and research. According to Access Philanthropy, a research institute that focuses on the giving preferences of foundations and corporate donors, family planning is one of the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation’s main purposes. The foundation’s nonprofit 990 tax form shows that in 2008, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates in the U.S. received about $45 million; the international arm of the organization got about $8 million. There is no line item for the Ryan program or the Family Planning Fellowship. But the foundation paid out around $50 million to universities with one or both of the programs. Warren Buffett has never spoken publicly about his views on abortion. But in the 1990s, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Buffett Foundation helped finance the research and development of the pills that induce abortion. The foundation also helped finance a lawsuit to overturn the ban on so-called partial-birth abortion in Nebraska, Buffett’s home state and the headquarters of his company, Berkshire Hathaway. (Susan Thompson Buffett moved from Omaha to San Francisco in 1977 but remained close to her husband. She took credit for introducing him to the woman he has lived with since 1978; the three sent out Christmas cards together.) In Thompson Buffett’s only television interview, which was broadcast after her death, she told Charlie Rose: “Warren feels that women all over the world get shortchanged. That’s why he’s so pro-choice.”

What Fox News and its ilk fail to realize, is at least half of this country is pro-choice, which means their efforts to discredit Warren Buffett will most likely elevate the public admiration and popularity of the Berkshire Hathaway Chairman & CEO.

The following is a list of Warren Buffett/Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation donation recipients via the anti-choice mrc.org article:



NARAL

Abortion Access Project

Center for Reproductive Rights

Central Iowa Family Planning

Funders Network on Population, Reproductive Health and Rights

National Abortion Federation

National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association

Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health

Planned Parenthood

Religious Coalition for Reproductive Health

Society of Family Planning

Catholics for a Free Choice

Grupo de Informacion en Reproduccion Elegida

Ibis Reproductive Health

Medical Students for Choice

Ms. Foundation for Women

National Institute for Reproductive Health

Abortion Access Project

Gynuity Health Projects

Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights

Family Health International

National Partnership for Women and Families

Feminist Majority Foundation

Guttmacher Institute

Advocates for Youth

DKT International

Irish Family Planning Association

Marie Stopes International

National Women’s Law Center

Pathfinder International

Population Council

Population Services International

Engender Health

Venture Strategies for Health and Development

Willow Foundation

Thanks, Fox News. Thanks, mrc.org. Thanks, Sheep. You say the left-wing and mainstream media have ignored Warren Buffett's pro-choice donations. You are so right. I'll be sure to get this good news out pronto!