Lugar Campaign Misleads Voters, Claims to be 100% Pro-Life

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Apr 19, 2012   |   3:28PM   |   Washington, DC

The U.S. Senate campaign of incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar is coming under fire from Indiana’s leading pro-life group for misleading Hoosiers with the claim that he has a 100 percent pro-life voting record.

The Indiana Right to Life Political Action Committee is calling on Senator Richard Lugar’s campaign to stop making the claim by stating that he has a “100% record” with National Right to Life, a claim that has appeared consistently in Lugar campaign communications.

“The Lugar campaign’s claim is clearly designed to give the impression that he has never voted against National Right to Life, but his lifetime voting record tells another story,” states Indiana Right to Life PAC chairman Mike Fichter.

Although National Right to Life does not score judicial confirmation votes, Fichter notes that this is another area in which Lugar has gone against National Right to Life, such as in the case of voting to confirm Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. Both are abortion advocates who are ready to keep unlimited abortions legal throughout pregnancy for any reason for another 39 years via Roe v. Wade.

“It is true that Senator Lugar can point to individual sessions in which he voted in alignment with National Right to Life, but when most people hear a candidate refer to a rating, the general impression is that the reference is to a lifetime rating,” says Fichter.  “We believe Senator Lugar should be up front with voters in acknowledging that he has voted against Right to Life on some very high profile issues.”

Indiana Right to Life is a state affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee and, earlier this year, it endorsed Lugar’s opponent, Richard Mourdock, for the state Republican primary.

“Richard Lugar will give the President his rubber stamp approval for any nominee put forward for the Supreme Court, just as he did when he voted to confirm Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Richard Mourdock, on the other hand, understands the dangers of judicial activism and will firmly oppose any Supreme Court nominee who does not hold to a conservative judicial philosophy that is rooted in the United States Constitution,” Fichter said at the time. “Unlike Richard Lugar, who has twice voted with a majority of Senate Democrats to use federal dollars to pay for embryonic stem cell research that requires the killing of human embryos, Richard Mourdock will fight to see that not one dime of federal funding supports this type of research that is abhorrent to the pro-life community.”