Reproductive health has suddenly become an issue this election. Birth control battle brings in bucks

The sudden focus on contraception and abortion in the 2012 campaign has meant a surge in fundraising for abortion rights groups that support women as congressional candidates.

EMILY’s List — whose mission is to elect pro-abortion rights Democratic women — has raised nearly twice as much for candidates at this point in the 2012 cycle as it did during the entire 2010 cycle, according to spokeswoman Jess McIntosh. And that’s with about eight months to go.


“We are on track to have one of the best first quarters we’ve ever had for candidate fundraising,” said EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock.

It’s a very different landscape than the one Democratic women faced in 2010, when 11 of them were ousted from the House and several were replaced by tea party-backed candidates. Democratic women fared better in the Senate, where moderate Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas was the only female Democratic incumbent to lose her reelection bid, but several others had close calls.

The shift is a surprise. Women’s groups were preparing to fend off a number of new state laws that restrict abortion access, not pull in new cash after attacks on Planned Parenthood funding and a comment from Rush Limbaugh about a female law student shifted momentum in their direction.

The fundraising boon is good news for female candidates, who are in a much stronger position in races across the country than they might have expected just a year ago when reproductive health was not expected to be a key issue this election.

EMILY’s List is helping to raise money for 37 women running for Congress — 11 in the Senate and 26 in the House. Much of the money is going to big name Senate candidates like Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Claire McCaskill in Missouri.

But lesser-known candidates are positioned to benefit, too, like Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), who is running for the seat held by deep-pocketed tea party favorite Rep. Allen West, and Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), who’s challenging Republican Rep. Charlie Bass.

This cycle, pro-abortion rights groups are confident that these are winning issues for them, and they’re using recent controversies to their advantage.

Congressional Democrats have latched onto women’s issues and tried to paint the GOP as anti-woman. In the Senate, the Democrats’ message man, Chuck Schumer, plans to make a law on violence against women a wedge issue.

Other pro-abortion rights groups are including women’s health controversies in their fundraising pitches.

Planned Parenthood sent an email on International Women’s Day last week, blasting Rush Limbaugh for calling a Georgetown Law student a “slut” for her views on birth control and Texas Gov. Rick Perry for a state law that blocks funding to Planned Parenthood.

EMILY’s List has been sending emails to fire up their supporters and running ads that hammer Republicans’ recent maneuvers. The group ran an ad in February featuring remarks by GOP donor Foster Friess that women should put aspirin between their knees for contraception, and images of a House hearing on birth control that featured an all-male panel.

“Things started to get more and more outrageous from the Republicans,” Schriock said. “The flat-out attack on access to birth control is just so outrageous to the mass majority of Americans because that fight did happen in this country — it happened 50 years ago.”

In December, even before women’s health had become a major focus of the campaign, women running for Congress had already raked in more than $1 million from donors giving through EMILY’s List, which earmarks contributions slated for their endorsed candidates, according to federal election data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

EMILY’s List has long been a major force in getting Democratic women elected to national offices. The group often ranks among the top political action committees and says it has raised more than $85 million for Democratic women candidates since 1985. In the 2010 election cycle, the organization says it’s entire operation helped raised more than $38.5 million to boost pro-abortion rights Democratic women.

Pro-abortion rights groups aren’t the only ones trying to energize their supporters in light of the recent fights over women’s issues. The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, for example, rallied supporters around a failed Senate amendment from Missouri Republican Roy Blunt that would have allowed employers to refuse to cover birth control.

And in February, in the wake of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure announcement that it would halt grants to Planned Parenthood, the breast health group’s donations went up 100 percent in two days, the Daily Caller reported.

And more women of the Democratic Party are still lining up for House elections. Shelley Adler announced in January that she’d be running against Republican Rep. Jon Runyan (her late husband held the seat before Runyan) in New Jersey, and Joyce Healy-Abrams jumped in late last year to vie for the seat of Ohio GOP Rep. Bob Gibbs.

EMILY’s List isn’t the only women’s group seeing checks pour in since the Republican rhetoric has intensified.

“Over the last several weeks, we’ve seen a significant uptick in fundraising,” said Planned Parenthood spokesman Tait Sye.

He declined to offer fundraising numbers, but the group saw an immediate boom last month after the controversy surrounding the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to cut off funding in light of a congressional investigation led by House Republicans. Planned Parenthood raised $650,000 in the 24 hours following the flap, The Washington Post reported — nearly enough to replace Komen’s funding from the previous year.

Women’s groups say their memberships are on the rise, too.

“Over the last several weeks, Planned Parenthood has signed up tens of thousands of new supporters, who have been speaking out, engaging their friends and families and donating time and money,” Sye said.

And NARAL Pro-Choice America saw the largest increase ever on its email list and Twitter recruits in February 2012, compared to the previous year, with about 850 email recruits per day, according to spokeswoman Samantha Gordon.

Since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election, EMILY’s List has doubled its membership, Schriock said, with more than 1 million members now “and growing rapidly in the last three months.”