Keys to Abortion Industry’s Success: Public Relations and Liberal Network

The abortion industry’s public relations machinery has always intrigued me. At any given time I can tell which agenda items anti-life groups have directed their PR firms to push by news articles, op eds, and tweets I read. If you pay attention you see there are always particular topics the other side is swarming around.

Right now, for instance, their focus is on making the morning after pill available over-the-counter for kids, and on forcing employers, with an emphasis on Catholic institutions (which actually may be a ploy to divert our attention from the bigger prize), to offer free contraceptives in their insurance programs.

Smearing abstinence education is one of their ceaseless targets, and Siri was a bonus add-on last week. (Do you really think Cecile Richards wrote that indignant op ed in HuffPo? Get real. It was penned and promoted by Planned Parenthood’s PR team.)

Public relations is a huge component of pro-abortion strategy. Wrote NARAL co-founder and pro-life convert Dr. Bernard Nathanson in 2002, “[W]e captured the media, we spent money on public relations.… Our first year’s budget was $7,500. Of that, $5,000 was allotted to a public relations firm to persuade the media of the correctness of our position. That was in 1969.”

This remains true. To be sure, abortion groups are always on the lookout for free interns to do PR for them (examples here and here), which most pro-life groups don’t utilize but should.

But they still need the big guns, companies paid to network with journalists like Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff [pictured left], a frequent pro-abortion accomplice.

So I’ve always wondered just who are these PR firms? How many are on retainer at any given time? How many and which abortion groups fund them? Do they pool their resources?

Well, last week I stumbled on one when reading an article in the New York Times, which quoted “Elizabeth Toledo [pictured right], a public relations consultant for abortion rights groups.”

I googled Toledo and found she is the president of Camino Public Relations, a firm “dedicated to bringing new communications technologies and proven media strategies to progressive causes.”

Indeed, Camino’s clients include Planned Parenthood Federation of America and three Planned Parenthood affiliates.

And this is no surprise since Toledo’s bio says she is a former Vice President of Communications for PPFA.

Of further interest are Camino’s other clients, which demonstrate the interconnectedness of liberal groups, none of which are actually service oriented but rather profit oriented.

One of Camino’s “featured clients” is the Service Employees International Union. SEIU’s International Executive Vice President is Kirk Adams  husband to Cecile Richards.

Another Camino client is Danco Laboratories, which manufactures Mifeprex, aka RU486. Danco advertises Planned Parenthood as a Mifeprex distributor, and Planned Parenthood states “medical” (Mifeprex) abortions account for 32% of its abortion business now. Rest assured Planned Parenthood has negotiated a sweetheart purchasing deal with Danco.

I could go on with the zero degrees of separation between the abortion industry and other liberal political and financial power houses, but you get the idea.

The incestuous and synergistic power of these groups also helps explain why and who Obama and Democrats regulate, unregulate, attack, and protect.