EMILY’s List is the largest and most powerful political action committee (PAC) in the world. “We are huge,” declared Ellen R. Malcolm, president and founder of the group, which works to elect pro-abortion women. In the 2000 election alone, members of EMILY’s List—numbering more than 68,000—contributed more than $9.3 million to female candidates who support abortion rights. The organization also raised $10.8 million for its WOMEN VOTE! initiative, an election effort designed to bring Democratic pro-abortion women voters to the polls, especially in battleground states. In the eight elections since the PAC’s inception, 11 pro-abortion Democrat female senators, 53 congresswomen and 4 female governors have been elected. Thanks to the backing of EMILY’s List, pro-abortion women are now hammering out public policy on a variety of issues ranging from restricting Second Amendment rights to expanding “reproductive rights.”
EMILY is an acronym for “Early Money is Like Yeast” (it makes the “dough” rise). EMILY’s List began in 1985 when 25 women assembled in the basement of Ellen Malcolm’s home to write letters telling their friends of a network they were forming to raise money for pro-abortion Democratic women seeking public office. By pioneering the practice of “bundling,” EMILY’s List developed a way to side-step financial caps often placed on political action committees by state governments. In Michigan, for example, prior to Public Act 250 of 2001, EMILY’s List circumvented the law’s $34,000 ceiling by bundling together solicited campaign contributions made payable to individual campaigns. These bundles were then forwarded on to candidates without reference to the $34,000 already donated by EMILY’s List. Although Public Act 250 of 2001 put a stop to bundling in the state of Michigan, laws in many other states do not place such limitations on PACs like EMILY’s List. Even the “McCain-Feingold” federal campaign finance “reform” bill recently signed into law by President Bush does not prohibit, or even limit bundling.
While researching how “McCain-Feingold” affects EMILY’s List, this author began to understand why women find such organizations so appealing. My call to EMILY’s List was answered by an eager young woman determined to do all she could to help me. She then efficiently transferred me to yet another energetic young woman who enthusiastically explained that “McCain-Feingold” not only would not hinder EMILY’s fundraising abilities, but would allow them to collect even more money than before. As we spoke, I could feel the energy of these young women and their passionate devotion to their “cause.” Hanging up, I couldn’t help but think how exciting it would be for a young woman working on Capital Hill, serving her country. I had to remind myself that those women are working to destroy innocent human life.
EMILY’s List understands the seductive influence of power, not to mention money. The PAC exists to enable women to help other women attain power. This power often entices women in our culture to choose a career over having a family, but more astonishingly to choose to kill their own children and feel okay, even noble, about doing so. Not only that, it convinces them to work for the legalization of the killing of other people’s children as well. Power, so the propaganda goes, does not lie in the courageous decision to become a mother, but in the choice to abort a baby in order to preserve a lifestyle of corporate advancement and personal pleasure.
The success of EMILY’s List is also attributed to the fact that its staff understands exactly the group’s mission and what it takes to accomplish that mission. As its website details, EMILY only hires staff from among the brightest in our nation: women with managerial expertise, extensive campaign experience, fundraising success and savvy media skills. EMILY then uses this powerhouse staff to seek out viable pro-abortion candidates and prepare them for victory through its own state and legislative training program. The PAC’s election success record is a result of well-run training programs and the ability to recruit scores of members to fund EMILY’s List and the individual candidates. The group brings in donations by assembling members to whom they send a detailed biography of each pro-abortion woman running for office. Members decide to whom they wish to contribute, make their checks payable directly to the individual campaigns and send them back to EMILY’s List.
EMILY’s List perpetuates the lie that the “right to choose” necessitates a right to have an abortion and turns women against their own offspring in the name of the feminist movement. Most women do not realize that the early feminist movement itself unanimously opposed abortion, characterizing it as a tool of male oppression. According to the early feminists, to evade having children—or worse yet, to kill them—was to live as a woman who had given up all freedom. Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792 author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, warns of the slavery that the so-called right to choose ultimately brings: “Women becoming consequently weaker…have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection…either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when it is born. Nature in everything demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.” Wollstonecraft understood, as the women who support EMILY’s List do not, that the real power of being a woman is that which comes from using your strength to protect and nurture the defenseless—above all, the pre-born child nestled in the womb.
Jennifer Taylor is a freelance writer for HLI.
(This article courtesy of HLI Reports, a publication of Human Life International.)
