Minnesota Twins and MN Zoo Criticized for Pro-Abortion Donations

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Dec 24, 2003   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Minnesota Twins and MN Zoo Criticized for Pro-Abortion Donations

by Paul Nowak
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
December 24, 2003

St. Paul, MN (LifeNews.com) — The December newsletter of NARAL’s Minnesota affiliate includes a lists of donors to the organization’s 12th Annual House Tour and Silent Auction fund-raiser on September 15th – including the Minnesota Twins baseball team, the Minnesota Zoo, and the Saint Paul Saints minor league baseball team.

That’s not going over well with the state’s leading pro-life organization.

"We cannot believe that the Minnesota Twins, the Minnesota Zoo and the Saint Paul Saints actually endorse and fund an organization that supports the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure," Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Executive Director Scott Fischbach told LifeNews.com. 

"While nearly all in the corporate world — including Target Corp., American Express and Disney — have stopped funding the pro-abortion movement, now we find the Minnesota Twins funding a pro-abortion political group."

An official with the Minnesota Zoo said the practice of sending free passes to the zoo to groups for use in fundraisers is a standard practice, despite the pro-abortion mission of Minnesota NARAL.

"The Minnesota Zoo is routinely asked to donate admission passes to a wide variety of organizations for their fundraisers," Kelly Lessard of the Minnesota Zoo explained to LifeNews.com. "As a state agency, the Zoo does not discriminate between these organizations and their causes. We send these tickets as a standard practice."

However, Fischbach said the Zoo shouldn’t be supporting abortion, especially when "the main visitors to the Minnesota Zoo are families, families with children."

"With nearly a half a million abortions in Minnesota since 1973, their ticket sales could be much higher today if they would turn away from their support of abortion. For them to support MN NARAL is outrageous and self-defeating," Fischbach added.

Meanwhile, the St. Paul Saints told LifeNews.com that an intern who was not familiar with NARAL and its policies filled a request for a donation of auction goods during the busy summer season.

"As an organization, the St. Paul Saints have a longstanding public policy to take no side on issues such as this one," said Dave Wright of the Saints team. "We also tend to answer affirmatively when asked for donation requests for silent auctions."

Representatives of the Minnesota Twins organization did not return requests for comment from LifeNews.com.

"Clearly somebody in the Twins front office has been hit in the head one too many times by foul balls," Fischbach told LifeNews.com "To be mixing major league baseball and a culture of death is bizarre."

When asked if MCCL would oppose the Twins’ request to the state legislature for a new stadium in light of the baseball club’s support of the Minnesota chapter of NARAL, Fischbach answered, "we will have to cross that bridge when we come to it, but I bet the MN Twins would be as shocked to find us involved in the stadium issue as we were shocked to find them supporting the killing of tiny, defenseless, little unborn Minnesota Twins fans."

MCCL credits recent advances in technology, such as 4D ultrasounds, as a leading cause of the declining popularity of national corporations supporting pro-abortion organizations.

Dean for America, Gephardt for President, John Kerry for President, The Minnesota Opera, and the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union were also among the Minnesota NARAL event’s supporters. 

"It is important for the people of Minnesota to know who is funding Minnesota’s radical pro-abortion movement, a movement that has led to the deaths of nearly 15,000 unborn babies per year in our state," Fischbach concluded.

ACTION: Express your views to the following:
Minnesota Twins – [email protected]
Minnesota Zoo – https://www.mnzoo.com/global/contact_us.asp
Saint Paul Saints – (651) 644-3517 or [email protected]

Related Sites:

NARAL December 2003 Newsletter, featuring a list of sponsors to the September fundraiser:
https://www.prochoiceminnesota.org/assets/files/nws_nov03.pdf.pdf