Pro-Abortion “Grassroots” Is Really Just Paid Astroturf

Opinion   |   Eric Scheidler   |   Aug 8, 2011   |   7:09PM   |   Washington, DC

A couple of weeks ago, a poster in the vestibule of a Thai restaurant in Chicago caught my eye. I’d just eaten there with my wife April before heading around the corner for a concert.

In large type, the poster was advertising “Campaign Jobs,” with the tagline, “Work for the pro-choice movement.” I snapped a quick photo of the poster, and shared a chuckle with April over the desperation it revealed.

As I’ve said before, the pro-life movement owns the grassroots. That fact was powerfully in evidence last month during the League’s Face the Truth Tour, as the League’s Matt Yonke noted. In all, fewer than a dozen counter-protesters showed up, at only a handful of sites, in contrasts to the hundreds of pro-lifers who volunteered during the Tour.

Desperation Growing in Pro-Choice Movement

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen abortion advocates going so far as to try to hire activists. In April, Jill Stanek reported on a similar poster spotted in Washington, DC.

In fact, both the Chicago and Washington posters were put up by the same organization, Grassroots Campaigns, a Boston company with offices across the country that works with liberal groups like MoveOn.org and the ACLU.

The conservative Tea Party movement is often derided by liberals for being “astroturf”—that is, a “fake” grassroots movement bankrolled by powerful conservative interests. But it looks like the real astroturf—if I can use that expression—is in the “pro-choice” movement.

Pro-Life Grassroots Flourishing

It’s unfortunate the abortion lobby is so well funded they can hire activists (or try to), but it’s encouraging to realize they have to. They just don’t have the kind of deep, grassroots commitment that characterizes the pro-life movement.

Every day, all over this country, thousands of pro-life volunteers are praying outside abortion facilities, reaching out to abortion-bound women with compassionate help, helping out at pregnancy centers, writing letters to the editor, calling up their legislators and doing everything they can to end abortion.

It must be deeply troubling to abortion advocates to see this kind of commitment, which after 37 years of legal abortion is only growing. No wonder they’re getting desperate.

LifeNews.com Note: Eric Scheidler is the executive director of the Pro-Life Action League and the son of the famous pro-life activist Joe Scheidler. He has led efforts against Planned Parenthood’s new abortion business in Aurora, Illinois.