Washington Post: Extreme Anti-Choice Activist Makes Sen. Houck Lone Target

Senator Edd Houck (pictured with his wife, Dana) is under attack by opponents of women's reproductive rights for standing up for choice in the Senate

An anti-choice front group has been spreading recklessly distorted information about Sen. Houck in an attempt to defeat a champion of women’s reproductive health in next week’s election. From The Washington Post:

Terry Beatley, an antiabortion activist whose tactics and views are a bit more extreme than what you normally see on the campaign trail, hopes her new political action committee, No Excuses Ministry, will make enough difference in next week’s election to topple her only target: Sen. Ed Houck.

Houck (D- Spotsylvania), chairman of the Senate Health and Education Committee, is in one of the closest races in the state against Republican Bryce Reeves.

Beatley’s volunteers have knocked on hundreds of doors and handed out thousands of fliers at community events in the Fredericksburg area to call attention to Houck’s voting record on abortion, gay rights and stem cell research. At at least one event they passed out plastic fetuses and talked about how Houck is destroying “biblical family values.”

The anti-choice PAC has been spreading flyers accusing Sen. Houck of eugenics and eroding what are supposedly “biblical family values” because he supports full access to reproductive health care. Obviously, these allegations have been fully discredited:

Craig Bieber, Houck’s campaign manager, said Beatley’s group is spreading “recklessly false allegations,”including handing out fliers that Houck to “killing African American babies” and the KKK.

One flier we received about Houck says Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was “a racist/population control supporter/lifetime member of the American Eugenics Society. She was frequently asked to speak at Klu Klux Klan meetings.”

Sanger, a nurse who died in 1966, is credited with opening the first birth control clinic in the nation and founding Planned Parenthood. She is a frequent target of attacks by the antiabortion-rights movement because, as she writes in an autobiography, she spoke to the women’s auxiliary of the KKK and she, like other prominent people of her time, dabbled in eugenics, which looks at ways to improve the human species.

The flier tied Houck to the KKK and eugenics because he supports — and is supported by — Planned Parenthood.

“Ultimately the truth will win out,’’ Bieber said. “We think it’s disgusting that she and her PAC would resort to these distortions.”

Unfortunately, No Excuses Ministry is not the only anti-choice PAC targeting Sen. Houck. National anti-choice group, the Susan B. Anthony List, also announced its intention to spend over $20,000 in an attempt to defeat Sen. Houck and roll back women’s reproductive rights in the state.

You can help keep a strong advocate for women’s reproductive rights and an experienced advocate for Albemarle County in the State Senate and stop a radical republican takeover by volunteering for Sen. Houck or by contributing to his campaign on ActBlue.