The pro-abortion group Emily’s List has shoveled millions of dollars into the election already this year, but its hefty pocketbook hasn’t managed to buy many victories for pro-abortion candidates.
Roll Call reports five of the six candidates endorsed by the pro-abortion PAC lost their races last Tuesday in an overwhelming defeat. The group even spent a whopping $3 million to back pro-abortion candidate Donna Edwards for the Maryland Senate Democratic primary, and still lost by a wide margin, according to the report.
The abortion group did manage to win one victory in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. According to the report, Emily’s List-backed Katie McGinty won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. However, the report said other groups also spent a lot of money backing pro-abortion McGinty.
Here is more about the pro-abortion PAC’s losses:
Three other House candidates who had been endorsed by EMILY’s List also failed to win nominations in their Democratic primary races. In each case, the endorsed candidate lost badly.
In Maryland, Kathleen Matthews in the 8th Congressional District and Joseline Pena-Melnyk in the 4th District both finished third in multi-candidate primaries. In Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, Shaughnessy Naughton won only 40 percent of the vote in in a two-person race.
The defeats have even sympathetic operatives wondering if the group, one of the Democratic Party’s most important fundraising sources, needed to reconsider which candidates it endorses and how, tactically speaking, it supports them afterward.
“It wasn’t just losing those four races, it was losing them by worse than expected,” said one Democratic strategist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s hard not to look at the results and say EMILY’s List is going to have to do a lot better if they want an EMILY’s List endorsement to inspire fear in primaries anymore.”
In the aftermath of Edwards’s loss, group President Stephanie Schriock called the defeat “a heartbreaker” but reiterated support for the heavy spending because it had “changed the conversation” about electing minority women into office.
Pro-abortion supporters seem confused by the losses, but others believe the news is a telling sign about American voters. Katie Pavlich, writing for Townhall, believes the pro-abortion movement is not resonating with young voters.
“The majority of Americans, including women, believe late-term abortion should be illegal. EMILY’s List candidates, including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, refuse to detail what, if any, restrictions should be placed on abortions,” Pavlich said. “As the country changes, the abortion movement is suffering from a lack of activists and a lack of single issue, abortion voters.”
SIGN THE PLEDGE: I Pledge to Vote for a Pro-Life Candidate for President
Polls back up this reasoning. A poll by the pro-abortion group NARAL found that young pro-life voters are much more likely to consider abortion an important issue than young voters who identify as pro-choice.
The radical pro-abortion stances of candidates like Clinton and Bernie Sanders also could be leaving a bad taste in many Americans’ mouths. Clinton promised Planned Parenthood that she would force taxpayers to fund abortions, and Sanders can’t name a single case when he thinks abortion should be illegal. Both stances are extremely unpopular with most Americans. And as evidenced in previous elections, abortion is not a winning issue for radical, pro-abortion candidates.
Most Americans oppose most abortions, and their votes are showing that.
