Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin skipped the White House Correspondents Dinner over the weekend to attend a pro-life event to raise funds for pro-life billboards and commercials.
The former Alaska governor used her draw to bring an audience to the event for Heroic Media and noted how she was skipping the D.C. gala featuring President Barack Obama and top elected officials and media elites.
“The pro-life cause or White House Correspondents’ Dinner? I choose life,” she said. “You really see evidence of that influence out there of — you know — the celebrity, how the news is, and the political arena, and how it all kind of meshes together. That’s what the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is.”
But Palin added that her decision doesn’t mean pro-life advocates should abandon attempts to influence the public within the media confines.
“We’re not going to be absent from that arena… I think we kind of want to infiltrate it. We want to get in there and affect that change,” she said.
Instead, Palin’s daughter Bristol went to the event and represented the conservative family.
“Go and grit your teeth if you hear Palin jokes out there on the podium,” Palin said about what she told her daughter.
During the event, Palin presented an aware for Lila Rose, the Live Action president credited with exposing Planned Parenthood and different kinds of abuses ranging from giving out incorrect information on abortion to covering up sexual abuse cases involving minors to helping arrange abortions for girls victimized by sexual trafficking.
“Planned Parenthood doesn’t empower women, or offer women who find themselves in less than ideal circumstances any kind of real choice. What they offer is not real choice or female health care,” Palin said, according to a Politico report.
Palin headlined the $250-a-plate dinner featuring about 300 people in attendance. During her 45-minute speech, Palin focused on the difficult decision women make when facing a crisis pregnancy and explained how she can understand how, “even for a split second” a woman might consider having an abortion.
As she has done at previous Heroic Media events, Palin spoke of her son Trig, who has Down syndrome, and told the audience of how 90 percent of Down Syndrome children are killed in abortions. She also spoke of the recent efforts to deny federal funding to Planned Parenthood and said they should continue.
